Your employees are your greatest asset and investing in their professional growth is the best business decision you’ll ever make.
Do your employees know your company vision and mission statement? Even though you’re sure they do, they may actually not have a clear understanding of the company’s strategy: 33% of executives are not confident that their employees could accurately communicate the company’s business strategy to others.
If you want to empower your employees the right way, you’ll need to encourage self-improvement, support your employees’ personal branding efforts, and rethink your internal communication. You’ll need to provide them with all the information they need to understand your business and how their jobs contribute to the company’s success.
Your employees are your most valuable asset, your success depends on theirs. In other words, you can’t grow your business without them. You’ll need to improve the way you communicate with them and to invest in their professional growth.
Let’s go through best practices that will help you empower and engage your employees:
Take Care of Your Employees
Your employees want to be happy at work, grow your business, feel appreciated, and develop their skills. Happy employees are more motivated, productive and creative. But to reach high levels of employee motivation and engagement, you’ll need to invest in your employees and support their professional growth.
So, what can you do to make your employees happy at work and retain your top talent?
The answer is pretty simple: take care of your employees. But don’t get me wrong: taking care of your employees doesn’t mean offering them benefits and perks. It means providing them with all the resources they need to grow as professionals and feel excited about their jobs. And to do so, you’ll need to cultivate a learning culture where employees can attend training sessions, are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, are encouraged to take on more responsibility and share key learnings. Don’t forget Sir Richard Branson’s philosophy that helped him build one of the most profitable businesses in the world: “Take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business. Healthy, engaged employees are your top competitive advantage”.
Communicate Your Company’s Values and Mission to Your Employees
It all starts with your internal communications. If you want your employees to feel motivated and grow as professionals, you’ll need to build a great internal communication. Think about it: how can you expect your employees to take on more responsibility and feel involved in your business success if they don’t know your mission statement, don’t feel connected to your brand or don’t believe in your values?
We all know that employee communication is the key to success but is your internal communication strategy effective, does it help your employees understand your corporate values and missions?
So many employees are still unaware of their company’s values and mission statement: 30% of employees worldwide are unhappy with the communication they’re experiencing at work and 61% don’t know their company’s mission statement.
Your internal communication should allow your employees to easily keep up with your company news and product updates. Employees spend on average 2.5 hours per day looking for business-related information they need to accomplish their tasks. It’s about one-third of their working time. That’s not surprising that employees get frustrated at work!
If you want to empower your employees, make sure your internal communication strategy prevents them from wasting their time searching for the information they need. Also, make sure that you communicate the company’s strategy and goals to them in an effective way so they have a clear understanding of your business. Explain how their individual jobs fit into the big picture. That way, your employees can share your vision and feel confident to speak for your brand.
Helping your employees to know what’s happening in the company is a good start but that’s not enough. You need to take your internal communication to the next level by creating an emotional connection with the brand. Use storytelling, more specifically visual storytelling, to share the information your employees need to know to do their job, but also to communicate your corporate culture. Cultivate an open communication, encourage your employees to share personal stories, and use your internal communication channels to celebrate team and personal achievements.
Your internal communication will help you earn enthusiasm about your brand and improve employee experience in your workplace.
Support Your Employees’ Personal Branding Efforts
Your employees are industry experts, but they may not know how to position themselves as thought leaders on social media.
Some of your employees may not be familiar with the notion of personal branding, while others may be reluctant to share company or industry-related content to their networks because they don’t have enough time to browse the latest industry trends or simply because they are not sure about what content to share on social media. But you can help them with that, especially through employee advocacy.
When it comes to personal branding on social media, one of the most challenging and time-consuming steps is to browse social feeds, blogs and forums to identify the latest market trends and find interesting content to share.
With an employee advocacy program in place, you make these research efforts for your employees and you encourage them to share their thoughts on these trends with their personal networks.
However, your employee advocacy program will work if you build it with and for your employees. The idea behind employee advocacy is not to tap into your employees’ personal networks to get your brand messaging through. Instead, build your program in a way that it supports your employees’ personal branding efforts: share with them company news but also third-party content that is related to their expertise. Encourage them to use the program to share key learnings with their colleagues.
Also, encourage your employees to be authentic on social media. Personal branding doesn’t mean building a perfect image of an industry expert. Encourage your employees to show who they really are, to share their achievements but also their failures. That’s how they’ll engage with their personal networks and build true connections on social media.
Investing in Your Employees Should Be One of Your Top Priorities
Your employees are the ones who build and develop your product. You can’t grow your business without your team. To retain top talent, you’ll need to make sure you deliver a great employee experience and that your employees are happy at work. And to do so, you’ll need to invest in your employees’ growth. You can’t afford to lose your top talent so make your employees’ happiness and growth one of your top priorities.
Are you interested in learning more about employee empowerment and how you can support your employees’ personal brands? Join our upcoming webinar “How to Empower Your Employees” where Ryan Foland, global keynote speaker and co-founder of InfluenceTree™, a personal branding accelerator, will share his best practices for helping employees to develop their thought leadership. Save your seat now!
