Employer branding, company culture and corporate jargons are essential elements of corporate identity, but to maintain a top-notch reputation in today's job market and become more resilient and adaptable, employers are ensuring that employees are getting conducive environment for building their own personal brands as well. Personal branding of employees in the workplace gives HR managers a unique channel to strengthen their company's ROI further.
For instance, making employees share company content alongside their own personal content on social media can positively impact your company. According to Nielsen, the majority (88 per cent) of people globally trust personal referrals more than any other source of information. A strong personal brand can humanise your organisation, helping you develop personal connections with job seekers, increase your appeal and credibility, and ultimately attract the top talent you need for your organisation's success.
The Brand Personality Framework And Its Dimensions
It is important to understand the significance of the Brand Personality Framework in establishing successful personal brands that live within that larger corporate identity. Social psychologist Jennifer Aaker's Dimensions of Brand Personality framework is widely renowned and consists of five key attributes that define a brand's personality. These are:
1. Competence
If you strive to be perceived as capable and dependable, try to embody qualities such as intelligence, expertise, responsibility, confidence, and influence. To communicate this, brands highlight their efficient and high-quality production processes. Most notably — insurance companies and investment advisors showcasing strong customer support policies.
2. Sincerity
If you aim for a sincere and trustworthy image, embody qualities like authenticity, kindness, thoughtfulness, generosity, and mindfulness. Brands that prioritise sincerity make it a point to highlight their commitment to customers and ethical practices, such as using sustainable and natural ingredients in beauty and apparel products.
3. Excitement
To prioritise excitement, go for elements that are bold, creative, and unique in your branding. Excitement-savvy brands convey a playful, imaginative, innovative, and energetic personality through their messaging and product usage. These companies aim to inspire and motivate customers by positioning themselves as original and one-of-a-kind.
A prime example is Airbnb, whose mission statement is 'creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere'. Conveying the message that you travel from your home to another (holiday-)home showcases Airbnb’s counter-intuitive and exciting approach to branding.
4. Sophistication
These brands are luxurious and prestigious. They represent a taste which is refined, glamourous, elegant, romantic, and poised. Their advertising usually takes place in affluent or exotic settings.
5. Toughness
To embody strictness at the workplace, convey an athletic, rustic, or resilient personality. Brands highlight the durability of their products through depictions in outdoor environments or challenging conditions. Their target customers are often adventurous and risk-taking individuals.
To develop strong personal brands of employees, it's helpful to understand these five dimensions of brand personality framework. Each dimension highlights different qualities and helps contribute to improved employer branding, higher-quality leads, reduced paid media expense, stronger recruitment pipeline and higher employee engagement.
While brand dimensions help you build your overall brand’s personality, they also need to be executed through these three successful personal branding strategies:
Crafting a compelling story
One of the most effective ways HR managers can help shape the organisational goals and initiatives and align them with personal brand identity of employees is by leveraging the power of storytelling. Research suggests that the most effective way to grab people's full attention is by telling a compelling story. Instill the mission, values, and culture of the company among employees by utilising storytelling. If done right, leaders can help create a narrative that employees can relate to and be proud to be a part of. These narratives when shared on personal social networks not only show increased brand trust in your employees but also in your organisation by association.
To effectively use storytelling to improve personal brand identity, HR managers must find engaging and captivating ways to convey the key messages of the brand to employees. This may involve highlighting the company's history, success stories, innovative products and principles that set it apart from its competitors. By utilising data-driven storytelling, hiring managers can demonstrate the tangible impact the company is making. This helps build credibility with employees, customers, and other stakeholders, while also reinforcing the company's values and mission.
An interesting example is Buzzfeed, a company you simply couldn’t do without during the mid-2010s, thanks to the wide range of topics it covered and the issues it addressed. One of the key identifying traits of the company was its strong policy of diversity and inclusion, which wasn’t just an HR buzzword for them. In the fall of 2018, the company reached a milestone of 50/50 representation of women and men in leadership positions in the company. They did this wholly by identifying and using metrics, which is a great tool to hold people accountable and to see when the company has had great success and be able to acknowledge that.
Choose authenticity over trends
Being authentic means deciding to be honest and transparent. Authenticity is no longer an option but vital to your branding project because it is what future generations deeply desire. A BBC News report this year reveals that 88 per cent of Asia-Pacific Gen Z respondents said that authenticity plays an influential role in their choice of brands.
A great example of this is CHRO at Facebook, Lori Goler. She has built a personal brand that is centered on authenticity, transparency and a passion for creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace. Her brand reflects her values and experiences, and she uses her platform to share her insights and wisdom with others. By choosing authenticity over trends, Lori has established herself as a thought leader in the HR community and a champion for creating more equitable and inclusive workplaces.
By choosing authenticity over trends, Oprah Winfrey has established a loyal and dedicated following that trusts her recommendations and opinions. This trust is key to a successful personal brand, as it allows the brand to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with its customers.
Being relatable
When organising an event, ensure that you can explain your company's purpose in a way that potential employees can understand. To achieve this, begin by understanding your audience. Use data from past events and your HR department to develop personas that you can analyse. If possible, leverage event technology software to examine the demographics of your previous attendees.
After you have a clear picture of your audience, tailor your communication style to their needs. Make it relatable and comprehensible. Avoid speaking to engineers as if they were attending a book club meeting, and don't address future bankers as if they were in fifth grade.
A great example is GE’s use of humour in coming up with the ‘What’s the Matter with Owen’ series of films, which showed in a quirky manner the misadventures of Owen, an engineer, struggling to explain his job to others.
It's A Journey, Not A Destination
A brand succeeds when authentic stories are consistently created for all stakeholders. That’s when organisations have prioritised connections with customers more than riding the next trend. McKinsey discovered customers respond positively when brands aren’t just transactional but invest in their relationship with their consumers.
Similarly, personal branding of employees doesn’t come with a ticket to a final destination. It's a continuously evolving journey that one needs to reflect upon as they build different elements of their branding. By incorporating the personal branding strategies into their corporate branding efforts, HR leaders and existing employees can engage future employees in a way that sets the employer brand apart from the competition.
