Symbolism and Brand Recognition for Employees

As business leaders sometimes we forget how important our brand, our corporate symbol, is to our employee base. All businesses have challenges that we have to overcome, and frequently they relate to personnel. However, people at all levels in companies and organizations throughout the world take great pride in their contribution to the success of their entity, their brand.

I was reminded of this last week when meeting with a client on west coast who had recently "rebranded" their business. Erik, the General Manager, told us about some of the challenges the company had faced in relation to defining their business to the community and their employees. He talked about how their previous name didn't depict the type of company that they were and that management had made a decision to update the name, logo and image.

This new brand was a surprise launch during a company-wide Saturday evening event attended by all employees. Organizational leadership spoke about how the new brand would reflect the great work they did and how employees contributions over time have made this evolution possible. After introducing the new brand and corporate symbol to their 150 employees, they made branded items available to employees for purchase. Erik indicated he was blown away by how his people had embraced the brand and that they bought everything they could get their hands on that included the new corporate idenity.

As we talked further it became clear that this company, like so many others, had people who were very proud of the business and wanted this on display. It was certainly more then just a paycheck; it was something they had invested themselves in and were proud to show off!