Report: Companies lag behind on organisational branding, social employee engagement

Activating and engaging an always-connected, social media-minded workforce can make a big contribution to cultivating the brand and shaping the ethos of a company, according to The CMO Council’s latest report.

Produced in partnership with Executive Networks, the Making the Workplace a Brand-Defining Space report revealed crowdsourcing and sharing employee content have become new areas of strategic focus for brand and HR leaders.

Yet the report also found most enterprises are lagging in the adoption and use of digital channels for real-time engagement with employees and partners. Furthermore, many are not taking full advantage of social media platforms, mobile devices and instant messaging technologies to crowdsource and share employee-inspired content.

While 90 per cent of chief marketers and HR leaders believe brand persona is key to hiring new (millennial) employees and keeping customers, only 37 per cent have a well-defined corporate culture. In addition, under two thirds of organisations have a formalised brand platform.

However, more than 50 per cent of respondents said they want to test or deploy mobile social platforms for real-time employee engagement. Top reasons to leverage social platforms for staff engagement include turning employees into brand advocates, making brands more authentic, unifying the organisation, recognising employee effort and effectively humanise the company.

“Organisations have long struggled to instill shared values, behaviours and ethics that embody and validate brand platforms, personalities and promises,” said CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May. “A tighter linkage between the CMO and the CHRO should be strongly centred on organisational branding and creating cultures that radiate and reinforce core brand attributes and aspirations.”

Sponsored by CultureSphere, the research was based on an online survey of more than 230 senior marketing and HR leaders across North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The survey was conducted in Q2 of 2015.

Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+: google.com/+CmoAu