Workplace Behavior Archives

Are the “Best Places to Work” Really the Best?

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Saja Chodosh

The Clout of the “Best Places to Work” List

Companies like Fortune and Glassdoor have been dedicated to naming and honoring the ‘Best Places to Work’ for more than 10 years. And these awards have gained more and more clout with time. Much like colleges treasure their rankings, workplaces hold these awards like badges of honor.

The ‘Best Places to Work’ emblem is hung from work walls, integrated into recruiting and new hire materials, pushed on social media, and celebrated by the press, employees, and company executives alike. Our work building employer brands with companies looking to attract the best talent out there has showed us first-hand how much businesses today really value these rankings.

And for good reason – as a group of people who believe meaningful brands must be built from the inside out, we’re all for the pride. Focusing on culture and employee fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness is key to building a business in the right way. The question is: What story do these rankings tell? Is it the whole story? And just because a workplace is deemed one of the ‘Best Places to Work,’ should recruits be jumping on the celebration wagon and signing contracts just like that?

First, Let’s Look at the Patterns

When you look at the companies who make the cut, yes, a bunch are big brand names you’d expect on the list. But many are less expected. So what ties them all together? Here’s what we noticed when we dug deeper.

1. They Lead with Purpose:

These are companies who are clear, aligned, and proud of who they are, what they stand for, and what they care about. Leaders have a vision for the future that everyone shares. The brands help employees live by the mission of the company every day – something we’ve always believed defines successful business today. Purpose-led companies who integrate purpose into their culture inspire and empower their employees to move the company forward in a meaningful and sustainable way.

2. They Offer Opportunity and Growth:

These are workplaces that celebrate employee accomplishments, foster a growth-mindset, work with employees to co-create the optimal work experience, and motivate employees to set high goals and help them actually meet those goals. This helps employees build a more meaningful relationship with their work along the entire employee journey. Above all else, employees feel as though they are invested in and valued – that people want them to grow, learn, be challenged, and succeed.

3. They Behave with Transparency:

Saying you value transparency is no longer enough. You have to live it – and not just externally. What ties many of these ‘Best Places to Work’ together is their leadership. Leaders don’t work in silos – they share challenges and successes with employees, hold open forums, have open door policies, and embrace honesty (even when it’s hard.) And it’s this kind of transparency that drives employee trust.

4. They Listen and Adapt:

The power of listening is huge. Being a good listener as an employer means you can better build empathetic, meaningful, and productive relationships with employees. This requires humility from leadership and openness to new ideas, perspectives, and opinions. And in turn, listening to employees creates more creative, innovative, diverse, and open work environments. Employers who not only listen – but act on what they hear – are able to flex to changing demands of employees, stay relevant and meaningful to the people who matter most, and never get stuck in past best practices.

It’s important to point out that what brings the companies in these lists together isn’t solely perks and benefits. Yes, a lot of the workplaces on the lists give out a lot of free food. Even free concerts, gym memberships, the most cutting-edge health benefits…But benefits and perks only get you so far. They have to tie back to employees – their purpose, their goals, what helps them grow.

Forget About Benefits and Perks, “Best Places to Work” Is About Something More

Because ‘Best Places to Work’ is often used in recruiting it’s important to remember that making any list of great places to work isn’t enough. Potential employees and current employees need to understand why you are not only great, but why you are a perfect match for them.

The employees who are going to drive your business forward not only care that you’re a great place to work (sure, that might be a plus), but they also care about connecting with you. A good fit means that they understand and admire what you do and why you do it. They feel aligned and connected to your business because it connects to their passions, expertise, and ambitions. Your purpose is a purpose they want to latch onto.

Yes, from 1984 to 2011, those that won ‘Best Places to Work’ outperformed peers on stock returns by 2.3% to 3.8% per year. But that’s because they did more than just display ‘Best Place to Work’ on their walls – they lived up to it. They committed to their unique workforce and their careers. They committed to their community. And they helped their community commit to their purpose with pride. In the end, those might be more worthy causes than any award out there. That being said, we wouldn’t be surprised if you made the list if you did just that.

If you need help evaluating your workplace and what you offer employees, give us a call and we can help you build a more meaningful workplace that will help you drive your business forward.

You may also want to download and read The Meaningful Workplace which has been downloaded more than 7000 times.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

Brand Behavior Matters for Transforming your Business

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Paige Lansing Valle

To Transform Your Brand, Transform Your Brand Behavior

In the end, brand behavior is what drives results. No matter how smart and inspired your brand strategy may be, it’s just strategy. And oftentimes, it’s just not enough. In fact, we’ve seen many brand strategies fall short because they failed to move beyond brand identity and communications, and didn’t provide the guidelines, tools, and processes needed to actually bring the brand’s defining attributes to life through meaningful behavior and action.

Brand behavior is all about how your brand reaches out to people and how they respond back to you. In reality, people never experience brand strategies. Instead, they experience brand moments. These brand moments are what bring the strategy alive. So if you want to transform your brand and reap the benefits of this transformation, you have to focus on these brand moments. By honing in on how your brand behaves at every touchpoint, brand behavior is what will ultimately take your brand strategy further than the “brand deck.” The goal of brand behavior is two-fold: make customers more satisfied and loyal, while creating an aligned, ambitious, and meaningful workplace that behaves in line with your brand.

Workplace Behavior

Because behavior is learned and often mimicked, people from childhood onwards depend on elders, role models, and/or authority figures to show them the “right” way to behave. And patterns of behavior operate the same way within a workplace. They trickle down. This means workplace behavior is self-propagating, infectious, and often indicative of the culture of an organization. In fact, if your brand isn’t living up to its potential, the cause may very well be workplace behavior does not pay off why your brand matters. When you add meaning to workplace behavior, you add meaning to the brand.

No Small Task

Modifying behavior internally is key to shifting your brand externally. But aligning behavior to reflect your brand is never easy. Old, rooted, and integrated patterns of behavior become second nature and breaking out of these patterns can’t be done overnight. It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of off-strategy behaviors, especially in the midst of a business shift. Because change is more easily said than done, it requires true courage and hard work.

Shortcuts never work. Leaders can’t just ask employees to change behaviors that they aren’t modeling themselves. And just a few “behavior champions” won’t be enough to transform your businesses. Everyone plays a role in transforming a brand (no matter how large or established the business). If behaviors don’t fit – even on an individual basis – your business will be slowed down.

When done right, workplace behavior can be transformative for you business, shifting the way people think, feel, and act with respect to your brand – and making your brand matter more.

Address shifts head-on. The importance of workplace behavior can easily be brushed under the rug, misunderstood, or lost in translation. Shifts must be communicated, outlined, and demonstrated clearly from the onset. At larger companies this is especially important. It’s easy for someone who has been working for your business for 40 years to have a different understanding of the shift then your new hire. Take the time to be clear. Good communication goes a long way.
Model behavior from the top down. Leaders lead by example. Demonstrating how behaviors connect to what your brand is all about is much more compelling than just telling people how to act. By behaving thoughtfully, you will discover why these behavior shifts really matter, what the challenges are, and how to overcome them as a community. This understanding will foster more successful teamwork, productivity, and help everyone move forward
Show empathy, respect, and trust. Empathetic businesses are smart businesses. Try to see your business through your employees’ eyes. Through this shift in perspective, it’s easier to identify the behavior shifts that are necessary to make the brand promise relevant and powerful to everyone. Show respect for everyone’s role. Strategic shifts change how people approach and do their jobs, and these transitions can prove difficult for many. Empower your employees to make the necessary behavior adjustments.
Make people feel like they matter. Recognize and reward meaningful behavior. When people feel like what they do and how they do it really does matter, they are more likely to embody the new behavior because they see first-hand how it makes a difference. The best way to get employees to behave in line with your brand is by demonstrating their individual value to the business – showing each individual how the brand can help them grow both professional and personally.
Build a roadmap. In larger companies, employees often feel out of touch with where the company is headed. What’s it going to be like in 5 years? What are the goals? How can each individual help? Building a roadmap is a great way to make people part of the shift towards success. Show employees where the business could go if everyone gets on board and behaves meaningfully each and every day.

Meaningful workplace behavior will positively affect the way your brand is perceived both inside and outside the business. When people see those behind the brand behaving in a way that truly reflects who you are, what you do, and why you matter, they feel more connected and appreciative of what the brand stands for. Workplace behavior can help your brand matter more to everyone.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

Top Brand Strategy Firm Shares Thoughts on Brand Purpose

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Saja Chodosh

A brand strategy firm perspective

There’s been a lot of buzz lately around brand purpose – a concept that San Francisco’s Brand Strategy Firm, Emotive Brand has championed from our very beginning. Unfortunately, with buzz, comes confusion. It’s easy to get lost in the vernacular and repetitions and lose the answers to the key questions at hand. Tracy Lloyd, founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer of Emotive Brand, offers some clarity, opinions, and answers to questions surrounding the concept of purpose-led brands.

1. What does it mean to be a purpose-led brand?

A purpose-led brand is a brand that is driven by a shared ambition, goal, or reason for being. Being a truly purpose-led brand means so much more than marketing your company’s purpose. I think many leaders have the ambition to be purpose-led, but are unwilling to do what it takes behaviorally to live their purpose. Purpose is something that people can identify with, internalize, and put into action for themselves. Purpose-led companies go beyond the obvious drivers of generating profit and creating shareholder value, and try to connect with people in authentic and emotionally meaningful ways. In 2016, I’m seeing a trend and stronger conviction in the idea that there is room for purpose AND profit, and I imagine we will see more and more leaders move toward this belief as they manage their business. Those leaders who are truly guided by their purpose will see their business gain the benefits of both purpose and profit.

2. How can brand purpose differentiate your business?

Purpose is what people are looking for in their day to day lives. So brands that lead with purpose have a real opportunity to connect with people in ways that matter. Be it to recruit top talent to an organization or to encourage people to choose your brand over another, purpose is becoming a deciding factor in our decision-making. We want to buy into something that makes us feel good. Something that makes us feel like we are a part of something larger than ourselves — larger than a single and fleeting purchase or a uninspired job that pays the bills. Purpose differentiates businesses because it connects ideas, people, activities, causes, and products that make lives matter in new and compelling ways.

3. How do you find your purpose?

I believe purpose finds you. And it is the one thing that drives people to build something that can change lives. Purpose is what drives you. For business owners, it might be the “why” that explains their decision to leave a previous job and create something new – something they believe in, are inspired by daily, something they feel could change the world. Your purpose is what attracts people to help you build it, and people to buy it. It is the common denominator of belief and this sets the foundation for other to be willing to work toward your shared ambition. When you lead with purpose, you can develop incredibly energized followers who share your beliefs.

4. Why should companies be thinking about purpose in the workplace?

There is no doubt in my mind that leading with purpose is what enables a thriving corporate culture. It is what will attract the right employees to you, keep the right employees with you, and more meaningfully engage employees in ways that will help both them and your business thrive. Workplaces automatically become more meaningful when employees share in the purpose of what the company is about.

To take this one step further and drive even more alignment and meaning in the workplace, outline the behavior shifts that employees and departments should work toward to support the purpose. This provides the opportunity for them to understand how their roles matter in the larger scheme of delivering on that purpose. When companies take this step, great things can happen: to the culture, to the bottom line, to how people feel about you internally and externally. A shared and embraced goal creates an aligned and engaged workplace.

5. Are purpose-led brands just the marketing buzzword of 2016?

I don’t think so. We’ve created a proprietary methodology and have been building a practice around purpose-led brands for the past 10 years. I believe purpose-led will become the defacto standard at some point. The world is changing, and people are looking for more meaning in their lives. We built Emotive Brand on this premise. And as time goes on, I think the value proposition, that, people want to work for, buy from, and engage with purpose-led brands, will be the most important way for brands to meaningfully connect with people today and in the future — which will create a win-win for everyone.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Six Steps to Improving Brand Behavior

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Tracy Lloyd

On Your Best Brand Behavior

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, brands need to be on their best behavior at all times. There’s nowhere to hide in this digital world when a brand misbehaves. A poor customer service experience, an offensive remark from a CEO, a bad workplace reputation, a lack of transparency, or lies, are types of brand behavior that create a lasting (and widespread) impression.

When business suffers, often, a business can trace it back to a misstep in the brand’s behavior. And though it’s easy to revamp the website or roll-out workplace training as a quick fix, the real challenge is making a shift in brand behavior across the board, starting on the inside with the way employees approach their work and each other.

Time for change

Identifying and aligning around a strong brand promise is critical as your brand evaluates its behavior against its aspirations. But even when there’s a guiding light for how the brand ‘should’ behave across all touchpoints, there may still be a disconnect. When people aren’t living up to the promise, it’s important to make a plan to truly affect how people think and feel about your brand.

Easier said than done

Pointing at one aspect of the brand and expecting results doesn’t cut it. Even so, companies spend billions of dollars on training programs as an obvious ‘fix’ for brand behavior. HBR notes that in the US alone $160 billion are spent on training programs that don’t work. Bad behavior persists without evidence that these programs enhance organizational performance.

Blaming it on external factors isn’t the answer either. It’s not the customers’ fault if the brand isn’t living up to its promise. If the market changes or competition creeps in and customers don’t respondlike they used to, the brand needs to adjust its behavior. A comprehensive approach that looks at behavior inside and outside the business is necessary to truly ignite change.

Creating and Sustaining Change

When the writing is on the wall that the brand’s behavior is negatively affecting its performance, there are six things that will make a significant impact:

1. Solicit an external perspective.

Brand behavior change comes from within, but it’s nearly impossible for top-down change to ignite from the inside. The recent HBR story on leadership training notes that ‘HR managers and others find it difficult or impossible to confront senior leaders and their teams with an uncomfortable truth’ that the policies, procedures and everyday behavior of an organization’s top management are responsible for the brand’s poor behavior. And they are. Using an outside agency to help identify the shifts the brand needs to make in its behavior and develop a clear strategy will ignite the behavior change in a much more productive way than is possible if internal leadership is tasked with the job.

2. Start at the top.

With an external team involved, begin by working with senior leaders to define the values and strategic direction the brand will follow. Then, identify the change in your leadership team’s behavior and commit to making shifts that align to the strategic direction. The brand’s promise should serve as the guiding light in identifying the type of behavior necessary to change. Aligning leadership behavior to the brand promise ensures that the rest of the organization has an example for their own behavior shifts, and subsequently the brand’s external behavior is well positioned to follow-suit.

3. Examine and redesign roles and responsibilities:

This must happen at all levels of the organization to reflect the brand’s promise and motivate change. Ensuring that the brand has the infrastructure in place to support its promise is critical. A brand positioned around its excellent customer service, for example, needs to have the team and people in place to execute.

4. Evaluate day-to-day behaviors:

Evaluating day-to-day behaviors outside of job descriptions helps people identify the individual things they can do to better represent the brand. At the end of the day, a brand’s behavior is reflected in the small things that it does. And, more often than not, the people behind the brand are responsible for every small touchpoint the brand makes with its audience. Establishing internal behavior expectations beyond job descriptions ensures the brand can live up to its promise and create a reputation that people come to associate as integral to the brand itself.

5. Measure change:

Measuring change for individual performance and organizational KPIs. Setting new expectations for behavior is one thing. Holding the people behind the brand responsible for the new behavior is another. Not only should individuals be held accountable, the business should too. Gauge the behavior change with established metrics on a recurring basis to ensure it lasts.

6. Adjust and adapt:

It’s important to constantly adjust and adapt your systems and procedures to sustain new behavior. Set a timeline for change and commit to reevaluating what’s working and what’s not in a designated time period. There’s always room for improvement.

If the brand needs to shift the way it behaves in order to improve its reputation, following these six steps will help ensure the change in behavior is widespread and lasting. When done right, it can have a positive impact on employee engagement, sales, people’s perception of your brand, and your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency

Workplace Behavior Helps Brands Compete

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Tracy Lloyd

Brand strategy that is not activated meaningfully within an organization can fall flat. The best way to ensure employees know how to bring a new brand strategy to life and live its brand promise is to develop a strategy for addresing workplace behavior.

When we set out to build our methodology for brand strategy, we had two bold objectives in mind:

1. Reduce the emotional distance between people and brands, to make lives more meaningful, and brands more successful.

2. Go beyond simply stating a meaningful ambition for brands, by showing the executive team, the management, and every employee how their behavior influences the brand’s future.

Workplace behavior has become an interesting and powerful differentiator for us. Clients see it as a welcome road map to greater success. Here we explain what we mean by workplace behavior, what it comprises, and why it is so important to successful brand transformation.

What is workplace behavior?

Think for a moment about another person who works in your company. It can be anyone, for example, someone in the C-suite, a product designer, a customer service rep, a sales person, someone in marketing, or a recent recruit. What role will they play in the shaping the brand’s meaningful connections? How does their attitude, ambition, and sense of purpose add to, or distract from, the brand’s success?

We believe everyone within an enterprise plays a role in transforming the brand. Clearly, there are many individuals who play significant and critical roles. These are the people who lead the firm and those who interface directly with customers, partners, suppliers, community leaders, the press, etc.

But meaning isn’t exclusively created by these highly visible individuals. Indeed, meaningful connections grow out of the intent and nature of every interaction within the organization. It is a function of the collective behavior of the organization to create meaning. As such, meaning is realized when the brand’s ambition filters into every conversation, decision, product design, customer service experience, etc., etc.

Indeed, a meaningful workplace culture is self-propagating. Every ounce of energy an individual adds to the shift toward meaning is multiplied as it resonates through the many people the brand touches. Over time, meaningful behavior becomes infectious as meaningful actions, gestures, and messages permeate the culture. Each exposure builds upon the last, causing people across the organization to react through new meaning-shaped behavior.

What comprises brand behavior?

The brand behavior document that we create aims to generate this collective energy by helping people across the organization see the role they can play in bringing the brand’s meaningful ambition to life. It does not tell people what they should do, but rather aims to inspire them to modify their own approach to their daily work.

By showing people how to change their attitudes and mindsets, we are able to help them find their own place within the brand’s meaningful ambition. By knowing how they want to make people feel about that ambition, they better understand how to tailor their individual attitudes and actions in ways that they find comfortable, are happy to do, and which leaves them feeling gratified.

This human and empowering approach helps employees more readily internalize and embody the brand’s meaningful ambition. Rather than seeing it as more work they “have to do”, they feel it’s a way of working that they “want to do”. When leaders regularly and actively recognize and reward meaningful shifts, employees feel more aligned to, and gratified by, their work culture.

What are the business benefits of meaningful workplace behavior?

The return on meaning can be very significant. Meaningful connections are all about reducing the emotional distance between the business, and the people important to the success. By dramatically increasing their personal relevance and emotional importance, meaningful brands change the way people think, feel, and act.

This change in dynamic operates on two levels. First, internally the advent of meaning in the workplace culture leads to greater employee engagement, collaboration, and innovation. People see more reasons to be engaged, because they feel that they’re a part of something bigger than before. Meaningful workplace cultures are, by definition, platforms for collaborative working, as all levels of employees better understand their big objectives. A meaningful ambition is the ideal trigger for new thinking, ideas, processes, and innovative products.

Second, externally customers and prospects quickly perceive a shift in the experience they have dealing with the brand. Because this shift reflects an intention of the brand to play a more important and valuable part in their lives, they are naturally drawn to it. They see the brand in this new light and allocate greater levels of preference for the brand. They also are more likely to recommend the brand, and defend it when others question its value.

Beyond customers and prospects, the external effect of a meaningful ambition, actuated through workplace behavior, extends to partners, suppliers, communities, the press, and so on. All these parties are more interested in, have affinity with, and hold respect for the brand.

Great brands make people feel something unique and special

There are many reasons to set a meaningful ambition and to create workplace behavior that makes it a reality in every moment. Brand strategies that do not go as deep will not address the underlying problems that your brand faces in the 21st century.

By focusing on a single idea, and helping everyone inside and outside the organization see it as personally relevant, individually actionable, and emotionally important, an emotive branding strategy will help your brand make the important shifts and transitions it needs in order to thrive in our fast-changing world.

Of course, just getting our workplace behavior recommendations is only the start. The benefits of a meaningful workplace culture will only flow once senior leadership, management, and employees all embrace its ideas and ideals.

Meaning doesn’t come automatically, but when it comes, it pays back handsomely.

For more information on emotive branding and our methodology

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