Internal affairs

A brand is more than a logo: it’s a statement of what a company stands for, and what it won’t stand for; it embodies the company’s personality. But that personality is an amalgam of millions of tiny actions carried out by employees. Suppliers, customers and other stakeholders don’t judge a company by how shiny its emblem is: they judge it by how its employees behave when they encounter them.How can companies with diverse and dispersed workforces communicate their values consistently internally, to ensure that employees can always be ‘on message’?

The answer could be the intranet, but probably not as you now know it. Most companies invest a tiny fraction of their website budget in creating their intranet. Often the intranet software will be bought off the shelf, like the word processing and spreadsheets packages, rather than shaped to the needs of the business and its employees. If something is too hard to use (clue: if it needs training, it’s probably too hard to use), then it’s unlikely to communicate effectively.

By contrast, if an intranet is designed around the company and its employees, it can be highly effective in articulating the company voice, beliefs and values. Employees can be kept up to date about what’s going on in the business, and this can inform their behaviour and attitude when speaking to outsiders. Whether it’s the airline or the mobile phone company, we expect Virgin staff to be friendly, personable and efficient. Virgin’s brand experience is consistent across all its products and services, partly as a result of clear internal communications.

Some companies can benefit by tapping into the forums where their employees already share their knowledge and experiences, such as Facebook. While conservative businesses like law firms might be uncomfortable with the blurred line between formal and informal communications there, some companies can avoid reinventing the wheel by integrating the intranet with Facebook. Posts there can be reused in forums, and colleagues can see who’s online and communicate quickly in an informal atmosphere.

To create an effective intranet, companies need to ensure there is clear ownership and leadership for it. There needs to be a clear understanding of how the company’s brand is conveyed internally, and the impact that has on external perception of the company. In order to achieve that, companies should use the same analytics tools on the intranet that they already use for understanding how customers use the public website. Forums might look inactive, but could be performing a valuable service to the lurkers who are content to read posts without replying. An analysis of common search terms can also be used to identify company policies that need to be communicated more clearly. By phasing intranet growth, and building on what works well, it’s possible to achieve buy-in from employees.

Employee behaviour is the clearest expression of a brand. Isn’t it time companies devoted as much energy to helping the team understand the brand as it does to trying to convey it to end customers?