Employee engagement – how can business leaders ensure that everyone shares their values?

In an ever-more-competitive drinks market, the enthusiasm and commitment of employees to the brands and businesses they represent makes all the difference. While every business leader acknowledges the importance of employee engagement, how many turn their words in to action?

With competition for the best employees also fierce, the way a business communicates its values internally takes on added significance. As part of their monthly thought leadership round table, Cesium Group brought together HR leaders from a range of drinks brands to debate the intertwined issues of employee engagement and employer branding.

Do we have a clear definition of employer branding?

Participants acknowledged the need for businesses to go beyond traditional measures of employee engagement in order to earn the commitment of employees. Defining this, sometimes elusive, concept of the employer brand, one participant called it the “framework of expectation”, within which the company’s expectations of an employee and the employee’s expectations of the company both sit. Another summed the concept up more simply as: “What’s it like to work there? Does the hype live up to the way it is to work day-to-day in the organisation?”

Creating a culture in which employees take a professional pride in the company’s success and standing in the market was also seen as essential. “Employer branding is a retention tool as well as an attraction tool,” said one participant.

Do family and entrepreneur-led businesses have an advantage in employer branding?

The drinks industry has many businesses with an iconic owning family or charismatic individual at the helm. This type of structure can deliver huge benefits in employer branding, just as it does when communicating the brand values to consumers – as long as the values communicated externally are also delivered internally.

One participant with experience of a family-led company said: “The way the family ethos is communicated to consumers has quite an impact on how employees see the employer brand, so it needs to give the true picture.”

Another made the point that while entrepreneurs often inspire great loyalty and pride in their employees, this kind of strong “personal brand” can also carry dangers if the entrepreneur’s media standing is tarnished. “All it takes is for that one individual to have bad PR. If the man takes a knock, so do all the employees.”

How can larger companies drive employee engagement?

Several participants suggested smaller businesses have a built-in advantage in harnessing the passion of employee loyalty. One said: “There’s nothing more powerful than building a challenger brand mentality. It’s like creating a tribe.“

The counterpoint is that businesses that have, for example, a diverse range of drinks brands or a portfolio of pub and restaurant formats, may face more challenges than those built around a single strong brand. As one participant said: “If the group’s values are well thought through, then it shouldn’t cause a problem. Employees can develop their career around the business, and know they have the central resource to support them. Where it’s not very well thought through, the different areas are going to clash.”

Where does responsibility for employee engagement sit in an organisation?

While HR has a key role in driving employee engagement, the commitment has to be at the heart of the business. “It’s very much led by the CEO and the values of the organisation, and everyone has ownership. HR will execute some of the work on the policies, but no single function should own it.”

One participant recalled working in a merged organisation where the various elements had no shared culture. “We had an aspirational set of values that no-one followed. I used to have to go around the world training, and it was tough. It wasn’t irrelevant, they just didn’t believe in it. It wasn’t lived.”

Has social media raised the stakes in terms of employee engagement?

In the digital age, there is a new level of transparency through websites such as Glassdoor, which allow employees to review the workplace culture of businesses, with a particular focus on aspects of recruitment such as the interview process.

“When our CEO sees a bad review, we try to put it in context for him – he knows he has happy employees, but the reputation of the business is very important to him. Quite often a bad review will be somebody who has a particular grievance. The question then is whether they are highlighting an issue that we already know about? It’s your stimulus to actually do something about it.”

Another participant highlighted the benefits: “In an environment where millennials are constantly interacting on social media, you can measure that snapshot to supplement the appraisals process. Given that we’re dealing with a different generation that often aren’t going to hang around too long in the organisation, that more instant feedback is a good thing.”

What benefits do engaged employees bring to a business?

It’s self-evident that “if you want your existing employees to be ambassadors for the company, they have to have a good experience as an employee.” Participants discussed the merits of offering incentives to recruit new colleagues, with several making the point that properly engaged employees will often do so willingly, without the need for a financial incentive.

In conclusion

There was agreement that genuine employee engagement only comes when businesses have leaders that live and breathe the values consistently, with a clear message to consumers and the wider industry, as well as the employees themselves. Greater transparency of the employee experience through social media heightens the need to get both employer branding and employee engagement right. Ultimately, the true value of a business is an engaged workforce that understands the long term vision, knows how their role fits into the bigger picture, and are proud to act as an ambassador for the products, brand and the business. The litmus test is whether employees are proud to hand out business cards and sell the virtues of their employer at a dinner party.

About Cesium Group
Cesium Group is a boutique headhunting and HR consultancy working across the beers, wines and spirits categories, both globally, and in the UK. We take the best elements of process and structure from the big international search firms and HR consultancies, but redefine them in a more agile, authentic and immersive way. The result? Better than best practice that positively impact the bottom line of our clients.