It’s one thing to have articulated your brand tools. It’s another to be held accountable for their success. Unless you are keeping track of how well your organization is living its brand, then a brand can quickly become an empty set of words, a nice idea, something to which lip service is paid.

There are many ways to monitor the effectiveness of your brand training and brand communications efforts, including quantitative brand benchmarking surveys, qualitative brand audits, focus groups, and more, and each has its purposes, benefits and drawbacks. This article will discuss one way to measure how well your company is living its brand.

A simple way that companies can be held accountable is through an integrated brand review process. The idea is not complex: just create a short form with the brand tools on it, and a space for the employee’s feedback as to whether the company’s policies, programs, practices and products are living up to the brand as stated. You are asking employees whether your company’s programs and policies are consistent with your guiding principles. (Alternatively, you can ask for examples of how the company is living up to its brand, but given human nature, it’s more likely that people will notice what’s not working far more readily than what isn’t.) Give these forms to new employees at orientation, and make them available in common areas around the office; it’s also a good idea to enable on-line submissions.

Any employee can make a suggestion or report an action that seems contradictory to the organization’s purpose. You need to make sure that a relevant manager responds within two weeks, either with an acknowledgement of the idea, a discussion around it, or a change in policy or program. You can allow responses to be anonymous, but then you can’t create a dialog around them, which is half the point, so request that people attach their names to their observations. When employees are so engaged that they are giving feedback on whether the company is living its brand, then you have more brand champions in your organization.

The benefit is multifaceted. Employees learn what the company is committed to, as well as get practice applying the brand tools. Employees feel listened to and see management’s commitment to the brand. And management gets valuable input to the decision making process.

You can even go so far as to put the responses in a database and track trends, which can identify trouble spots early. At the very least, reporting back to the company on the top employee concerns and their solutions once a quarter will keep all employees aware of the brand promise and how management is delivering on it.

-Lynn Parker

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