This article has been written by Jay Chandrashekhar Bhatt pursuing an Executive Certificate Course in US Accounting and Bookkeeping from Skill Arbitrage.

This article has been edited and published by Shashwat Kaushik.

Introduction

In the era of fast-changing and developing environments where everyone is trying to socialise themselves with the help of technology and via means of telecommunication, brands and reputation have been playing a vital role in the development and fostering of a business. Be it a sole proprietor or a private limited organisation, each and every business needs to build its own brand image in the market so that it can survive the pros and cons and strengthen itself to absorb the time and tides of the market, which is highly volatile in nature.
Building a brand image for a business can be a highly technical, lengthy, and time consuming process when it comes to a product or service industry segment. As far as other segments are concerned, the demand in the market is so high that they easily climb the ladder and attain a level where they can foster themselves automatically.

Understanding of the topic

Let us divide the topic into three for a better understanding. The first will be “rethinking reputation,”  the second will be “employee personal brand,” and the last will be “employer brand.”

Rethinking reputation

Rethinking simply means you need to re-examine your reputation. It can be about what factors play an important role in building your reputation; are there any changes that need to be inculcated that can bring a drastic change into your organisation. Rethinking reputation can also mean examining whether the reputation you built many years ago works as efficiently as it did when it was newly introduced in the market. Is the business organisation in a position to regain its market, if any, using the same brand image? If the answer to the above is yes, which certainly might not be due to many factors being introduced into the market that can hamper your brand, you can still re-build it using various tactics. And if it’s a big no, there is a need for strategic implementation of techniques that can give you affirmative results.

Employee personal brands

Moving on to “employee personal brands”, it simply means to build a personal audience and influence in a particular industry. Let us understand this term with an example, say Mr. Ratan Tata or Mr. Mukesh Ambani, or recent examples like Mr. Aman Gupta, Peyush Bansal, and many more. Of course, they are no longer employees of the business with which they might be working, but to name some of the few was just to shed light on the fact that their name is a brand within itself. Let’s say Mr. Aman Gupta has built a brand that is soaring to the heights of the sky. Now,  even if his product does not have a name or separate launches, his name itself can turn the situation into an affirmative one. By this, I mean to say that there might be some employees in the organisation who can create their own monopoly on a smaller scale within the organisation, industry or business. Another way we can better explain is that, in some manufacturing units, there is always importance given to the procurement department, which can result in negative costs for the product the business might be manufacturing. In this department, there may be some personnel who might have a brand image in the market from which the organisation might be procuring raw materials or other products. We might never know that, with the reputation/influence of such people, the organisation is able to procure materials at lower costs. This point is very much related to something called “corporate politics,” which is difficult but not impossible to understand.

Employer brand

The last point we need to understand is “employer brand.” This can be a continuation of the above two points that employees personal brand and image can also affect the employer’s brand, i.e., the goodwill of the organisation itself. Misbehaviour or unprofessionalism of the employees when they represent themselves from a particular organisation can lead to negative image building in the market.

In brief, we can say that in this era of business, an organisation should not only focus on building and managing its own brand / reputation but also on the impact of employees’ personal brand, which can have on shaping and enhancing the employer’s brand. This can be done by the organisation by promoting a work culture in which the employees might be more comfortable working, promoting their own development and encouraging them to excel more in their personal as well as their curriculum. It can also be done by providing some certifications with respect to some courses or bootcamps familiar to them in the organisation.

Benefits and challenges

Talking about benefits could be a much narrower point to be discussed, since the benefits would be on a positive note and everyone is not concerned unless there are negative outcomes.
This is going to benefit the organisation in all aspects and jurisdictions because it will bring a positive financial breeze into financial and non financial matters. But this can be a challenging task to deal with. This is because the organisation needs to directly or indirectly deal with humans, and as far as humans are understood, their behaviour, opinion, language, and thought process can differ on various grounds and understanding each and every one’s aspect is not going to be an easy piece of cake for anyone.

An organisation can deal with this by understanding their employee groups, their knowledge level and skills, their willingness to work within the environment provided and much more. Letting an employee build his/her own brand image can also be so challenging and risky  in nature that if the organisation is in its development/growth stage, there might be higher chances of that employee leaving the organisation once a certain level of knowledge and experience is achieved by him/her. In this case, the brand built by the employee is benefiting the employee itself rather than doing the same for the organisation. This can be a very challenging task since recruiting another one can also feel like dropping off a mountain after having climbed it on its own and that too on bare feet.

Best practice

On this point, best practices cannot be a standard rule or line of actions being framed for every organisation which is common for all. It will depend on various factors, circumstances, ethics and cultural background which will be required to be considered in order for an organisation to be in compliance with the core of the topic.

Factors that play a positive role in boosting an employee’s personal brand

Skills and expertise level of knowledge

It is a very common practice now a days in big organisations to not only help employees to bring up and grow financially but also provide them with the necessary resources and finances for their career and professional development. Many organisations offer inhouse postgraduate and multiple certification courses with the help of which the employee can develop himself/ herself, and the feeling of being   in one’s career can be avoided.

Networking and socialising

Building an employee’s personal brand, from which the employer can benefit, is the easiest way to market and build an organisation’s presence in the market. Many campaigns and drives are organised by companies like Drive for Poverty Eradication, Food Distribution, Essential Supplies, sponsorship and scholarships for needy students for their primary and pre-primary education, wherein the employees are made to participate in the drives and campaigns, which helps them to develop a sense that the organisation even has a deep intuition with regards to society and the economic environment as well as the development of its own employees.

Online presence

Organisations now a days insist their employees be as active as possible on social media, update their profiles, share their thoughts on work culture, environment, policies, etc. while working with the organisation. Various websites like LinkedIn and Facebook help employees develop a virtual professional profile, with the help of which they are easily reachable by recruiters and the general public. All this helps an organisation advertise itself, not directly but through the medium of its own employees.

Professionalism

Organisations also nowadays train their employees to develop a professional attitude within themselves and this can be a positive arrow struck when the employee jumps from one organisation to another by showcasing all the skills he/she has developed while in  previous employment.
There can be various other points that might be self explanatory but I have tried to elaborate on them as much as possible.

Conclusion

Employers and business organisations, though they might be working for a profit motive, when they are not in sync with their employees’ requirements and needs, their employees’ brand and reputation and employers’ reputation might be at some risk, which is not a good sign for a business to foster.

References

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-personal-branding-employees-boosting-your-career-mirko-spinella/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-your-employees-personal-brand-can-elevate-companys-isotalent
• https://belinapayroll.com/re-thinking-reputation-how-your-employees-personal-brands-elevate-your-employer-brand/#zw