Connecting with Employees in the Groundswell

When thinking about a brand's priorities, what often comes to mind? 

Maybe it's profit, maybe it's investors, maybe it's customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, brand awareness...the list goes on. However, what maybe doesn't come to mind right away is employee satisfaction and employee empowerment. The reason for this is that lots of brands don't prioritize this. For many, employees fall lower on the totem pole when deciding what stakeholders mean the most to them. 

Throughout this blog so far, we highlight and discuss the importance of satisfying and empowering consumers in the groundswell, however, the conversation has not yet surrounded employees in the groundswell. To me, employees should be the most important stakeholder to any brand or company. The more satisfied employees are, the more they will be motivated to engage with the company's vision and goals, which will then lead to greater success. Similar to how "energizing the base" encourages successful word-of-mouth marketing among consumers, employee empowerment energizes employees in ways that also lead to brand success.  

So why do I bring this up? 

Well, as we can see in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling of Best Buy started Blue Shirt Nation; an employee community where employee feedback was accepted and encouraged. "Best Buy's Blue Shirts are on the front lines and have, collectively, a lot of insight into what's really working in the stores." Bent and Koelling understood the need for employee feedback and Best Buy was on board. This turned into a community where employees supported and connected with each other, discussed successes and failures, and overall just felt like their voices were appreciated and heard. 

Circling back to the importance of employee satisfaction, we see this example in Best Buy. This community allowed employees to feel empowered and gave them a deeper connection to the brand. In Blue Shirt Nation alone, we can see examples of how this platform listened, talked, energized, supported, and embraced the employee groundswell. 

Searching deeper into brands that tap into the groundswell inside their company and value employee advocacy and empowerment, Starbucks prioritizes these values and shows it in an interesting way. First of all, they do not call their employees, employees. They refer to them as partners, as they believe they "are all partners in shared success." To give partners the power to contribute to brand success, Starbucks encourages the use of #ToBeAPartener for them to use on social media.

They have this Instagram page specifically dedicated to Starbucks partners for them to share content about what being a partner truly means to them. This is how Starbucks implemented their employee advocacy campaign; giving partners the power to create their own content. Starbucks believes that partner enthusiasm towards their workplace will lead to the inclination to share this positivity and enthusiasm with their networks. The example of Starbucks is a little bit different from the Blue Shirt Nation at Best Buy, but both are communities created that in the end, foster employee empowerment. Both of these examples "tap the power of the groundswell of ideas among the people who know best how the business runs." Starbucks just so happens to use this campaign and community as a way to generate increased brand awareness and a more positive brand image. 

Similar to how Groundswell discusses how connecting with the customer groundswell can transform your company, these same theories can be applied to connecting with the employee groundswell. A point to highlight relates to the people in charge. "Don't pick the person with the most time on his or her hands or a senior executive. Pick the person who has the most passion about starting a relationship with your customers." This idea is equally as important when brands create employee communities. Employees are smart (most of the time) and can tell when their employer truly cares, and when they do not. As discussed above, employee empowerment can result in great brand success, but this empowerment will not be truly reached unless the brands actually care. 

Have you ever reached the feeling of true empowerment at your workplace?