We believe that if a brand it to be successful it needs its employees to be advocates – internal champions and ambassadors.  A strong brand delivers a great customer experience and your people, regardless of their position and role in the company, are key to that delivery.  Customer advocacy for any brand is a sign of trust.  Our new Workplace Study (soon to be published) validates this thinking.

After discussing this report and its findings in the office we had a conversation about our own internal advocates.

The BrandHook team are young, smart, funny and dedicated to the business.  They are also very laid back.   Sometimes I worry that they are not showing enough demonstrative love for the business but should I? One of my hard working reindeer-knitting Gen Y’s said ‘we will never love this business as much as you – it’s your baby’.

It made me think about that analogy ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and wondered if it worked the same for a business?

The partners, owners, the founders of any business start it with all the love and commitment of birthing a baby.   We are unconditional in our love, we walk the floor with it all hours of the night and we protect it from dangerous situations.

So far BrandHook has been born, named, grown and now Paul and I are nurturing that baby to one day be independent.

Maybe we should think about our internal advocates as our extended family; nannies, godparents or aunties of this business.  They too can love it but it is easier for them to give it back.  They play with it, they babysit it and they enjoy it but they get to hand it back when it cries.  They are entrusted with the life and well being of that baby for a short period of time.  They will love it and look after whilst they are with us but they can turn off when they walk out the door.

Maybe we need to make sure that both our baby and our people enjoy the time they have together, that they both get the most out of the relationship and both grow as a result of being with each other.  They might not be ready for parenthood yet but they can see how easy / difficult / challenging / rewarding it can be and they can play a role in the growth and development so when the business is grown up, they can look back and think ‘I had a hand in that’.

For now, because our baby is still growing, we may need to ask for some extra help when it won’t stop crying but we will make sure they get invited to all the parties and celebrate its growth with us.