We recently came across this figure: the extramarital escapades of Tiger Woods cost the shareholders of his 5 major sponsors anything between US$ 5bn and 12bn (see http://faculty.gsm.ucdavis.edu/~vstango/tiger003.pdf). This is a lot of money and companies have become increasingly aware of the risk they take with celebrity advertising.

However, it often seems that a factor most likely to be far more important is off the radar screen of executives: the every day impact of your employees behaviour, even when they are not directly interacting with customers.

• It’s the way the drivers of your branded vans behave in traffic – not to forget unbranded company cars, which are often easy to recognise from number plates or just colour and type.
• It’s how employees talk about their employer, when they are with friends and family (do you recon they say “We are going to launch this product” or “They are…”)
• It’s when this employee of a credit card company says at the store checkout: “I know these cards are crap. I only use it, because I work there”.
• And it’s when prominent managers behave disgraceful in public, even where no explicit connection with the company is made. And make no mistake: much less is needed to damage your brand on a local level than a CEO being arrested for antisocial behaviour in the centre of Rome (this 15 years old escapade of Daimler’s CEO Jürgen Schremp still comes up second on Google, when searching for “Daimler” and “Rome”)

All these things can constantly erode your brand value, leaving your marketing department fighting an uphill battle. What you really want are employees taking pride in the organisation they are representing and broadcasting a positive message. So what?

We are not suggesting that you should police your workforce’s behaviour nor should you draw up a huge set of rules on “How to behave brand friendly 24/7”. On the contrary. If you want your people representing your brand positively, than it has to be their brand to begin with. It is still striking how often organisations treat their “normal” brand and employer brand as two separate entities. On this basis, you’re not going to excel.

What you need is a set of shared values to build a brand upon your people are proud of. If you create ONE culture, ONE reality, then there’s no micromanagement required to keep each employee in line with the brand. Culture is much stronger than rules and formal controls.

This is not that easy? Right! This is a strategy for winners, not for the mediocre firm. It’s a long shot and it’ll never be 100% perfect, but even if you get it nearly right, you probably won't need the Tiger Woods’ of this world any more to raise your brand value.

And as this is a Monday and Mondays are perfect to start something new, here’s the first step for you: take stock of your organisation’s culture and values. Not the executives’ view! Go out there and do a proper cultural audit across your organisation. And then find out what journey lies ahead of you to get it where it needs to be…

We discussed typical issues occurring, when you use recruitment agencies, on this blog already (see this article on salesforce incentivisation on iProCon Insight 09/2008). Based on a recent case study and a survey as well as further observations, we want to give you some ideas about how to cut recruitment cost while increasing quality at the same time by using alternative channels and by managing agencies better, when you need them.

This article on recruitment best practice  

• shows some evidence that many organisations spend far too much on recruitment agencies, while still not getting the best candidates
• presents a case study on how an Australian software company cut recruitment costs by half relying much more on referrals than agencies
• explores the role of recruiting websites, communication, and organisational culture in your recruitment process

Our latest book recommendation is "Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies" (Tom DeMarco at al).