Brand From the Inside:Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business

A great brand is built from the inside. In other words, a business can't build a brand identity if its employees don't buy into it. If a brand doesn't live inside with the workforce, it won't thrive outsidewith customers.

The key role of employees in brand delivery makes building and nurturing the employer brand as critical to the company's success as promoting the customer brand.

The employer brand refers to how a business builds its identity, celebrates its origins and values, and emotionally connects with its workers. As branding experts Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann explain in Brand From the Inside, employees are the ones whose behaviors determine how well the company delivers its products to customers.

Sartain is the senior vice president of human resources at Yahoo Inc. Schumann is the former global communication practice leader for the Towers Perrin consulting firm. Together they helped to build employer brands at Southwest Airlines and Yahoo.

This summary will give you a framework for creating an employer brand that engages your employees emotionally. It will show you what must happen inside a business for an employer brand to create not only positive buzz about the business as a place to work, but also a commitment from people that produces extraordinary results.