Employer Branding Starts Here

“What’s important for me, as leader of the company, is I want to make sure that everybody can embrace our core values. That I too want to be a creator. I want to be a leader. And I want to be a champion. If we can all align with that, then we’ve got something to build on.”

– Renée Safrata, Founder and CEO, Vivo Team

Here are some ways to facilitate ongoing alignment to your employer value proposition.

Accountability to the Vision, Mission, and Values

With good leaders and managers that are tightly connected around their accountabilities, you will have an equation for success. Be accountable to your values, your vision, and your mission. Accountability isn’t a one-and-done. It’s all about ongoing alignment.

Here, Renée expressed: “I want my employees to be able to achieve our vision, mission, and values in their day-to-day and in their career achievement with us.”

Behaviors demonstrate accountability, so it’s important to behave in a way that supports and reinforces your vision, your dreams, and your aspirations.

One way we do this at Vivo Team is on a weekly basis, we provide feedback to one another in response to the question: “What are the behaviors that I, or others, demonstrated that align with our values?” It keeps our coast-to-coast hybrid team aligned and accountable!

Whether you do this in a regular meeting, during Friday afternoon “happy hour” or have a dedicated slack channel, regular interactive feedback should be a systematic practice within organizations.

Norms and Transparency

Just because it’s obvious to you doesn’t mean it is to everyone! By agreeing to a set of behavioral norms, teams increase productivity and engagement significantly.

Clearly outline the types of behaviors that are expected of existing and new employees. Do you have email norms? Meeting norms? A particular way files are stored and shared? Make sure these things are clearly laid out and that everyone understands and is aligned.

Increasing digital visibility among your team boosts productivity and reduces stress. At Vivo Team, we have access to everyone’s calendars, and everyone does a daily check-in on our internal communication platform (we use Slack). This makes planning meeting times a breeze because you know who’s available when. Also, by checking in each day, you won’t have to spend time and energy wondering where people are or what they’re working on.

Create Connection

Being in the same building doesn’t ensure employee connection; the key is really about developing a thriving company culture.

During onboarding, we ensure that every member of the team books our new team member for a casual get-to-know-you chat. They also get invited to participate in internal weekly training sessions on our core teachings to build their knowledge and connections.

We have tools and techniques embedded at the start (check-ins) and end (appreciation, difficulty, final statement) of every meeting to help build connection and increase interactive feedback.

Here are other workplace activity ideas that promote connection:

• Share and celebrate wins, often—even the small stuff!
• Plan weekly development meetups to stir the creativity and collaboration juices, where smaller groups work on learning something new together.
• Assign a mentor to new employees for 30-minute chats once every week or two.

Walk the Walk

The words used to describe your company to current and potential future employees are certainly important, but behaviors speak volumes. Focus on the behaviors you, your leaders, and your teams demonstrate on a regular basis and prioritize them, ensuring that they align with your core values.

Since your employees are your unofficial recruiters and marketers, set them up for success to be able to communicate your company’s employer value proposition by incorporating into the day-to-day culture of the organization.