office furniture now blog

The Branded Work Place: Engaging Your Team In Your Vision

Your brand is what makes you unique. It’s your identity among the competition. It is a voice that is largely heard through advertising, packaging and web design. But reinforcing that brand experience across your workforce will give you a much more valuable voice. The most effective strategy in any well choreographed office design combines technology, message, image and tone of voice. Engaging your team in your brand on a daily basis will do three things effectively:

  • Align: Creating a common sense of purpose through immersion in the essence of the brand
  • Inspire: Through messaging that visually convey’s the story, mission, vision and values of the company
  • Inform: Spreading knowledge by providing meaningful history and how that is moving forward with key initiatives

One of our brands did this very well in their corporate office in Chicago. The reason? The branded environment plays a significant role in how employees perceive and communicate a consistent brand experience. It is a powerful strategy embraced by many progressive technology companies like Apple, for instance. They immerse their internal team in the brand ideology through messaging and philosophy so they learn to live it everyday. This increases their fluidity with the message they deliver to their customers.

Rethinking the role of workspace design to infuse the branding message can have a significant impact on how well employees understand a brand and communicate its promise to customers. Transitioning your branding across your space is so much more than just putting your logo and colors in the entry. Utilizing the entire environment to communicate the brand immerses the team. Textures, surfaces, the design of every area… from the collaborative spaces to the meeting rooms and the lobby…should convey a consistent message, color story and insight. Finding ways to incorporate your message consistently without superficiality is where a designer steps in and allows it to become a style decision, not a signage decision.

A branded workspace speaks volumes about a company’s commitment…not only to its brand but to its team. It defines the company belief that every employee is a significant contributor to the big picture. It reinforces that the company is dedicated to treating their team the way it wants them to treat the customer. It is a clear road map to even those who function behind the scenes without customer interaction. Companies that are in touch with their brand on this level tend to have more engaged employees and are able to attract and retain the best talent.

Recent studies have shown that increasing an employee’s level of engagement with a brand can improve their performance by 20 percent and their probability for departure drops by 87 percent! A key component in that engagement is the branded workspace. Thoughtful space planning that allows the right level of collaboration through integrative brand awareness fosters a personal connection to the brand on a deeper level. It immerses them in it: they see it, understand it and believe in it…that is the competitive advantage.

To significantly impart your brand awareness across all platforms, a branded environment should be more than superficial. It should own a pivotal role in your office planning. It is the internal dialog that creates the tone of voice your team reveals to the public about your brand. It does take some planning and time, it costs more but it will reap a huge return on investment in the amount of engagement your team has within the company. In an increasingly mobile workforce, it also creates a center point where they can come together with renewed focus.

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IMG_1546-162129-edited.jpgMEET DARRELL McCOLLAM: Darrell is our newest team member and he comes to us with a strong background in commercial furniture sales, space planning and design with extensive experience in all facets of government sales. He brings with him an extensive network of professional relationships throughout Texas. For more information on creating a compelling office environment, contact Darrell at 888-910-3769 x132 or darrell@officefurniturenow.com