This week I would like to share with you some interesting feedbacks got through the internet from two Mauritian nationals studying abroad. They regularly visit www.lexpress.mu to get news about their home paradise country! Atish Beesoondoial is Student in Business Administration at the National University of Singapore, while Thierry Corret is studying at The Surrey European Management School. Both plan to come back to Mauritius later and both their thinking seem to be aligned on the key aspects of Employee Branding?

24 April 2004

Dear Mr Oozeerally,

I wish to thank you for providing readers with a platform for such knowledge-sharing. According to me, this is a truly commendable effort indeed. I truly appreciate the way the concept of Employee Branding is emphasized in your article and how you relate it with two core issues: communications and the change process.

Corporate branding constitutes the fundamentals of any organization. In relation to the two other C?s (Customers and Competitors), the Company should be aware that what it puts into its brand largely determines the brand salience level and the company?s comparative advantage. Corporate Mauritius, as you put it, is in fact a relatively small market and aiming at instilling top-of-mind awareness into consumers should be one of the key goals of any firm, alongside the hardcore financial objectives like shareholder value, market capitalization etc. As such, making the employees an integral part of the ?total product? is a way of capitalizing on brand identity. In certain cases, we should even be talking about employees as a unique selling point...

Communications, in effect, should be engineered by top management. May I add that bottom-up communications too should be encouraged as it is often at the line-managers and middle-managers? levels that the heart of the company?s performance is evaluated. Dialogue is more important than discussion when it comes to generating value-added. This can typically help in bringing out certain emergent strategies, coming from the grassroots.

We should also realize that communication and change mode are (and should be) interrelated. I find the concept of OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behavior) particularly useful in the context of Mauritius. It can form the answer (though more theoretical than practical) not only to the quest of instilling change in the minds and hearts of the Mauritian workforce but also to fight against the phenomenon of Organizational cynicism that has been a real hazard over the years (and threatens to continue to be so). This unfortunately often renders several objective management practices ineffective or simply irrelevant. Bad-mouthing the organization and back-biting management and co-workers (it would be a fallacy to assume that these take place only at the lower levels of the organization) seriously hinder the battle for growth and success that you refer to. (Atish BEESOONDIAL)

Fri, 23 Apr 2004

Mr Oozeerally,

As usual your article on ?branding the employee...? was very thought-provoking. I?d like to add that branding the employee involves having the right organisational culture whereby employees share the mission and vision of the company. By so doing, employees will communicate the corporate culture to stakeholders such as customers and shareholders among others. However, to reach that goal, employees must be kept happy and this requires appropriate HR strategies?

But, as you rightly mentioned, Top Management should lead by example. Unfortunately, some old-fashioned managers in Mauritius still want to stick to their old-fashioned autocratic management style showing no concern for employee branding. These leaders haven?t yet realised that Mauritian consumers are becoming more educated and sophisticated, thus, having higher product and service expectations? To a large extent, branding employees is a form of marketing communication which positions clearly the company in the minds of targeted customers and communicates the selling proposition of the company. Above all, branding employees is a means to communicate the corporate personality to the stakeholders.

This is particularly important in an era of growing concern for corporate governance following financial scandals such as Maxwell, Enron, Parmalat, and more recently Shell (Thierry Corret).

Ashraf Oozeerally Managing Director, eye_dentity [email protected]