Does everyone in your company advocate what you do?

In organisations of over 1000 people, pride in their employer drops to only 38% compared to 60% for people in organisations under 100 people. These were the findings of an Interbrand survey in April 2007

How sustainable is a business where less than half the employees if asked in the pub, would recommend the products / services to a friend or acquaintance? This attitude must show through to customers.

How much more successful would these organisations be, if they managed to engage just 60% of their staff to ’Deliver’ their services by virtue of being proud of what they do in the context of their market place?

Positive attitudes are harder to foster than the viral negativity spread by bad apples. There is another days work in exploring the impact of negative individuals on team performance - Sir Clive Woodward praised highly the virtues of having people in a team who default to positive attitudes and behaviors when under pressure in England’s World Cup winning team.

Interbrand go on to conclude that to build pride in the organisation you need to:

* support individuals in making a difference and
* create a culture of delivering high standards for the customer.

If forced to choose, Interbrand would aim for the culture of high standards for the customer first, based on the performance of those companies. That people will be happy to endorse their company to anyone when they are confident that their products and services are among the best or the best in the market should come as no surprise.

A strong measure of your performance standards is the simple survey of employees to determine if:

* they are proud to work for their company
* they would happily recommend your products / services to a friend.

Analyse the results, involve and engage employees in designing and taking actions to make them comfortable to advocate your company. You will then have engaged a key stakeholder and have an action plan that, well executed, should improve performance and increase the long term sustainability of your organisation.

Much to do...