Critical Role of Frontline Service Employees in Internal Branding

Abstract

The cohesion of Vision, Culture and Image (VCI) of a company greatly affects its brand strength where the greater the coherence of vision, culture and image, the stronger is the brand. Organisational employees are important contributors to the creation of corporate brand value ie when employees and organisation embrace the defined purpose of the organisation, they would be more committed to align their energy and initiatives to meet that purpose.

Internal branding, the process of building the corporate brand from within the organization, can shape employees attitude and behavior in line with the organisation's desired public image or brand. Employees are organizational biggest competitive advantage and there is a strong need to better understand the brand identity management process from the employees' perspective.

It is highly essential for organizations to align their HR practices with brand values as it has been shown that employees have a more positive attitude towards the brand when there is HR involvement in internal branding. Of critical importance is the role of frontline service employees, who have direct and close contacts with customers. Failure to properly hire, train, motivate and track performance of frontline service employees who have strong influence on customers perception of the bank, will have huge negative impact onorganisation's branding effort.