Page 343 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

330B RE-ENGAGE

we know have done). If you begin your branding process by declaring an
“aspirational brand” without aligning it with the reality of employees’
daily work experience, you are in danger of writing a check your culture
can’t cash.
For example, let’s say a bank has determined that having customer
service representatives (CSRs) cross-sell and up-sell bank services in
addition to providing services at teller windows is a key piece of its
business strategy. That means that in addition to training current
CSRs to be more sales oriented, the bank must also attract and hire
CSRs who are able and willing to both sell and serve customers—a
rarer commodity. Because the CSR job will now be more demanding
than before and the right candidates harder to find, the bank may
decide to raise pay, or provide sales training, or create new flex hours.
Whatever new enticement it decides to offer and advertise, the
bank needs to make sure it delivers what it promises. If it doesn’t,
new employees will quickly become disengaged and leave. This is the
cardinal rule of employment branding (along with its corollary: be
careful what you promise), but it is dismaying to consider how often
we have seen it broken.

: THINGS CHANGE: BAD NEWS AND GOOD

You don’t even need to have read Nassim Taleb’s thought-provoking
and sobering bestseller, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly
Improbable, to understand that things can change quickly in today’s
business world. We have seen companies turned upside down and
destroyed since the economy began its meltdown in September 2008.
Companies that used to show up on Fortune’s “100 Great Places to
Work” list year after year have since dropped off.

Voices of Disappointment
We saw much evidence of wrenching change in the comments of em-
ployees on the Best-Places-to-Work surveys. The following comments