Employee Brand Engagement – An Overlooked Marketing Resource

There is an underutilized, and often overlooked marketing resource in your organization right now: your employees.Each time a customer interacts with your organization there’s an opportunity to build your brand through your employees. The experience your employees deliver to your customers will determine the ongoing perception, and reputation of the brand.Internal brand engagement is a simple, cost-effective strategy that will help take your organization to new levels of success. Employees who are truly engaged with a brand can create significant financial returns for their organization.Your Employees Are Your BrandMost organizations fail to recognize the role employees’ play in building a brand’s reputation. Employees interact at personal and professional levels each day with current, as well as potential customers. Each interaction is either a positive, or a negative representation of your organization, and your brand.Every employee (not just customer-facing) plays an important role in supporting, and building a brand. For example, an administrative assistant might provide support to an entire product development team working on the release of a new product. The support provided by the administrative assistant allows the product development team to focus on creating a cutting-edge product that will deliver on the brand’s promise.Most employees don’t realize the effect, and the impact they have on building brand equity because they are rarely given the chance to get involved with that part of the business. Brands are not just the responsibility of marketing departments; the responsibly and accountability of building and supporting a brand should integrated throughout every part of an organization.Build A Brand-Centric OrganizationSo how do you go about building a brand-centric organization? Create a “brand academy” or a similar type of group that has the responsibility to ensure that every employee receives initial, as well as ongoing education as your brand evolves and grows over time. The brand should be linked to job descriptions, training programs, meetings and events. Anyone who represents your organization should be required to participate in some type of brand education program.Employees should read, see, feel, or hear something each day that represents your brand’s values, goals, and promise that will help to keep their connection, and their shared responsibility to be an owner, and ambassador. Immersion is key to creating a brand-centric culture.Brand education helps employees understand and connect with your organization’s vision and goals. When employees understand and connect to a brand’s goals, personality, and promise, they become brand ambassadors.Ambassadors help build your brand each day through their work and interactions. Your employees become a major part of your marketing resources by delivering relevant brand-centric experiences (internal and external) that help to build brand equity, and customer loyalty.How To Develop Brand AmbassadorsThere are several steps you can take to begin building a team of ambassadors:1. Develop an awareness / education programBrand engagement does not magically happen, and it’s more than handing out “logo swag.” An effective education program goes into detail about the brand’s positioning statement, values, goals and personality with emphasis on the benefit/promise. Employees can’t deliver on the brand’s promise if they don’t know what it is, and how to deliver it through their work each day.The training program should include tangible examples of how each employee group helps to deliver on the brand’s promise, and how their work contributes to the brand’s success. Again, each employee plays an important role in either providing direct support to a customer-facing team, or they are in contact with customers each day.For customer-facing teams it’s critical to define the desired customer experience, and design the customer experience around the brand. The brand makes the promise, and the customer experience delivers the promise. A well-designed customer experience always supports, and delivers the brand’s promise in each customer interaction.2. Create a Brand-Centric Employee ExperienceYou should deliver your brand promise to your employees as well. The employee experience will have a direct affect on your customers’ experience, and should be directly connected to your employee experience strategy for continuity, and consistency. Designing and delivering an on-brand employee experience is an effective strategy to help build morale and motivation, as well as improve employee retention.The ResultYour employees will work with a renewed sense of purpose and meaning, and the result is a more vibrant, educated, and motivated workforce that will bring positive results to your bottom line.

Student Plans – Student Health Care Plans

Student health care programs offer health benefits at a greatly reduced cost, allowing students to pay for it themselves or allowing their parents to include their children’s health care plans with little additional cost to them. Student plans provide a great option to ensuring the good health of your children without having to take on a significant amount of extra financial burden, and also provide a way for students putting themselves through school (and supporting themselves financially) to maintain a level of health insurance. Here, we’ll go over how student health care plans work, as well as why you might want to consider them either for yourself if you are a student, or for your children.Student health care plans can be acquired from a number of different sources. Some private insurance companies provide parents with health care options for their children, specifically geared towards keeping students healthy. There are also publicly and privately funded state and federal programs for helping students pay for health insurance. Some of these programs provide different benefits by working with individual schools to help set up unique types of plans for each student. This means it’s important to do a little research on your current health care provider, as well as the school you or your child is attending in order to find the best deal on student plans.Student plans are used primarily to keep students in good health in order to allow them to go to school without missing attendance, as well as ensure their good mental health throughout their education. Students who are in better physical health exhibit higher test scores because they tend to miss fewer classes, and need to repeat classes much less frequently than those who have consistently poor health. A healthy student will also tend to be less stressed about school, and will be able to maintain a more active lifestyle both physically and socially.The benefits of student plans are far reaching and very important to any young person going through an education. If you are a student or the parent of a student, looking into student health care is a great way not only to save money, but also to ensure that you or your child is in consistently good health. Student plans can range from typical care such as doctor’s visits, emergency care, and so on, to catastrophic coverage, dental, and other types of health benefits.If you need assistance in locating particular coverages at a pre-determined price, we can help save 50% on health insurance

How to Effectively Use an Interim Home Health Care Manager

Whether it’s planned or it happens suddenly, losing a leader in your home health care agency can disrupt business and leave you feeling rudderless. With the industry more competitive than ever, lack of leadership for even a short period of time makes a huge impact. Interim home health care management prevents these disruptions from harming your business and puts you back on the path to growth.Working with interim managers lets you take advantage of the skills of an experienced home care professional and helps you better meet the needs of your clients. They can operate as your CEO, CFO, COO, or fill any other management position to refocus your agency and implement change. But for an interim home health care manager to be successful, you and your employees need to take a few steps to make the most out of the experience.Why Hire an Interim Manager?
In addition to the obvious benefits of bringing in executives with the right experience, you also know you can trust their motives. After all, they have no history with your agency and no axe to grind. All politics aside, they’re just there to put their talents to good use and put your agency back on track. They help you develop short- and long-term goals and recommend cost-effective solutions to make your agency competitive. An interim home health care manager can also be flexible to work around your schedule and take on multiple roles.Use an Organizational Assessment
You will want to work with an interim manager who begins by performing a thorough organizational assessment. This audit takes a close look at all of your systems, people, and processes to uncover problem areas and understand your operations. It also ensures the interim management services are aligned with your agency’s needs and goals. After getting a clear picture of your agency’s strengths and weaknesses, an interim home health care manager can then develop a plan to achieve your specific goals. Keep in mind that this may require organizational restructuring too.Be Open and Ready to Change
You bring in interim home health care managers for a reason. While it may be hard to hear some of the things that need to change in your agency, remember that they have no personal stake or attachment to your agency. Your agency’s growth and development are at the center of every decision, so the advice they provide is for the greater good of the company. All you have to do is be ready to change and follow their lead.What’s Your Opportunity?
Whether your agency is in transition or has an immediate need, approach this time as an opportunity to develop your agency into a leader in your market. Put an interim home health care manager to work for your business to solve your short-term challenges and achieve long-term goals. By providing valuable insight into your company that a traditional manager may not be able to offer, an interim manager can help guide your growth and sustain your success well into the future.

How to Choose a Technology Partner?

You have discovered the need to enlist the help of a technology partner, doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult to find, just Google it, right?The dizzying amount of results that this simple search returns will put a kink in your plans to have a list of potential technology partners to your boss by this afternoon. There are a lot of things that need to be considered when picking your technology partner and a lot of criteria you should keep in mind when making this decision. Seize the opportunity to turn this decision into a strategy to stay ahead of your competition.First, let’s define what a technology partner is and how a technology partner is different from any other technology company. Technology partners offer technical expertise to assist you with your technology needs. A technology partner works alongside your team, taking the time to learn your business and educate you on the technical options available to you. Rather than just waiting for the end product, a technology partner will communicate and collaborate with you throughout the entire project so that the final product meets your needs, saving you time and money. Now that we have defined what a technology partner is, there are considerations that need to be addressed prior to choosing the right partner for you.You have discovered the need to enlist the help of a technology partner, doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult to find, just Google it, right? The dizzying amount of results that this simple search returns will put a kink in your plans to have a list of potential technology partners to your boss by this afternoon. There are a lot of things that need to be considered when picking your technology partner and a lot of criteria you should keep in mind when making this decision. Seize the opportunity to turn this decision into a strategy to stay ahead of your competition.BEFORE YOUR SEARCH:Before you even begin searching for a partner you need to consider your budget, internal resources, your intended market, and role of the new software. You should know where your company stands on this project and how much your company is willing to spend on this project. These are all important things to understand yourself before you engage potential partners.It is important to ask yourself a few questions about the project itself. What will you need the software for? How intuitive do you need the software to be for the end-user? Is there something on the market already that would fit your needs? After you have answered these questions you will be able to see the extent of the project and have a better idea of the resources that you will need from a technology partner. With a better understanding of the project itself and how your company will handle it, you now have to determine what attributes are important in a technology partner.CONSIDERATIONSWhen it comes to making the decision on which company to partner with on your project it is important to take multiple factors into consideration. Your company is investing a lot of money into this one project so it is important that the project is set up to succeed. This decision can make or break your projects success so you need to take your time and do your research to find the company that is the best fit for your company and your project. You will want to see a track record of a potential partner’s level of customer service. You may have to obtain referrals and references from past customers in order to prove the level of customer service they have provided. Past projects are telling of what you can expect from the companies on your project.To have a successful project you need to hire a company that has an understanding of your business or a company that makes understanding your business a priority. A lack of understanding in these situations can result in a project that is disjointed from your company and your message. Although companies might have an excellent level of technical expertise it will do no good if they produce a product that does not look like yours. One of the reasons that you are in search of a technology partner is likely because your company is similar to many others out there and resources are hard to come by. Make sure that potential partners have the resources you need. This information can be validated by asking for referrals, references, and looking at a portfolio of projects the company has completed. Another great way to find this information out is to ask what technologies the company uses and ask to see examples. This is one area where it will pay off to do your due diligence.To confirm a company’s experience you should ask for a timeline of projects they are currently working on and the projects they have worked on in the past. This will be helpful for you to see if they have worked on projects similar to yours in the past which will demonstrate if they have the ability to complete your project. A timeline will also be helpful because you will be able to see if they have worked with teams and companies of comparable size.One of the keys to a projects success is the ability to meet deadlines and make the release date. Responsiveness is a big part of being able to complete the project on time and you want a company you work with to respond to you when you have questions or changes that need to be made. You should be able to tell if a company will be as responsive as you expect from early on in your engagement.It is important when hiring a consultant to work on your project that they are objective. You want the potential partners to be able to give you objective advice about technology. This can be an issue when some companies are only willing to work in one technology. You want to use the technology that works the best for your project and will be the most beneficial. Make sure before committing to one company that you ask what technologies the company works in and you should be able to tell from their answer their willingness to work in different environments.Making sure your business style will work with the company you choose is important. If the company has an informal business style, but your company is formal there might be some issues. The level of professionalism should match, limiting the number of problems you might encounter. This might ensure the teams are compatible and will integrate well with each other.Are these potential partners going to be available when you need them to be? Confirm with potential companies that they have more than one employee dedicated to your project. You may want to consider using a company that uses Project Managers or Engagement Managers to ensure that you will be able contact someone when you need to. Project managers are helpful as a single point of contact.Chemistry and ease of doing business are important aspects to consider when choosing a technology partner. If the rapport between your team and a potential technology partner are off there will be issues that will be hard to overcome. You will get an idea of this from your initial look into the company, were they easy to get a hold of? Did you mesh well with the employees you have spoken to?Does this project require ongoing support and do the companies you are considering offer the support you will need? Will the company prepare your own team to take over maintenance upon completion? You will have to consider what you need from the company after the completion of the project and then match those needs with a company that offers those services.