CorpComms Magazine

A celebrity endorsement and slick media campaign may well have widespread impact, but when it comes to your core customers and their networks the real influence comes from everyday contact with people. But can employees really embody a brand, or will there always be a gap between the shiny surface of communications and the reality of hard pressed staff?

As a world class hotel, Gleneagles wants to be the benchmark against which others measure themselves. When we noticed some of our competitors beginning to gain ground in terms of reputation and offering, we recognised the need to better differentiate ourselves and safeguard our position as the market leader.

Our managing director led the initiative by challenging the executive management team to identify what made Gleneagles truly special, the idea being that we could then unite our workforce behind a shared mission and get them to deliver that consistently across the business. We commissioned a significant piece of research to define what made Gleneagles unique from a marketing and brand perspective. The resulting brand values were then communicated to all 700 employees. But the quality of any insight, the strength of any brand, is only as solid as the people who represent it each day.

It quickly became apparent that employees didn't understand what the new brand values meant for them in practice. How straightforward was it to be 'traditional but not stuffy'. The task was to find a way of translating the ethos we had documented into the customer's actual experience.

Different ideals

We couldn't prescribe a rigid set of rules for employees to follow; while some guests want to be told about and enjoy as many exciting outdoor activities as possible, others want total peace and relaxation. So we brought in people development consultancy Hunter Roberts to help our people understand the essence of the brand and turn it into reality in a way that would meet the unique expectations of each and every customer.

After taking the time to get to know and fully understand our business and proposition, Hunter Roberts worked with managers to translate that proposition into key behaviours that frontline employees could adopt. The result was the creation of four internal brand values to drive all behaviour within the business.

The 4Cs, as they quickly became known, define what it is to be a Gleneagles employee. You have to contribute, be part of a community, be creative and do things consistently. After engaging managers, Hunter Roberts went on to conduct further workshops with all frontline staff, in groups of 20 to 40 people. The workshops included a mix of creative, practical and fun activities as a means of engaging and keeping the attention of the full range of staff involved - with a continual emphasis on making sure the theory was demonstrated in practical ways. There was also plenty of time for discussion, so that everyone had the opportunity to contribute their views on branding, communication and their role in the commercial and sales aspect of the hotel.

Bringing service to life

The workshops made use of specialist 'business' actors to bring the ideas to life in real situations. Each of the 4Cs was acted out in a range of everyday instances of contact with customers and good and bad practice highlighted. This helped frontline staff see for themselves how their thoughts and actions were impacting on customer perceptions of the brand and the overall success of the business, and the chance to take part in role plays to try out the brand behaviours for themselves.

The result is that the 4Cs became an integral part of our business. They are used by employees to structure staff assessments, team meetings and reports. It's become second nature to ask 'how does this fit with our values?', helping us to create competitive advantage by understanding and exceeding the expectations of every guest. The initiative has given employees a fresh mindset and renewed energy, enabling us to delight customers and increase profits. Customers are spending more because employees are more attuned to their individual needs and better able to connect them to relevant services and facilities.

For me, though, the greatest benefit of engaging employees to get behind a shared set of values was the way in which people 'lived' our values and pulled together during the recession. If we were feeling the pain, that didn't translate to our customers: we had chauffeurs working as golf attendants and some of the HR team carrying out operational roles from time to time. Our values enabled us to do all that without resistance, enabling us to retain all our experienced staff and recover much more quickly than our competitors.

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