Do your employees know your business purpose? If yes, do they know how they personally contribute towards that purpose? Here are six areas where you can align your brand, purpose and culture:

1. Purpose of the business

The vision, brand, values, beliefs and aspirations of the business should drive the true purpose — not an advertising campaign. Work with your employees to define and articulate your purpose and culture, and then use that to develop campaigns aimed at your customers.

Your customers will experience the business the way it really is, instead of having a far-fetched campaign that neither your employees nor your customers can connect with.

2. Marketing and HR 

Marketing and HR need to be best friends. To get employees to understand the brand, purpose and culture, they should be exposed to it from day one and then throughout their employment journey.

While marketing works at communicating the brand to customers, the collaboration of HR and marketing communicates the brand to employees. 

3. The work that employees do

People find meaning when they see a clear connection between what they highly value and what they spend time doing. That connection, however, is not always obvious. Leaders are in a great position to articulate the values a company is trying to enact and to shape the story of how today's work connects with those values.

4. Human testimonies 

People need to feel a sense of purpose in what they do; if they understand how their individual roles make an impact, they'll behave as if it does. Share stories of real people and how the business has made an impact on their lives.

Bring in people who have been helped by the company's products or services and let them talk to your employees. While businesses are usually pretty good at sharing financial data, it's the human stories that make the most impact on your employees.

5. Leaders

Beliefs, attitudes and behaviours only get entrenched in a business when they're focused on and driven from the top down. Leaders should visibly drive culture, live the brand and continuously make the connection back to purpose.

Make purpose real by formally and informally sharing stories, speaking passionately about what the company stands for and sharing personal lessons learned in that process.

6. Hard conversations

Often, leaders overlook or ignore behaviour that is not aligned to the brand, culture or purpose. It gets even trickier when inappropriate behaviour is displayed by a top performer.

This is harmful to the business and creates an impression that culture is only applicable to some. Address issues and have hard conversations when needed because they are more important than you think.

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