We all want to be doing business with people we trust. This sort of sounds obvious doesn’t it. We like doing business, or working with people that we know we can count on. Does it really matter? Do you find yourself trying to get away with a few small things that just make you feel a bit ashamed?

RedBalloon is a company of values – as I talked about in my last blog. And the first value is simply to: “Do what you say your going to do” that is to honour your word, to be a person who is counted on, doing work as it was meant to be done, or better without cutting corners.

But what if it comes to down to the wire – a big client asks you to break your terms and conditions… what do you do. Is there a grey zone?

For me not…in fact I explain to the client the difficult position that they put me in personally. (After all we are all just people doing the best we can for the businesses we work in.) This was my response to a recent request.

"I take onboard your request. However it is a breach of our terms and conditions …. We are a company of values – and our first value is to ‘do what we say we will do’. It would put me personally in a difficult position if I was to request of my team to disregard this value – just because a big and important client has asked us to do so."

Is this too risky, might I loose the client all together…  But as a leader if I don’t live the values then who is going to believe in them? Trust them.

Test yourself – Here are 11 questions to rank your own integrity?

1. As a famous athlete, you are offered a $500,000 endorsement to promote a product that you dislike and would NEVER use. Do you endorse it?
2. You are working on a project along with several other companies and you notice that one of the companies is doing shoddy, dangerous work. If you report the company, the entire project may be shut down and you will lose 20% of your revenues for the year. Do you report the problem?
3. The taxi driver gives you a blank receipt as he drops you off. You are on an expense account. Do you write in the exact correct amount?
4. You’re golfing with an important client who thinks that golf skills are as important as business skills. Your ball has a bad lie, but you can move it to a better position without being seen. Do you?
5. You’re backing into a tight parking space in the work car park and you accidentally dent someone’s car. Nobody has seen you. Do you leave a note taking responsibility?
6. A colleague wants to copy and swap some music CDs. You know it’s illegal. Do you do it?
7. You know you are attractive and so does your prospective customer. Do you lightly flirt to get a major new account for your business?
8. A good friend has been unemployed for several months. They ask you to write a reference for a job that you don’t think they’re well qualified for. Do you agree?
9. You see some great content for a presentation, you know it is copyright – do you use it in your work presentation to make you look good?
10. Your budgets are tight, you procure some business services, the vendor forgets to invoice you… six months go by do you remind them to send the invoice.
11. You are offered tickets to a rock concert with a potential supplier that is currently tendering for a big contract. It is your favorite band and you really want to see them - and tickets have been sold out for months. You know it will not influence your contribution to the tender process. Do you go?

How did you go…? Do you think there is ‘grey’? Did you find this not so easy after all? Someone once said to me "how may drops of urine does it take to spoil the soup.' I've never forgotten it. (A bit to vivid really.)

It's not just what you do - but it is who you are that counts. Values have always been such an intigral part of what we do at RedBalloon. But they are nowhere listed on a wall in our offices. Yet we speak of them every day.

I was chatting with one of my colleagues (who has been with RedBalloon for just a few months) the other day and he said 'Of all the companies that I have worked with - RedBalloon is the only one which truly 'gets' values'. He continued 'anybody and everybody in the organization at some time during any conversation in any day - might just slip in to the conversation - "now that's an example of our the first value".'

When we designed our own recognition program 'Red Hot Rewards' (years ago) we took a very simple approach and for the first year or so - the only thing we did was recognize people for living the values. It remains the most prestigious awards of all that we now do. Simply we use our platform to capture the stories about how people are living the values. Peers nominate each other, and at the company meeting I read these stories to the whole company. Sometimes we laugh out loud together, when they are read, and other times there is not a dry eye in the house. The fact the the stories explore the impact that our values are having and that we don't pretend their is no emotional impact means it is so human and authentic, and ultimately real. This is why our values are so much about who we are. The video below explains more.

You can’t pick up a paper or business publication without reading about job losses and pay freezes…

British Airways has asked it’s employees to go without pay for a month… Telstra has frozen it’s top execs’ pay.  51% of privately held businesses have frozen salaries. 44% of Telco’s have pay freezes and 33% of IT companies. And of course the finance industry is frozen.

If I were an employee in one of these organizations I’d be asking questions of the leadership team. I’d be wondering what implications such freezes have to my career. And how would I feel that I could get ‘ahead’?

Many organizations are saying ‘no jobs will go – but we’ve all got to tighten the belt’; a ‘we’re all in this together approach’. Some are leading by example and reducing management salaries and benefits. Many are using the opportunity to invest in infrastructure to enable future growth – which will lead to career opportunities.

What will this do to employee engagement? There are not many people who work just for the fun of it…. Because they love their job so much they don’t need to be paid – except of course the millions of people who volunteer their labour- (but that is a whole other story and they are usually working for not for profits, charities or a cause.)

Is a commercial enterprise a ‘cause’?

I remember when Steve Jobs returned to Apple after years in the wilderness after he was dismissed from the organization he founded. There had been a series of CEOs running Apple before his return – all famous for the massive remuneration packages. When he returned, he came back in an ‘acting capacity’ refusing a salary. When he was finally appointed to the role he took a salary of $1. You could argue that this unbelievable commitment to the purpose of the business – turned it into a ‘cause’. Jobs then had the opportunity to completely re-energise and focus the business on what it was the best in the world at.

So if I was an employee in British Airways I would be asking the question – what fundamental restructures are going to be made to ensure that it is the worlds best at what it does. If it was truly world class then the career options available would blossom  - for the investment of one months salary, long term I might end up with better career options.  To give up a months salary is a massive investment to make, I’d really have to believe in the leadership of the organisation, that it was in a market that had great potential, and that I believed in not only what I was doing but that I respected my colleagues and wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. I become a true stakeholder.

Apparently more than a third of employees are just waiting for the ‘crisis’ to pass before they begin to search for their next role. People will remember how they were treated during this ‘blip’ and it is why recognition programs are more important than ever.

There are signs of recovery, and some believe that Generation Y will be back in charge by the end of the year.

People will contribute to an organization and stay engaged if they believe in what they are doing and that they see a long term benefit to their own personal circumstances. If new career opportunities arise as a result of restructure then they are likely to not just hang around but also play full out. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves and if they feel truly connected to the organization they will do a lot for the good of the whole.

I wrote a blog back in 2006 about 'The Story of Johnny the Bagger'. A simple tale about being ourselves when we are with our customers - and how easy it can be to add value to them. It is great to be reminded that it is the simple things that can make the biggest difference... Even in tough times. The book is well read at RedBalloon - but here is Barbara Glanz the author telling her story directly. Worth the two minutes.

Just listening to Richard Watson of nowandnext.com  – the Futurologist who wrote Future Files.

First of all I like a bloke who will make up words to suit the occasion (see some of them below). Secondly who will poke fun about his own profession and thirdly who, when asked what is the future of industrial relations answered authentically “I have no idea on that one.”

He had a few other interesting things to say:

• “No one can predict individual events. What a futurologist does is look at broad trends.”
• “The future is already here it is just unevenly distributed (there are people in Japan who are writing whole books on a mobile phone interface)”
• “Generation Y will be back in charge in twelve months after this blip is over”
• “Generation I are connected, networked and collaborative – (they have been doing their home work online together – what is cheating anyway or copyright for that matter? – and they do not read linearly or spell.)”
• “The planet will be back on the agenda later this year - saving the planet is also saving money."

There are four key trends coming from the mixture of Social Activism versus Social Passivism and Market Pessimism versus Market Optimism.

1. Enoughism (reduced importance on possession increased importance on shared experiences)
2. Moreism (consumerism gone mad accumulation of material goods eg Dubai)
3. Personal fortress (ultimate privacy)
4. Smart Planet (science and technology will solve the problems of the world.

Richard then put his talent to work to look at he key trends for the HR community.

• Globalisation

1. Growth outsourcing
2. Relocating people everywhere
3. Re-localisation
4. 1 billion new customers competitors and collaborators – as China moves into the mainstream of not just producers but consumers.

• Demographics

1. Aging workforce
2. Declining birth-rates
3. Skills Shortage
4. Rising singles
5. Generation Y impact
6. Generation I impact
7. Asian immigration (and reverse migration)
8. Retirement age much later if at all

• Technology

1. Pace change rising
2. Increasing automation
3. Smart machines
4. IT enabling distance working
5. Growth of virtual worlds
6. Rise in robotics (smart ones – with no empathy)
7. Impact of genetics
8. Web.3.0

• Environment

1. Demand for natural resources is rising – people far more aware of the sustainability issue
2. Procurement taking on strategic significance – buy local
3. Tightening regulations
4. Rising transparency

Someone once said that we would have an easier life with all these labor saving machines that we now have... However Richards view of the future of work - doesn't look that easy to me:

1. Faster
2. More global
3. More polarised
4. More promiscuity (people will job hop more)
5. More stressful
6. More specialist
7. More machines
8. More part-time
9. More local
10. More collaborative
11. More transparent
12. More human
13. More ethical
14. More feminine (less command and control)
15. More mobile
16. More creative

A few other interesting ideas:

• Innovation is driven by diversity
• Flexibility for employers is essential for the future of engaged staff
• Retirement ie ending work, is an notion that will cease, people will be in some sort of paid work longer
• Physical spaces will become more important for people to go as the virtual world takes over. (Libraries are a safe neutral space)
• Thinking spaces are very important.

To finish off Richard presented his Extinction Chart of what he thinks could end as we know it in the next 50 years. Of course letter writing was on the list - so was Paris Hilton - spelling and coins. I attach his chart to download FYI

Whole point of the session was to get us thinking - and that it did.

Working for a small unknown company can have it’s advantages – People don’t yet have a story in their head about what that brand means to them.

[It was a really turning point for RedBalloon when at social events I no longer had to describe what RedBalloon did. In fact now many people tell me what RedBalloon delivered for them – they share the experience of what they gave or received. This is a true delight for me as the founder. The RedBalloon brand has become a promise held in the heart of the customer it is no longer up to us to create that story – they have now created it themselves.]

I digress really from my point about creating employee brand connection. Working for some one small and unknown can have it’s advantages – but many people love working with larger, well known businesses. They are proud to name their employer and will openly promote the products or services of their employer (72% of actively engaged employees according to Gallup)

Given that I write this blog whilst traveling back from holidays. I sit in the clean, cheerful A320 and remember how excited and proud I was to get a job in the aviation industry.

I had been working for a professional services firm and I really wanted to get into a more ‘traditional’ marketing role – a mentor said to me ‘go and work in product marketing for one of the bigger advertisers and that will give you the right footing to rise up through the marketing ranks.’

I looked up the list of top advertisers – approached five and was offered three jobs. (Late 1980s) I was soooo excited to accept a role at Ansett Airlines as a product manager. I literally jumped with joy. I told anyone who would listen so proudly that I worked for Ansett.

Fast forward three years and that view had changed completely. In fact it got to the point that if asked at a social event where I worked. I would answer ‘in the travel industry’ and change the subject really quickly.

I knew within the first month that Ansett was nothing like the organization I imagined it would be. People didn’t have job descriptions, there was no planning process, people seemed to spend a lot of time in meetings without resolutions. I was a young naive marketer who was so passionate about making a difference – but there was no one interested in listening.

I could go on about actual events which caused me to make such a dramatic turn around on my ‘brand connection’. But there is no point. It is just my view of the world – and others would have experienced something completely different.

Simply the external communications (advertising) was inconsistent with the employee experience. One of the TV campaigns ‘You can’t have the greatest airline in the world without the greatest people’ was on air at the time when the pilots first striked and then resigned - Australia did not have an aviation industry of nine months.

Another reasons I stopped being a brand advocate for Ansett – was when people told me things about the airlines service – I knew I had now power to influence what they had told me. I couldn’t fix it. There was no mechanism for collecting this customer feed back. Given I was ‘voiceless’ internally – then I too became ‘voiceless’ externally.

To create a company where employees are truly connected to the brand – cannot be bought – they either believe in what the organization is doing or they don’t. If people are proud then they cannot help but tell others about why they are proud of their employer.

(I know On Brand Partners work in the area of brand connection)

Right now – there is no cheaper nor authentic advertising than your employees talking about you.

(Side note interesting that on 22 April Telstra has embraced employees as advocates with its social media policy  “Telstra has taken a liberal approach to regulating employees' use of social media, with a new policy assuming that employees are responsible and will be the company's best advocates. ??Telstra's policy, Social Media - Telstra's 3 Rs of Social Media Engagement, states that the organisation "embraces social media as an important tool of corporate and business engagement". ?

There are three clear stages to achieve authentic, real employer branding communications.  I discussed in the previous entry stage one – which is the logical connection to the organization. This is all about compliance… and knowing what ‘you’ are there to do.

We have been doing this for a long time… years in fact. We have not always had the employee engagement score that we now have (97%). I was in New Zealand a few weeks ago speaking with a client and they mentioned the book ‘Branded Customer Service’  and how they had applied this to their business.

I had not realized that this was the format we had been following. That is:

1. Logical Connection,
2. Emotional Connection,
3. Brand Connection.

Emotional Connection comes from a shared set of beliefs. Leadership plays the most important role here. As I say over and over again ‘As goes the leadership team – so goes the rest of the organization’

People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to belong to something, feel like their contribution has made a difference. This is Generation Why? – this is not based on someone’s age – more their state of mind. Why am I here? Do I believe in the same things that the organization believes in? Why should I do everything in my power to make this company successful?

This is where shared values are important. Especially in tough times – people need to feel that they believe in what they are doing, especially when more is being expected of them. In some ways employees may even feel that they are part of a ‘cause’ – think Apple or Google employees here…

There is no faking it – it is authentic leadership that will create an emotional connection a clear sense of purpose… that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. People's direct managers are equally important. Are the consistent? Do they recognise the people that work in their team regularily?

This ultimately will lead to Brand Connection…which is 'the promise held in the heart of stake holders;… but more on that later.

Employer Branding does not mean sticking a uniform on your people and having them parade around wearing your logo. It is not about promotional products, or logo’s on trucks. It’s about an authentic, real and open conversation that is created spontaneously by employees.

Some people think that Employer Branding is about the recruitment ads that they place. Employer Branding is HR generated external communication - but it is so much more than that.

In my definition Employer Branding is about a truly focused and engaged work force that cannot help themselves but exude their ‘love’ and commitment to the organization they work for. This does not come easily… let me look at what I think are the ingredients’ for a great Employer Brand.

Think Apple – I remember my first day working there (a very long time ago) and as I was being wheeled around to meet every one… one of my peers handed to me an Apple t shirt. She said ‘Let me be the first to give you the “currency” – you always remember your first.’ And she was right. Of the many Apple t shirts I received over the course of my career with Apple this one was special. It was my entry ticket into being a part of something bigger than myself – joining a community.

There are three clear stages to Employer Branding: 1. Logical Connection, 2. Emotional Connection, 3 Brand Connection - but I will need more than one blog to describe them.

Logical Connection. It is very hard to have an employee truly engaged if they have not worked through things logically. Much of this will happen during the attachment phase of employment when people are just getting to know the organization that they agreed to work for. Let us consider that from the time someone responds to your job ad until they pass their ‘probationary’ period – then we call this the attachment phase. An employer is being judged as assessed on the employee experience. Quite simply ‘Is the organization all that it was cracked up to be?’ ‘Did it fulfill on its promise?’ ‘How does the new employee experience the business?’

A third of people will decide in their first month of employment when they will leave an organization. The degree to which a company keeps its promises made during the recruitment phase is critical.

I remember being so excited to join Ansett – but by the time my first week was up I knew that my experience as an employee was nothing like what I had expected. I had wanted to work for an organization that was inspiring… instead I had to learn how to fight a bureaucracy simply to get some stationery to do my job. No one seemed to care if I was there or not… and I definitely had no idea what I was there to do. No such thing as a job description or KPIs.

This logical connection is about compliance – do I have a job description? Do I know what is expected of me? Do I know what the companies products or services are? Do I know how I am supposed to do my job? Do I have the tools to do the job expected of me? (how about business cards on the desk ready to go).

We cannot get to a place of high Employee Engagement unless all this ‘table stakes’ stuff is taken care of.  We are not talking about creating a kindergarten here… we are talking about creating a focused, productive and efficient business that is likely to deliver 27% higher profitability according to Gallup.

The most recent figures from Gallup show that for highly engaged employees - 78% will openly promote the products or services of their employer in Australia and 76% will in NZ. But to get them talking Logical Connection is not enough to really get them talking. Emotional Connection comes next....

I write this blog as I sit on an aircraft on my way to Melbourne to present on the power of Employer Branding. I’m seated next to a thirty something mother and her young pre-schooler. The child reads aloud from his book… the mother flicks through the in-flight magazine. She stops her son reading and she says…’look at this’ and she starts flicking through the magazine – ‘Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad…’ she announces to her 4 year old  ‘What do you mean mummy?’ he inquires. ‘Well’ she explains 'Companies pay money to put these pictures in the magazine to try to get us to buy, buy, buy the product.’  She goes on to complain ‘it takes 12 pages before there is anything to read. The child looks at her quizzically. He has just received his first lesson in how to tune out to promotional messages. She did not actually advise her son that if there was no commercial messages in the publication then there would not in fact be a magazine at all. It is the advertisers who fund that publication in entirety.

Which begs the question – what are we prepared to accept as a price for the privilege of information? And if we know this price, is there anything improper about it. My concern is when we do not know we are being advertised to. If we are being coerced by some guerrilla activity that in fact is totally funded be advertisers.

The youtube video downloaded by 150 million people because people thought that people were really defacing Airforce One – when in fact it was a carefully constructed $700,000 production to promote a brand of clothing? Does this do more harm than good to the brand when discovered to be a fake? (It has now been edited on Youtube to show the brand name clearly the whole time – clearly enough consumer back lash.)

Apparently we are bombarded by 3000 promotional messages every day. There are logo’s on everything, banner ads, you cannot even have a cup of takeaway coffee now with out finding some message on the cup. We live with it… we tune out. We are taught that ‘it’s just advertising’.  This is why we value our friends opinions so greatly… if someone tells us that a product is good…then it must be.

I hate to say it - the only way that I try new fast moving consumer goods is because a friend has either brought it to my home or told me it’s great. I am completely lost in a sea of colour in a super market and I am a bare minimum sort of a shopper (AND I’m a marketer).

Could it be true that advertisers have got so desperate that they now have engaged armies of university students who are being ‘sponsored’ to share their opinion with their friends on facebook, twitter etc on what products they like, without the subheading – ‘Advertising’. Never  - surely not.

So with all this noise how on earth is someone going to get the message across. I have a business – I want to promote what we do….. The point is any promotional activity must be met with integrity and authenticity. It is why Employer Branding can be so very powerful. Because quite simply you cannot fake it until you make it.  I'll share in subsequent blogs about what I really mean by Employer Branding.

It was Ogilvy who said ‘I’ve never seen a landscape improved by a billboard’ now we don’t even notice that it is there – it has just become part of the never-ending sea of commercial message landscape.

I had the pleasure of listening to Darren Shirlaw this week – founder of Shirlaws business coaching. He shared his thoughts on the current economic climate and what businesses could do to come out ‘one top’.

He noted that there is nothing ‘unprecedented’ about the current cycle. In fact by reviewing the ASX over the past century he was able to demonstrate how this recession follows a similar pattern to those of the past. He was very careful to outline that this in no way represented ‘financial advise’, just his views on the world.

I remember Keating saying back in 1991 that we were having ‘the recession we had to have’. We did have a downturn primarily driven by the technology sector in the early part of this century too – that many seem to have forgotten. One of the differences in this recession is that it was not manufacturing or retail businesses failing that caused the ‘needed’ restructure. It was of course the banks and financial institutions. This has not been the case historically; usually it is the banks that fail after business does.

There are four phases of the macro economic cycle.

1. Downturn (share market plummets)
2. Drag (share market stays constant)
3. Release (a 30% lift in share market before a sharp decline again)
4. Up (share market rises)

The ‘Downturn’ has passed – we are through that phase, again looking at history, to predict the future the share market is probably at 90% of how far it could fall. February may have even shown signs of recovery – but the media is not yet reporting this.

It is a bit late to tighten the belt if the recession is past. In fact this is a great time to invest in growth… the point of course being that we need to know where to invest strategically in the business to take advantage of the ‘Up’ phase which in all reality will be late in 2010.

So now that I know the markets are in the ‘Drag’ phase I can begin to plan the future.

Shirlaws Five Mistakes of business Owners in a recession:

1. Timing – they cut back during the ‘Drag’ phase rather than getting ready for the ‘Up’ phase.
2.  Risk – when everyone around you is gloom and doom then business owners are likely to become more risk adverse.
3. Unwind – when we think our business is on the rise we set the P&L up for growth – yet if an external event aka recession hit’s then we begin to unwind the longer term strategy and change to a P&L focussed on saving money rather than making money.
4. Macro/Micro view – we need to stay focussed on where we are to be five or ten years from now. That is being strategic rather than operational.
5. Sector Cycles – the recession means that some industries simply must restructure – they are inefficient and not sustainable… it is important to be aware that some sectors can be completely marginalised and a recession will flush these out really quickly. Don’t assume that all sectors will come back.

Shirlaws Five areas to maximise opportunities during a recession:

1. Product innovation – in reality much product innovation is in fact ‘packaging innovation’ that is the things around the product improve – ie service gaps, pricing gaps etc.
2. New channels – with product innovation you must look for new ways to come to market. The way people purchase, consume and acquire is constantly changing. Whole distribution channels may have been restructured.
3. Functionality – ‘doing more with less’ by improving efficiencies. This must be a relentless pursuit to get better and smarter.
4. Capability – do you have the right resources and the capacity to build the foundation for growth? What vision, skills, talents, and resources do you need in all the functions of the business to make sure that you have the foundation to support the ‘Up’ phase.
5. Succession – an absolute focus on relationships – not just with customers but also more importantly with employees. When the ‘Up’ phase comes upward of 30% of employees will be ready to move to another employer who treats them better than their present employer. Now is the time to invest in training, recognition, and development – so that you have a total team of ‘A Graders’ who are going to want to stay and be part of delivering on the growth in the future.

I urgently have things to get done, to make ready for the huge ‘Up’ that is on it’s way. This is the third recession of my business career… and I know it will not be the last. So I am learning wherever I can and investing to make the most of the ‘Up’ times.

Are you ready for the ride?