Internal branding: how to involve employees in the brand

Internal branding and corporate culture are not the same

They are often confused, which is a strategic mistake. Corporate culture is how a company lives inside: norms, rituals, communication style, relationships between departments. Internal branding is how an employee understands the company brand and conveys it outward, voluntarily becoming its carrier. Culture can be strong and healthy, while the brand may still be vague and unclear to employees. And vice versa: a company may have an impressive external brand that has nothing to do with what people feel inside.

Without a healthy internal culture, internal branding is not launched at all — this is one of the minimum conditions: there must be a company strategy, consistency of management styles of top management, and basic employee satisfaction. If people do not trust management or are burned out, a conversation about ambassadorship is meaningless — first you need to close the base.

Why employees sabotage ambassador programs

Resistance is rarely related to laziness or indifference to the company — there is usually a specific reason behind it, and it can be diagnosed. According to research data, the distribution looks like this:

• 32% — misunderstanding of the initiative's purpose, often a result of unprofessional management: people were not explained why this is needed for them personally;
• 20% — lack of clear communication: employees learn about the program from a mailing, not from their manager;
• professional burnout — when people are asked for 'a little more involvement' from someone who is already working at maximum capacity;
• introversion and discomfort with publicity — not everyone is ready to appear on camera or write a post under their own name;
• uncomfortable event format — filming during working hours, requirement of specific clothing, rigid scripts;
• lack of choice — ambassadorship is imposed, not offered.

It is telling that the first two reasons are management failures, not 'bad employees'. If 52% of disagreement is explained by the fact that people were not explained or conveyed the meaning, then the problem is not with the personnel, but with how it was launched.

One approach does not work for everyone: differentiation is needed

A big mistake is to offer the same participation format to all employees at once. An extrovert will happily record a video for stories, an introvert will withdraw from such an offer and most likely refuse any further dialogue about the brand. It is important for a manager to convey strategic meanings, and for a specialist to tell about a specific work situation that is close to them.

It is precisely this differentiated approach that is ignored in most publications on internal branding — yet it is the key to making participation not look like a chore.

What really works: formats, not slogans

The intellectual-emotional buy-in model proposed by researcher Kevin Thomson explains why some programs work and others fail. An employee must simultaneously understand the brand's meaning with their mind and believe in it emotionally—neither alone provides a sustainable result. You can explain strategy perfectly logically, but if a person does not feel an emotional connection to the brand, they will not become its voluntary carrier.

Practice confirms this with numbers. Content created by employees themselves (EGC) generates up to eight times more engagement than official company posts, and the total reach of individual employee accounts exceeds the reach of corporate channels by ten times. This is not theory—this is precisely why one should engage in internal branding at all, rather than replace it with glossy press releases.

At QIC, systematic work raised the company's value recognition metrics, and it was possible to involve a significant portion of employees in ambassador initiatives — with an active core of authors comprising only 10%. This is an important detail: it's not necessary for everyone to participate; a small active core is sufficient, around which the rest of the engagement is built. Sber launched the HR campaign 'You're Too', which used stories and visual employee portraits, positioning unconventional qualities as advantages — this worked as motivation better than any order. In Gazprombank, in 2023 year, projects based on employee stories were implemented (the 'Legends of Gazprombank' competition with 333 submissions, a values book with 12 stories), through which the company conveyed its principles and values. According to research data, engagement increased from 85% in 2020 year to 89% in 2022 year, and loyalty — from 79% to 88%. IBM, through the EGC program #NewWayToWork, received 250 000 shares, 200 000 reactions, 500 million impressions, and 50 000 leads — figures that cannot be achieved through any corporate account.

How to overcome the fear of public exposure

Being nervous in front of the camera or fearing 'writing something wrong' — not whims, but a normal reaction to the risk of public expression. The solution is not to force, but to lower the entry threshold:

1. provide format choice: text, audio, photo, video — instead of an obligatory single template;
2. start small: a comment, not a full-fledged post, a short quote, not a five-minute interview;
3. show an example of a colleague, not a top manager — people trust their own people more than a top-down benchmark;
4. ensure the right to editorial control and the right to refuse publication without explanation;
5. praise the attempt, not just the viral result.

How to understand that internal branding is working, not just existing on paper

One questionnaire at the end of the quarter won't show anything — a multi-level assessment is needed. There are three layers that should be measured separately: the efforts employees make voluntarily (not according to a task); personal convictions, to what extent they align with company goals; and emotions that arise at the moment when the goal is achieved. If high indicators are only present at the first level — people participate formally because 'that's what they were told.' True engagement is visible where all three layers coincide, and this can be tracked through qualitative interviews, not just through the percentage of completed questionnaires.

Where engagement turns into coercion

The most common yet most overlooked mistake is perceiving internal branding as a one-time campaign rather than an ongoing part of work routine. The campaign ends — interest fades, and the next attempt to launch faces not neutrality but cynicism: 'we've already been through this.' A second alarming signal is when voluntary participation gradually becomes mandatory KPI, and refusal begins to be perceived as disloyalty. This is a direct path to burnout: a person who already works at full capacity receives additional burden under the guise of 'personal brand development' or 'contributing to the common cause.' A healthy internal branding always leaves space for refusal without consequences — and it is precisely the absence of pressure, not the brilliance of the campaign, that distinguishes a working system from another initiative that will quietly die in six months.