I had the rare pleasure of diving near a beautiful reef off Key West several years ago when the tranquility was shattered by the sudden arrival of a large boat containing around 50 snorkeling daytrippers. Suddenly the fish scattered, the water became a frothing mass of fins, bubbles, and elbows, the air was alive with excited chattering in a dozen languages and the water literally clouded over.

Something similar has happened to the employee engagement space in the past decade or so.

As often happens when a topic attracts enthusiasm, passion, and energy, the waters soon become cloudy and we lose sight of what is a relatively simple concept. To clarify my own take on this subject, I define the increasingly obscured term "brand engagement" as the sense of willing connection between stakeholders and brands based on values and resulting in increased loyalty and improved performance. It is dependent upon free will and requires an emotional as well as a rational connection.

Employee or internal brand engagement is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It represents the most mature or advanced form of internal communication at the opposite end to the push mode of communication. It is not different from internal communication, as some critics imply, because employee engagement and communication are inextricably linked. 

Brand engagement in the internal market is simply the process of clarifying and forging a relationship between employees and the brand they represent in a way that ensures they are able to deliver on the promise the brand makes to the market, which is where the value the organization adds is judged.

An organisation's brand is the physical and behavioral identity it presents to all stakeholders – the 4 Cs, not just customers. This means that brands are as relevant to employees within the not-for-profit and public sectors as they are in the commercial sector as drivers of engagement; culture development; and performance.

As lasting engagement is based on free will, the implication is that engagement is conditional on authenticity. Absolutely. Whether they physically leave or not, people don’t tend to stick around when they don’t trust what the business is saying; and for the business, read first line manager and then all other forms of corporate communication. Lasting engagement, in my view, is entirely conditional on authenticity.

As the saying goes: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”