subject: Corporate Fitness: Is Your Team Portraying The Right Image? [print this page] When you imagine your business as a person, your company image in the flesh - what do you see? Are you imagining someone wearing a three-piece suit or a more casual style of clothing? How do they present themselves and what feelings to they invoke in people they meet? Do they have a beer-bulge or a solid six-pack? How do they carry themselves? Is their posture slumping, rigid like a marines or something in between? How do they speak, what is their vocabulary like and how do they interact with other people? How do they perform in business and in life? What is their attitude like? Are they active or sedentary?
Now look at your staff and ask yourself; are they a match or a mismatch?
Our imagination is almost always picture perfect and we do need to realise that reality will never be as great as the images our minds can conjure up. We're human beings after all. However, if your team does not give of the same vibe that you want them to, chances are it's hurting your brand or at the very least not reinforcing your idea of what your company is supposed to be like.
Customers will deal with your employees most of the time and probably quite rarely with yourself, and what they see and feel after interacting with your staff will be their perception of your brand - no matter how fancy your copy-written mission statement on the website is. People don't care who you say you are, but what they perceive you to be - and a business is no different.
If your team give off an unhealthy, sluggish vibe (it doesn't have to be everyone, even a single interaction can colour your brand) you should look down the lines of a corporate fitness program to light that spark in their eyes. If they're unmotivated and uninspired you should be looking to your great leadership skills and ways to make working for you something to rave about. If they cannot handle feedback from customers or human interaction, perhaps they're not fit to be the face of your business. And finally, if they don't want to play by your rules, what's the point of paying someone a full or part-time salary to NOT do their job. I'm just saying. But before you travel down that road, investigate what you can do to rectify the issues at hand - it might be easier than you think!
