Last week, the Wall Street Journal posted an article titled “Your Employee Is an Online Celebrity. Now What Do You Do?” The article is about the pros and cons of “co-branded employees:” employees that actively build and maintain their own personal brand outside of work. The goal of the article is to shed light on this type of employee and present some of the potential advantages and disadvantages.
The article begins with the following statement: “meet your newest management headache: the co-branded employee.”
That’s a pretty harsh introduction, but the rest of the article isn’t quite so negative. It’s actually part cautionary and part risk assessment. Several valid concerns are brought forth, such as How much time during the workday should be allocated or permitted? andWho owns the content? There’s also a “balance sheet” that compares several advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
- Prestige – The company can claim the top-ranked employee as their own
- Leads – By engaging publicly, the employee is potentially attracting new customers
- Free media – A large following can equate to free or inexpensive publicity for the company
- Recruitment – The employee will attract other, aspiring minds
Disadvantages:
- Prima donnas – Popularity can lead to inflated egos and expectations
- Distraction – The employee may dedicate a wrongly proportional amount of time to their extra-curricular activity
- Leaks – Internal details may be deliberately or accidentally become “less internal”
- Resentment – The employee’s popularity or reputation could negatively affect the team
These potential risks and rewards are part of a short list that could clearly be much longer. I started blogging to track things that I’ve learned and figured out, and it’s evolved into a hobby that doubles as a profession-growth mechanism.
Does it take time out of my day? Sure. A lot of things that I learn and write about are directly related to what I’m doing at work. There’s probably an argument to be made that tasks take me longer to complete because of my blogging. After all, I’d be done sooner if I didn’t have to scrub out customer-related info and write several paragraphs about why I was doing something and how I ultimately accomplished it.
The flip-side to that is that the quality of my solutions is improved by the additional diligence that comes along with my desire to write. I don’t stop when it works. I go deeper; I want to understand why it works, what’s necessary, and what’s not. Then, I take all of that information, condense and simplify it into a blog post. That post becomes my own, searchable repository of lessons learned. If somebody on my team is faced with a similar task, I can send ’em a link. They get an abbreviated version of the journey with a (hopefully) clean, concise solution.
I can only speak in terms of my own experience, but I’d certainly argue that activities like this are a win-win. My online presence, and the desire to grow it, result in an expansion of my horizons. I get personal satisfaction from learning and exploring new topics. The knowledge gained through these exercises allows me to think outside the box when solutions are needed. I’m more well-rounded because of it, and I’m more capable of supporting and providing guidance to my team on solutions old and new, alike.
adamprescott.net 