Why Employee Branding is Your Manufacturing Company’s Hidden Value Driver

When a potential customer looks up your engineering team on LinkedIn and finds outdated profiles with minimal information, what message does that send? When your sales team takes three days to respond to vendor emails, how does that affect your reputation? Most manufacturing leaders focus on operational efficiency and product quality while overlooking a critical value driver: how their people represent the company brand.

During a recent Moore on Manufacturing episode, Alyssa Gelbard, founder and CEO of Point Road Group, shared valuable insights on how employee branding directly impacts business growth and company valuation. This discussion highlighted the importance of aligning employee behaviors and communications with company values to drive credibility, trust and revenue growth.

What Employee Branding Actually Means

“Employee branding is essentially how your people represent and promote your company, your company brand to stakeholders in everything they do all day long whether it’s online whether it’s in person,” Gelbard explained. This includes how employees introduce themselves, their LinkedIn presence, communication habits like email response time, presentation skills and how they show up on video or in person.

For manufacturing companies, this extends far beyond the sales team. Engineers brought in as subject matter experts for customer meetings, quality managers communicating with vendors and leadership teams at trade shows all shape external perceptions of your business.

“When you consider all these things and tying it to your company brand, do all these actions and behaviors that people have every single day align with your mission, with your values or are they completely contrary?” Gelbard asked.

The Direct Connection to Company Value

Employee branding has measurable financial impact. Gelbard shared a compelling example of a manufacturing client preparing for exit. The company had optimized operations, maintained high quality standards and controlled costs, but revenue growth remained flat.

Point Road Group started by improving the leadership team’s LinkedIn profiles, which Gelbard described as “kind of embarrassing” despite the company’s strong reputation. They updated corporate bios, ensured consistent company messaging across departments and trained employees on communication habits including response times.

The results were significant. “After all of those things, they sounded like everybody looked and sounded better and they started to see an uptick in new business,” Gelbard noted. More impressively, “the company sold a year earlier than anticipated and the acquirers made a point of saying to them, ‘Hey, everybody looked and sounded really together. Your team looked really sharp.'”

Where Manufacturing Companies Should Start

LinkedIn and Online Presence

When prospects, potential employees or acquirers research your company, they look up your leadership team, engineers and sales staff. “If they look and they see either things that are outdated, has next to nothing, they’re not going to be that excited,” Gelbard explained. “Now they go to your competitor and your competitor has ‘Wow, look at these people.'”

This doesn’t require becoming social media influencers. The goal is ensuring profiles accurately reflect current roles, expertise and company positioning.

Communication Standards

Response time matters across all departments. “It could be a customer’s interest in staying with you. They are constantly reaching out and you take three days to get back to an email or you take a long time to get back to them. It doesn’t matter what area of the business you’re in,” Gelbard said. These habits can hurt business reputation without anyone realizing it.

Consistent Company Messaging

Gelbard recommends auditing your company description. “When was the last time you looked at that?” she asks clients. In her example case, different employees described the company differently, potentially causing missed opportunities. Ensuring everyone communicates a current, consistent message helps prospects understand your value proposition clearly.

The Multi-Generational Challenge

Manufacturing companies today have four generations working together. “We very much believe you have to meet people where they are,” Gelbard said. Older generations sometimes resist new communication expectations while younger employees expect digital engagement as standard practice.

The key is leadership modeling. “Leaders model behavior for their teams,” Gelbard emphasized. When leadership maintains outdated LinkedIn profiles or inconsistent communication habits, “everybody looks and sees, ‘Well the leaders aren’t doing it, so why should I?'”

Beyond Customer Acquisition

Employee branding impacts multiple business areas:

Talent Attraction and Retention: Job candidates research companies and key personnel before applying. Poor online presence or slow response times during hiring processes send negative signals. “What are they thinking now? They’re going to have a negative brand association,” Gelbard noted.

Vendor Relationships: When vendors become frustrated with poor communication habits, they’re less likely to provide referrals or prioritize your requests. “Any interaction someone has with any stakeholder can influence business,” Gelbard explained.

Succession Planning: For companies preparing next-generation leaders, employee branding helps transition client relationships smoothly. Consistent professional presence ensures customers feel confident the company culture and service quality will continue.

Trade Show Differentiation: “You can tell when a company has their stuff together and that their people are really on it. They’re excited to be there,” Gelbard observed. This tangible difference helps companies stand out in competitive environments.

Take the First Step

Gelbard recommends starting with one priority area rather than attempting everything simultaneously. “There’s always low-hanging fruit,” she noted. Companies can begin with a simple audit examining employee LinkedIn profiles, company messaging currency and communication response times.

“At the end of the day, it’s not rocket science,” Gelbard said. “We are helping them help themselves.” The key is recognizing that every interaction employees have with stakeholders, whether customers, vendors, potential hires or acquirers, shapes perception of the business.

For manufacturing leaders focused on building company value, employee branding represents an often-overlooked opportunity. As Gelbard’s client example demonstrated, investing in how your people represent your brand can accelerate growth, improve customer retention and significantly impact exit outcomes.

Build Value From the Inside Out

Employee branding isn’t about turning your workforce into marketing professionals. It’s about ensuring the people driving your business success present themselves in ways that reflect the quality and professionalism of your operations. For manufacturing companies seeking competitive advantage, this internal investment delivers external returns across sales, talent acquisition, customer loyalty and ultimately company valuation.

Want to learn more about building a stronger brand through your people? Watch the full conversation with Alyssa Gelbard on the Moore on Manufacturing YouTube channel, where she shares practical strategies for conducting an employee branding audit, training tips for different generations and specific ways to measure the impact of these efforts on your bottom line.