To truly reach employees and make your messages stick, you need to approach them as any company would approach their potential customers.

Sound crazy? We will attempt to de-crazy it for you. Check it out:

Employees are consumers of your messages, just as your customers are consumers of your product. Like your customers, your employees are busy. Their attention is being pulled in a dozen different directions at any given moment. Therefore, it takes strong, authentic and cleverly presented messages in order to cut through the day to day clutter and really reach an employee.

And we’ve found that when employees are treated not as assembly line producers, but rather as humans whose allegiance an organization is fortunate to have, something very beneficial happens—employees will work harder and better because they feel an emotional attachment to their employer. This is something theCEO of Southwest Airlines learned long ago – and to great benefit. Over the years, whenever reporters would ask CEO Herb Kelleher the secret to Southwest’s success, he had a consistent response. “You have to treat your employees like customers,” he told Fortune in 2001. Friends and peers of Kelleher’s would often see his philosophy in action.

“There isn’t any customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction,” said Gordon Bethune, the former chief executive of Continental Airlines, and an old friend of Mr. Kelleher’s. “He recognized that good employee relations would affect the bottom line. He knew that having employees who wanted to do a good job would drive revenue and lower costs.”

Makes sense, right? This next bit is a mouthful but break it apart piece by piece:

Beyond professionalism and happiness at one’s job, an employee’s sense of worth within the context of their work identity directly affects the quality of the service they provide in the eyes of their customers.