Using Employee Advocacy In Building A Great Employer Brand
9 steps for getting started
Posted on 05-13-2018, Read Time: Min
Share:
A great employer brand is a wonderful thing. It positions your organization as the company where top talent wants to be, the benefits of which are remarkable:
- Improved recruiting
- Improved employee retention and engagement
- Higher revenue and lower costs
It’s no wonder why 68 percent of the “world’s most attractive employers” have employer branding strategies in place as of 2017, and of those that don’t, 76 percent plan to develop them, according to the ERE Employer Branding Now survey.
There are many components to effective employer branding—a few examples include creating a standout employer value proposition (EVP), consistently applying the EVP messaging to all talent sourcing and customer contact points, and developing quality content that supports the EVP.
Another critical element: building and sustaining an employee advocacy program, which is the most effective way to communicate and promote your employer brand. In this article, we:
There are many components to effective employer branding—a few examples include creating a standout employer value proposition (EVP), consistently applying the EVP messaging to all talent sourcing and customer contact points, and developing quality content that supports the EVP.
Another critical element: building and sustaining an employee advocacy program, which is the most effective way to communicate and promote your employer brand. In this article, we:
- Define what an employee advocacy program is
- Explain the power of employee advocacy
- Discuss the benefits of effective advocacy programs
- Reveal three keys for building an effective advocacy programs
- Provide nine steps for getting started
What is an Employee Advocacy Program?
Employee advocacy is when employees of an organization speak positively about the organization. An employee advocacy program is when an organization has a formal program that encourages and facilitates employee advocacy—primarily through social media, but also through email, chat, forums, discussion boards and other ways that people communicate.
Why is Employee Advocacy So Powerful?
Employee advocacy is powerful for two reasons: trust and the power of numbers.
Trust: When an organization advocates itself as a great place to work, people are naturally skeptical. Any organization can say that, whether it’s true or not. When an organization’s employees serve as advocates, however, people take notice.
Power of numbers: Whether you have 10 employees or 10,000, each employee is a potential brand evangelist to help distribute and communicate positive information about your organization. Through their various social media accounts, many employees have networks that reach hundreds or even thousands of people.
An effective employee advocacy program enables you to:
Trust: When an organization advocates itself as a great place to work, people are naturally skeptical. Any organization can say that, whether it’s true or not. When an organization’s employees serve as advocates, however, people take notice.
Power of numbers: Whether you have 10 employees or 10,000, each employee is a potential brand evangelist to help distribute and communicate positive information about your organization. Through their various social media accounts, many employees have networks that reach hundreds or even thousands of people.
An effective employee advocacy program enables you to:
- Reach New People. Your employees’ networks are likely significantly different and broader than your organization’s networks.
- Reach People in New Ways. Potential customers and others are exposed to your brand in new ways, supporting marketing and sales efforts.
What are the Benefits of Effective Employee Advocacy Programs Aside from Employer Branding?
An effective employee advocacy program helps your organization be the best it can be. In particular:
- It Fosters Faith and Loyalty Among Employees. You’re involving employees more deeply in the organization, and showing that you value them. This helps boost retention, and also supports employee engagement.
- It Demands Quality Management. An organization that mistreats employees can’t have an effective employee advocacy program. Having a goal of encouraging employee advocacy in turn encourages your organization to treat employees in a way that gives them a reason to advocate for you.
What are Key Strategies for Success with Employee Advocacy Programs?
Getting employees to participate is the primary success driver and challenge for employee advocacy programs. Many organizations struggle to get employees to participate—even those that have quality management and a strong culture.
The primary cause of these struggles: the wrong content.
Way too many employers make the mistake of expecting employees to share content that they have no reason to want to share. For example, marketing content. We’re sorry, but your employees aren’t going to be motivated to share your latest white paper on their Facebook accounts. Besides, the white paper has nothing to do with your employer brand.
Strategy 1: The Right Content
You want, and need, employees to voluntarily share information about your organization. They will, and will be proud to do so—if the content, article, story is meaningful to them. So you need to generate content that is meaningful to them. And the better the content is, the better your results will be. Not only are employees more likely to share great content, but great content also will maximize engagement—clicks, likes, comments, reshares, etc.
Recognize that while some content might be relevant for all employees to share, other content may only be appropriate to employees in a certain region or department (e.g. marketing). Your employment branding team should align your content development strategy to various company advocacy “groups” within the organization. This allows them to produce content that resonates and is emotionally appealing to these groups and their social networks.
Examples of company advocacy groups:
The primary cause of these struggles: the wrong content.
Way too many employers make the mistake of expecting employees to share content that they have no reason to want to share. For example, marketing content. We’re sorry, but your employees aren’t going to be motivated to share your latest white paper on their Facebook accounts. Besides, the white paper has nothing to do with your employer brand.
Strategy 1: The Right Content
You want, and need, employees to voluntarily share information about your organization. They will, and will be proud to do so—if the content, article, story is meaningful to them. So you need to generate content that is meaningful to them. And the better the content is, the better your results will be. Not only are employees more likely to share great content, but great content also will maximize engagement—clicks, likes, comments, reshares, etc.
Recognize that while some content might be relevant for all employees to share, other content may only be appropriate to employees in a certain region or department (e.g. marketing). Your employment branding team should align your content development strategy to various company advocacy “groups” within the organization. This allows them to produce content that resonates and is emotionally appealing to these groups and their social networks.
Examples of company advocacy groups:
- All employees
- Location/region: [California] employees
- Interest: [Technology]
- Affinity: [Pets at work]
- Department [Marketing]
- Event: [Walk to end Alzheimer's or a tradeshow]
- Outside Constituents: [Customers or Board Members]
Below are examples of information employees might be delighted to share.
Strategy 2: Consider an Employer Branding Consultant
Many companies enlist the help of employer branding specialists/consultants to help with their employee advocacy programs. If you’re struggling to start or improve your program, don’t have enough content to support your employer branding initiatives or are unable to create employer branding content on an ongoing basis, find an employer branding consultant to help.
Strategy 3: Use Employee Advocacy Software
For employees to become advocates, they must first be informed. You can use email or other corporate communication systems already in place to ask employees to share information — e.g., one email per week to employees with some content ideas for the team to share. Employee advocacy software, however, is more effective, allows you more control, and gives you the power of measurement.
In particular, employee advocacy software enables you to:
- Find, manage and organize employer branding content
- Create and manage “groups” of advocates
- Find content to curate
- Send advocates content to share, people to connect with and messages
- Notify advocates of sharing opportunities and allow for “one-click” sharing
- Help advocates grow their social networks and build their thought leadership
- Encourage participation through gamification
- Access analytics (advocate activity, top content, reach, etc.) to make adjustments
Get Started with Employee Advocacy
Interested in getting started with an employee advocacy program? Start with these nine steps to create a solid foundation.
- Strategize: What do you want to accomplish? Awareness of the corporate brand. Set specific, measurable goals your program should accomplish. Decide whether or not to use an employer branding consultant.
- Get Buy-In: Secure buy-in and solicit feedback from senior management and employees. Regardless of how many advocates you start with, let the whole company know what you’re doing and why. Be sure to keep leadership involved as much as possible — employees should see that there’s buy-in throughout the company
- Establish Guidelines: Content is being shared on behalf of your brand so provide examples of appropriate content and what’s acceptable.
- Identify Advocates: Some employers invite all employees to participate in their advocacy program while others identify their “social stars,” employees who are likely to have early success with your program. Determine which approach is right for your culture. Either way, advocacy works best when it’s not forced (e.g., requiring or paying people to share). But keep this in mind — people who are happy in their jobs and have large social networks make the best advocates.
- Train Advocates: Train advocates to get them familiar and comfortable with sharing content.
- Create Content: Great content that supports your EVP is the foundation of an effective advocacy program. Have a process in place to keep fresh content coming.
- Push Content to Advocates: Invest in an employee advocacy software platform that makes it easy for employees to access and share content.
- Measure: Make sure to identify your KPIs, and be able to measure how the advocacy program supports your employer branding goals.
- Reward: Acknowledge advocates and consider rewarding them for participating, regardless of their sharing engagement (something they may not control).
This article first appeared here.
Author Bio
| Mark Willaman is Founder and President of Fisher Vista, LLC and HRmarketer.com. Mark has over fifteen years of proven success in the human resource and healthcare industries. In addition to being a pioneer in the use of web-based technologies for the delivery of employee benefits, Mark has a track record of conceptualizing and implementing innovative, creative and highly successful marketing campaigns targeting HR and employee benefit decision makers. Visit www.hrmarketer.com Connect Mark Willaman |
Error: No such template "/CustomCode/topleader/category"!
