Employee advocacy

Employee advocacy

What is employee advocacy and how can your company use it as a business strategy?

Studies show that the employee is one of the most reliable sources of information, in fact the employee ranks far above management on the trust barometer.

But what is employee advocacy about? Why is it smart to use? You can read more about that in this article.

What is employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy is broadly about the same as employer branding, but in employee advocacy it's just the employees who tell the good stories instead of the company itself. The employees therefore talk about the company on their own 'channels'.

A survey carried out by Envision in 2017 showed that when we need to learn more about a company, we generally have more trust in the employees as a source of information than in the company's management/owner. The employee is therefore one of the company's most reliable ways of communicating. 

On the right you can see where different sources of information lie on the trust barometer. Here you can see that 54 percent trust the employees to a high and very high degree, while only 31 percent have the same trust in the company's owners/management.

The study also shows that positive stories from employees have a great impact on the willingness of any future employees to apply for a job with the company and the willingness of users to be a customer/user of the company. Conversely, bad stories from employees affect users' willingness in a negative direction.  

Despite the positive aspects of making use of employee advocacy, it is not something very many companies do. The aforementioned study showed that only 5 percent of the employees surveyed believed that their company encouraged employees to post about the company on their own social media to a high or very high degree. For top managers, this figure was 24 percent.

In other words, you are wise to include employee advocacy as part of your recruitment strategy.

 

Where can employee advocacy be used?

Places like Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter are good places to start when you want to begin with employee advocacy. But think about the following, among other things:

1. The target group, employees and the goal

• What is the target group and where is it located?
• Where are the employees? So where does it make sense for our employees to communicate with the target group?
• What is the goal?

2. How do you want to appear on social media?

• Draw up guidelines for your employees so that your employees can answer relevant questions about your company, but also so that they are aware of whether there is anything they may not comment on on their social media

3. Be up to date on the latest trends

• Make sure that your employees are up to date on what works on social media, including that it is important that they know about the latest digital trends. In 2022, the use of reels on, for example, Instagram and TikTok is very popular

4. Power measurement

• Continually evaluate and find out what is working and what might not be working. Find out which areas you want to measure the effect of as one of the first things

When you know this, you also have a greater overview of where it makes sense for your business to start. But it does require that there is something to share in the first place.

It is therefore important that your company generates something that the employees think is worth sharing, liking and commenting on. This can be videos, articles, products and so on. This you can read more about here.

In this way, you brand your company through your employees and ensure that your reach stretches as far as possible.

See more about how you can use employee advocacy as an effective recruitment strategy: