Employee Voice Is Crucial to Your Hiring Success As a Brand
When getting across the most appealing aspects of your company, who better to be a brand ambassador than your employees? Candidates are looking for authenticity and credibility – and real people are seen as being much more trustworthy than what brands communicate about themselves.
Think about your own reaction – what’s going to have more of an impact? A corporate post laying out an upcoming wellness event or a selfie from a friend working for that business actually at the event? Jobseekers feel the same.
According to the Edelman Trust barometer, employee voice is 3x more credible than the CEI’s when it comes to discussing working conditions at a company.
So how could your current talent attraction benefit from the advocacy of employee voices?
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is when the people who belong to your organisation voice their approval. This can be commercial regarding products and services, or for talent attraction around the working experience.
For talent attraction, employee advocacy activities could include:
- Company reviews such as on Glassdoor
- Referrals of friends, former colleagues or acquaintances
- Contributing to company content like employee testimonials
- Resharing company content like news, jobs and blogs
- Creating their own social content about projects, team company culture.
- Participating in online discussions
With a strong employer value proposition to drive rewarding work experiences, some employees will likely be advocating for your organisation anyway – but there are tried and tested strategies that can create a wider culture of sharing and advocacy. In today’s fiercely competitive talent market, supporting employee advocacy could be the difference to help you attract and retain top talent.
Why is employee advocacy important?
Employee advocacy matters because polished corporate messaging can only go so far. That’s why seeing your key employer value proposition (EVP) messages supported by employee voices builds trust, showcases your culture and humanises your brand.
Not to mention the technical reach – on average, employees can have 10 times as many connections on social media as a company (source: Social Chorus). Therefore, the increased reach of a company that has 200-400 employees through employee advocacy could easily amount to 2,000 times or more.
According to an employee advocacy study, content can be shared up to 24 times more often when originally shared by employees.
Not to mention the high value candidates who exist right now in the friend, family and alumni networks of your employees:
- 88% of employers said that referrals are the best source for above-average applicants
- Referred candidates are 55% faster to higher compared to careers sites
- 47% of referral hires have greater job satisfaction and increased longevity at your company
If you’re looking to take advantage of employee advocacy for your talent attraction strategy, look at what initiatives will support and encourage your people to be vocal about the business and their experiences.
How do I get more employees to become brand ambassadors?
So, you want your employees to start talking about and engaging with your organisation in public spaces.
Consider the following:
Are Employees Connecting With Your EVP?
Pay attention to the conversations taking place on what it’s like to work for you in the office or on Glassdoor. Are people reluctant to engage with the business in public spaces? Are there wider challenges about retaining and attracting new employees? It might be worth in the long-term re-evaluating your reputation and what you offer to see how it compares to your competitors.
Start Small
Identify a few well-connected people you work with who are already doing great at the social game, whether that’s on LinkedIn or if they’re well-versed with Instagram or even TikTok. If you can get them on board and posting semi-frequently, then it can inspire others to have a go.
Share Best Examples
Many people at your organisation might not be sure about what they should share and what that would look like. If you’ve got a company newsletter, intranet or shared channels on Slack or Teams, consider highlighting on them great examples of what’s been posted already.
Empower Them With Creative Tools and Training
Have a plan for how to encourage people to create content. This could include access to tools such as AI-content writing apps, training sessions on building a presence and creating accessible content – or even pre-made template libraries to take the hassle out and help them get started.
Dedicated Hashtag
Launch a hashtag to bring together your employee related content in a way that will help people feel part of something. Some famous examples for inspiration include #LinkedInLife, #IWork4Dell, and #LifeAtPetSmart to name a few.
How do I get employees to share my company content?
So, you want employees from your organisation to share official posts to their own networks. Your people must be actually willing to co-operate and engage with speaking up about your business in the first place – if praise and engagement in public spaces is forced or mandated, this lack of enthusiasm will come across and only hurt your employer brand reputation.
While this can mean a lack of enthusiasm about the employee value proposition, even the most attractive purpose and culture will suffer if people are asked to post about it every ten minutes.
It’s therefore important to exercise moderation when it comes to asking people to share content.
Remember that an employee’s networks of friends, family, former colleagues and acquaintances are theirs, and respect what they choose to share can affect their professional and personal standing.
Therefore you need to create excitement and energy to motivate people to want to be involved. What have we found can help incentivise employees to share your employee content?
- Ensure sharing content is top quality so people will feel proud to curate it. As well as free from typos or errors, that also means offering real value to their networks – be that funny, insightful, inspiring or celebratory content.
- Make clear the purpose of sharing and why you’re asking them. For example, that by sharing jobs adverts for positions in their team, they’ll be part of welcoming new starters and making onboarding less intimidating.
- Make content more personal and relevant so they feel connected to it. For example, suggesting employees to share a post about an event at their office or a team achievement.
- Use a dedicated platform designed with employee advocacy in mind such as SocialHP or Ambassify. These are designed with settings that determine how much employees can edit pre-approved content to balance variety with brand compliance for industries such as law or medicine where messaging may need to be tightly compliant.
- Incentivise social sharing with rewards such as shout outs, awards or being included in rewards like being included for a monthly giftcard draw.
- Offer ring-fenced time to help them share content and build their own professional social presence and networks, even if it’s only half an hour a week!
What could I suggest my employee brand ambassadors create for their own content?
If you’re looking for ideas to suggest to your employee brand ambassadors, look around at what is working for other employer brands.
Some tried and tested content that we’ve seen doing well on LinkedIn includes:
- Welcome pack unboxing post
- Social events
- Milestones
- Praising team achievements
- ‘Favourite Place’ in the office
- Awareness days
- Sharing experience from benefits
For every industry, the opportunities will be different to pull back the curtain and invite wider audiences to engage. Trust employees to spot and make their mark on.
What are some top tips to support employee advocacy at your organisation?
If you’re looking to foster a culture of sharing and engagement among your employees, then consider the following:
- Make sure to recognise top performers and great content pieces for their contributions – they’re lending you their resources to give you a more cost-effective and trusted addition to paid advertising!
- Remember that content that doesn’t feel corporate is more trustworthy – so don’t rush to force everyone to add clunky branding to their photos and content!
- Don’t be afraid of fun – even professional content needs to stand out in the feed, and sometimes this requires a break from the norm to be part of trends.
- Consider recruiting employees from underrepresented demographics to your employee ambassador programme as a priority. Support your diversity and inclusion goals by increasing visibility of those with different backgrounds in the wider sector.
By bringing an employee advocacy program to life and leveraging your employee value proposition, you can amplify the conversation to external candidates about why it’s great to work for your organisation. Increase your chances of attracting your future employees by empowering your colleagues to have their voices be heard across different channels.
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