Employee advocacy can be a powerful tool in building employee trust, investing in the company, and also helping to recruit talent and spread positive word-of-mouth about your organization and its products. However, employee advocacy needs to fit your staff, your company, and your objectives for a program to have the desired affects. Here are three components to help when deciding if employee advocacy is right for your organization:
- Know if advocacy will work for you: According to a recent study from Holtz Communications, 70% of employees in a typical organization aren’t behind the organization’s mission. Ensuring that your employees and management are in good standing with each other, and that your general workforce believes in the goals and mission of your organization, is key. You need to make sure that your advocates are going to advocate for you and not antagonize the organization.
- Start with enthusiasts: This may seem like an obvious tip, but it’s often overlooked. Start with your enthusiastic, positive people. Employee advocacy can be a huge risk if the responsibility is put in the wrong hands. Lower your risk by putting that responsibility in trustworthy hands at the beginning of your program. Lower your risk and create easy wins.
- Make it easy: Using content sharing platforms to set up challenges and allow employees to share content with only a couple of clicks is a great way to create momentum early in your program. Making it easy for employees to participate is critical. Don’t intimidate an employee because they don’t know what to share on social media. Put the power in their hands and watch the advocacy momentum take off. Use the virality of social media posts to jump start your program.
Employee advocacy can be tricky, but if you start your program off strong, it will grow employee loyalty, trust and investment in your organization. Employee advocacy can easily grow into employee retention.
