Your employees are one of your biggest resources, and not just for getting the job done. Employee advocacy is a great marketing and HR tool. Understanding your employees and giving them opportunities to tell their stories improves both the company culture and your employer brand. As recruiting adopts strategies from marketing, employee advocacy will come into the spotlight and it will be integrated into more recruitment technologies.

Why employee advocacy is good for your business

People trust employees over brands. By giving a platform to your employees’ voices, you will lend authenticity to your brand that can’t be simulated by copywriters. The popularity of sites like Glassdoor and Workadvisor show just how much people care about the insider opinion of a company, whether it's candidates or customers. Candidates want to know what a company is really like before applying, and there's no better way to evaluate the company culture than to hear directly from who works there.

Employee advocacy strategies help employees share their experiences. Happy employees may already be talking about your company in their social circles, and you can help spread their words further, especially on social media. Generally, an employee advocacy strategy sets the tone for communications and provides platforms and content so that employees can tell your story. This can include specific hashtags or social media accounts to capture the employee experience.

Many of your employees are likely plugged into social media, which means your content and recruiting efforts can have substantial reach, once you give the clear to share on their platforms. A substantial amount of recruitment for creative professions occurs on twitter, where there are huge organic networks of working artists, writers, and designers.

At the same time, there’s a risk that your employees will contradict or tarnish your employer brand. That’s why some companies choose to have social media managers or to dissuade employee advocacy entirely. Similarly, employees may not feel able to truly speak their mind about their company on public social media, especially if they believe their social media is being monitored. There has to be a happy marriage between employer guidance and employee honesty — and if your employees aren’t happy in their workplace, initiatives to improve will have longer recruiting benefits than forcing employee advocacy.

What does employee advocacy look like in 2018?

There are currently several programs, tools, and softwares to facilitate employee advocacy and measure success. Some are packaged into other HR technology. If you’re looking for the right tech to advance your employee advocacy, make sure the features are mobile friendly, have strong analytics, and integrate with major social media platforms and other technology you use.

LinkedIn Elevate is an employee advocacy program that allows you to curate content, suggest relevant content to your employees so they can share, and measure the results. Now that LinkedIn has an improved design to their newsfeed, it is really becoming a more social site, and is a natural place for many companies to launch their employee advocacy strategies. 

Product You

Product You is a program for recruitment, retention, career development, diversity training, team building, and employee recognition. It’s a combination of employee advocacy and personal employee branding. By focusing on employees, it truly transforms them into advocates both within and without the workplace.

During the process, you design a blueprint for each employee. This snapshot encapsulates their strengths and unique potential, empowering employees to become advocates for themselves and your company. Product You knows that an empowered employee is going to be more engaged at work, which maximizes harmony and productivity in the workplace.

Product You also allows you to understand your team better, and to share that understanding with clients, strategic partners, and job candidates. Your company culture is not just what you aspire to be — it’s made up of the individuals who work there. 

For more information on Product You, contact Sky today.