The following is a sponsored article from our partner, GaggleAMP
Implementing an employee advocacy program has a slew of benefits for your marketing team, but you might be surprised to hear it helps your human resources department as well.
Your marketing department will always spearhead your employee advocacy program. A successful program results in a huge boost in all your social media marketing KPIs, including engagement, clicks, website traffic, and leads. Additionally, your program will help HR reach its KPIs too.
Employee advocacy involves people across your organization promoting your brand, its products, services, and initiatives. However, not all your initiatives revolve around marketing. Sure, you can use employee advocacy to promote marketing content, product announcements, events and more, but it can also help your human resources department.
How Employee Advocacy Helps With Recruiting
People trust other people more than they trust brands, which is why people are more likely to take a job opening seriously when their friend posts it on social media.
If you see a job posting on a job board or shared by a brand account on social media, you might not be sure if it’s a good fit for you, if you’d like the organization or position, or if it has what you’re looking for. But, if someone you trust posts it, you’ll value their recommendation.
In fact, 44.5% of people are more likely to apply for a job they saw a friend post on social media than if they saw the same position on a job board, according to the Marketing Advisory Network. There is no skepticism towards a friend, but there is towards a paid ad or brand account.
It’s all about authentically sharing your message. Your employees have different followers than your brand account, but people trust your employees more than your brand. Therefore, a post coming from their account will be better received than one coming from your brand.
How Employee Advocacy Helps With Retention
When employees promote company initiatives through their employee advocacy program, they get a better understanding of the company’s mission and how they individually contribute to its objective.
Because employee advocates get a better understanding of how the organization works, where they fit in, and what it’s trying to achieve, they tend to feel a stronger connection to their organization.
Additionally, employee advocacy can lead to employees growing their personal brands on social media in their areas of expertise. By sharing content and performing activities on social media, they become more comfortable with it, build stronger connections in their industry, and promote themselves through knowledge sharing and thought leadership.
When building up their personal brand in their industry, they become more knowledgeable about their area of expertise and feel more valued by their organization. By combining this with a stronger understanding of their company’s mission, it builds a great connection to their company and makes it less likely they’ll leave their position. This helps minimize turnover and helps HR with retention.
Your HR team won’t lead your employee advocacy program, but when they see the benefits it brings them, they’ll help expand it across your organization. Employee advocacy has many benefits for HR, Public Relations, Sales and, of course, Marketing, but it’s up to Marketing to communicate the benefits to your other departments in order to scale the program.
