The following is a sponsored article from our partner, GaggleAMP
Employee advocacy has many benefits to any organization, no matter the size or industry, but gamification makes these programs even more effective.
Organizations implement employee advocacy programs in order to greatly enhance their social media presence by garnering reach, engagement, clicks, website traffic, leads, and more. The success of a program relies on the number of employees in the program and how active they are. This is why people running employee advocacy programs work to recruit more employees in their organization to be advocates for their brand, and to encourage them to be as active as possible.
This is where gamification helps immensely.
How Gamifying Employee Advocacy Works
Gamification is the set up of a system of points, rules, and awards to a task that someone can voluntarily carry out on a regular basis, thereby making the task fun and competitive.
As the manager of your employee advocacy program, you can incorporate gamification into your program by assigning points to each activity you request your employees carry out. You can assign rewards and prizes for each point milestone an employee reaches.
These prizes could be monetary, or they could be company-branded items such as mugs, backpacks, shirts, and more. Some organizations give away premium parking spots, lunch with the CEO, additional paid time off, gift cards, and other coveted perks to incentivize employees.
You can keep track of which employees have the most points in a certain span of time and acknowledge them for their activity in the program using a scoreboard. An employee advocacy tool such as GaggleAMP will help you do this. Every time an employee performs an action, the tool keeps track of how many points that activity was worth and adds those points to the point total of each employee who performs and action.
Managers of the program can use the scoreboard to see who has the most points and can share the scoreboard to employees in the program to acknowledge the ones who are doing the best. Of course, employees like prizes, but they also like the acknowledgment.
What are the Benefits of Gamification and Employee Advocacy Together?
Gamifying your employee advocacy program has two distinct benefits.
First, the employees who are already advocates in your program are motivated to be even more active, continuing to be active over the long haul. People like prizes, acknowledgment, and competing to win prizes. Rather than taking part in an employee advocacy program and losing interest after a long period of time, employees will stay engaged and active longer through gamification.
Second, we all have a bit of FOMO and when employees who are not yet part of your employee advocacy program see acknowledgments and rewards to colleagues, they want to join, too. People don’t like missing out on rewards, bonuses, and acknowledgment. When they see what they could be getting had they taken part in the program in the first place, they’ll be interested in joining. This helps you grow your program and expand your reach on social media by having more active people involved.
Employee advocacy has many benefits, but incorporating a gamification strategy gives it a major boost to help ensure you reach long term success.
