How to maintain an employee advocacy programme

Building a strong employer brand isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s an ongoing task where you’re constantly maintaining and strengthening your reputation as a desirable employer to work for.
We asked Emma Lang, Founder & CEO at employer brand consultancy, Empower EB to share her top tips on how to maintain momentum after you launch an employee advocacy programme.
Make it easy to create content
Set up your employees so they can easily share, signal boost or repurpose branded organisational content for their profiles and social media channels. From welcome kits and online meeting backgrounds to team photos – make sure any employer content is easily accessible and shareable. This ensures your branding can be seen beyond your company-led channels and on your employees’ channels to boost brand awareness and attract new business and candidates.
Measure your employer brand efforts
Employer branding tools that measure sentiment and reputation is a great start to help you conduct an internal analysis to identify what your current employees think of your company. These tools can also easily help you measure and track performance via social listening, employer reviews and reputational surveys once you have your adapted employer brand strategy in place to see what is working and what isn’t in a post-pandemic recovery.
Engage different employees with every cycle
Consider changing up your ambassadors every 6 to 12 months by engaging different groups to join your employee advocacy programme so they’re taking turns getting their voices out. With intern and/or graduate schemes, consider integrating the programme into their day-to-day so you’re always getting a fresh perspective socialised on social networks every time there’s a new cohort joining your organisation. Remind your employees that being a brand ambassador is a great profile-raising exercise that allows them to expand their network beyond your organisation.
Repurpose and localise employer brand content
Depending on how you’ve designed, strategised and governed the programme, you should empower your employees to create authentic content in their local language to be shared on the platforms they use that your organisation may not be active on. For example, a truly global omni-social channel initiative can be done when an employee creates content in Thai and shares it on the app, Line which can be translated or adapted by another employee in Chinese and posted on WeChat and so forth.
Research has shown that organisations who have invested in employee ambassadorship and employee engagement programmes saw a ten-fold increase in their audience outreach. Get more tips how to manage your employer brand in our latest whitepaper: Managing your employer brand in challenging times.