The Business Case for Employee Advocacy

What Is Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy is the result of engaged employees being empowered to speak on behalf of the brands for which they work. To attain employee advocacy, organizations need to actively engage their employees and ensure their satisfaction. An employee advocacy program is the first step in achieving meaningful and long term results.

Introduction

The entire concept of employee advocacy is both incredibly powerful and nerve-wracking all at once. Many brands are just coming to grips with the very realities that their consumers now wield tremendous power in the digital age. Just as brands are beginning to empower this phenomenon by putting real plans around the consumer, here comes another onslaught – let’s empower our employee as well.

Why Should You Care?

The power of employee advocacy is in bringing scale and personal context to the relationships we own as brands. Empowered employees can sell products, recruit new talent, inform the consumer in more natural ways, and build more intimate connections to the market. However, at the center of large scale brand advocacy is mutual respect and trust between employees and their leaders. What follows is what many business professionals are looking for – the real business cases as to why we can and should empower employees to advocate for their employers.

What is Employee Advocacy?

What is Employee Advocacy?

When your employees actively support your brand with their words and actions, you’ve achieved employee advocacy. These employees are subject matter experts on the topics, products, or services for which they’re advocating. They’re often viewed as the most credible experts or spokespeople for a brand. 47%  

of  employees  are  already  using  social  tools  to  communicate  

with  customers.9  

What is Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy programs are structures or frameworks that enable internal stakeholders to share stories and content, provide context, and amplify the voice of the brand. They provide employees the ability to showcase their expertise for the audiences with whom they communicate through governance and technology .

78%  of  engaged  employees  would  recommend  their  company’s  products.6  

67%  of  engaged  employees  say  they  ac=vely  advocate  for  

their  company.  An  employee  advocacy  program  helps  

engage  your  employees,  and  add  scale  to  the  sharing  they  

are  already  doing.6  

How Can I Achieve Employee Advocacy?

What does it mean to be a brand worth advocating for? You have ethical and transparent business practices, your company’s mission aligns with its actions, and you take the well-being of your customers and your employees into account when making decisions.

What’s the Business Case for Employee Advocacy?

How Can I Achieve Employee Advocacy?

Employees are trusted more than activist consumers, academics, CEOs and media spokespeople.2

Consumers are 77% more likely to buy a product when they hear it from someone they trust.3

72% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.2

Combined, employees have an exponentially greater reach than a company’s branded social profiles.

The “share rate” of content increases by 8x when shared by employees, compared to the same content from the brand page.4

92%  of  the  average  employee’s  social  connec=ons  don’t  follow  the  brand  they  work  for.4  

 

EMPLOYEES TOGETHER OFTEN HAVE GREATER REACH AND INFLUENCE THAN THE BRANDS THEY WORK FOR

How Can I Achieve Employee Advocacy?

Why Does Employee Advocacy Matter?

Companies that foster brand ambassadors experience on average a 19.2% increase in operating income.6

EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY BOOSTS BUSINESS OUTCOMES

Engaged  employees  produce  2x  as  much  work  product  in  the  same  =me  as  unengaged  employees.4  

Why Do You Need an Employee Advocacy Program?

Employees aren’t as engaged as you may think. Globally, only 13% of employees are engaged at work.5

63% of employees say they’re disengaged at work, and 24% say they’re actively disengaged at work.5

The U.S. is faring slightly better, where 30% of employees say they’re engaged.5

What is Employee Advocacy?

26%  of  companies  s=ll  block  

social  media  access  in  their  workplaces.7  

31%  have  no  social  media  policy  

in  place.7  

In many cases, nothing is being done to engage employees and amplify the social reach of branded channels. Otherwise, there’s the catch-all social media policy. If you currently have a social media policy in place, consider whether it’s enabling or disabling your employees to share your content.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

What Resources Do You Need?

THE COST OF SETTING UP A NEW PROGRAM ISN’T JUST MEASURED IN DOLLARS, BUT IN TIME AND HUMAN RESOURCES.

How Is Success Measured? TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES A MEASURABLE WAY OF ASSESSING OVERALL IMPACT

Contact Us to Get Started Today! References:

1.  Merriam-Webster

2.  2015 Edelman Trust Barometer

3.  Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, Sept. 2013

4.  Social Chorus: Transforming Employees into Advocates

5.  NBRII: Employee Engagement + Customer Satisfaction = Financial Performance

6.  Gallup: Linking Employee Engagement to Customer Growth

7.  Wordpress Hosting SEO Social Media in the Workplace Infographic

8.  Altimeter & LinkedIn: Relationship Economics, October 2014

9.  Oracle & Aberdeen Group, Social Media and Customer Service: From Listening to Engagement

 

Contact Us Today info@ciceron.com � 612.230.3901

Ciceron is a full service digital marketing, insights, and brand advocacy firm based in Minneapolis, MN. Since 1995, we’ve been helping clients use data and consumer insights to identify the right digital strategies and tactics to meet their business goals. Whether those goals are intended to build brand awareness, generate leads or ultimately, drive revenue and ROI, we’ll help you uncover the opportunities to meet the needs of your potential customers by celebrating and scaling the positive experiences of your current advocates.