Employee Advocacy: the company from the employee’s point of view
When a company needs to fill a vacant position, it requires the intervention of its HR team to develop a recruitment strategy. The search and selection process will be geared towards Talent Acquisition, the hiring of a qualified resource that will make a difference in terms of ROI.
The recruiting activity could be considered as a “give – take”: in fact, a reciprocal relationship is created between the candidate and the company in which the former, after having been selected from among many, decides to make his skills and peculiarities available to the latter.
What can the company offer the candidate? What is the added value that differentiates it from other companies?
Among the many reasons that make a candidate choose to work for one company rather than another, Employee Advocacy plays a key role.
What is Employee Advocacy?
Employee Advocacy is when employees act as spokespersons (“ambassadors”) for the image of the company they work for. In this sense, by conveying the brand, they contribute to the transmission of its core message, its values, the perception and the feelings derived from being part of it.
In fact, it is precisely the employees who experience the working life of a company at first hand. Therefore, as they communicate and share with others their daily experiences within the office, they become an unquestionable source. Seen through the eyes and experiences of employees, the company’s image appears more truthful and reliable and, as a result, the company brand becomes stronger and achieves a positive return in terms of Brand Reputation.
The effects of Employee Advocacy on the company, employees and candidates
Employee Advocacy mainly acts on:
- Company
- Employees
- Candidates and new talents
Company Brand Reputation
When employees become protagonists in the diffusion and promotion of a company, two mechanisms are triggered that enhance Brand Reputation. The first has to do with the growth of visibility for the company: sharing online, communicating and to tell friends and acquaintances or simply the world around the life within the company implies getting in touch with a wider network. Thanks to online sharing (let’s think about social networks), for example, employees’ testimonials reach a much wider and varied audience than the classic target audience (the company’s customers or potential candidates for an open position).
The second aspect, on the other hand, is linked to a sort of “humanity” that would emerge thanks to employee participation. Whether it’s a coffee break, a office drinks, or a reunion outside working hours, these are all moments of daily life that allow the company to be perceived as attentive and close to people rather than just “workers”.
Employee Retention and Engagement
The effect of Employee Advocacy on employees themselves is expressed in terms of Engagement and Retention and, in this sense, a fundamental role is played by sharing and trust. When employees become representatives of the company and its values, they feel that they share a common goal with their colleagues and even with their boss: to participate actively and personally in the growth of the company. Sharing generates a sense of belonging that leads resources to give a voice to the company which, for its part, shows great trust in its team with a consequent increase in Engagement and Retention. Sharing, collaboration, team spirit: these are all factors that will have a positive return in terms of productivity.
Attraction of candidates and new talent
As a direct result of the first two points, Employee Advocacy also has a major impact on Talent Attraction and retention. In some ways, it intervenes by channeling candidates’ interest at various stages of the selection process.
What to focus on for positive Employee Advocacy
As mentioned above, Employee Advocacy benefits a bit of everyone. For this reason, it is important to take care of all the aspects that characterize it, to train one’s own internal resources and collaborate with them for a clear and integral promotion of the company.
How? You can decide to post moments of sharing between colleagues on social networks, to motivate each other by giving feedback on the work carried out by the various teams, to assess the degree of internal satisfaction with specific surveys. It would also be a good idea to live moments of light-heartedness without ever losing the focus on professionalism by focusing, for example, on gamification and contests to reward productivity. In the end, encourage open spaces and communicating offices to practice sharing and exchanging ideas.
Digital Marketing presso Inrecruiting