Employee advocacy

Employee Advocacy

Businesses need to look at employees as more than just “people who are hired to provide services to a company on a regular basis in exchange for compensation”. Employees are one of the most valuable marketing assets a business can have, and if you’re not utilizing your employees as a part of an overall marketing strategy you are missing out on a huge opportunity to drive exposure, build brand awareness and increase revenue.

Employees put a face on a corporate brand — to consumers, the community and prospective employees. Simply put, engaged and motivated employees who understand the brand and where it is going translate to happy customers. Helping employees to feel equipped and motivated to support the organization’s brand is one of the most important and effective ingredients in building market share.

What is Employee Advocacy?

At its core, employee advocacy is the promotion of an organization by its staff members. An employee advocate is someone who:

• generates positive exposure and raises awareness for a brand
• recommends a company’s products or services to friends and family
• represents the best interests of the company both internally and externally
• can help build employee ownership of the organization
• is an expert on your product or service and can be a credible spokesperson for your company.

Empowering your employees to advocate on behalf of your brand can breed inspiration and increase loyalty within an organization. This can also increase internal employee engagement and improve internal communication between team members and higher echelons of management.

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Cameron Hillard submitted the Element Employee Advocay to us and we thought it was a great suggestion, so here it is! He also told us about this fact sheet resource he uses to try and encourage the business to communicate with staff what is going on in the organisation.

“Unfortunately too often people think our customer are only external, but actually they are internal as well. In many instances the information we are sharing outside is relevant to those on the inside as well especially as our workforce resides in the community we are talking to.”
– Cameron Hillard, Elements of IC contributor