Imagine you started a new venture that becomes popular within a few months of launch. Everyone begins showing interest in your products, and you even start receiving orders. Over time, you receive a number of orders that you cannot handle alone. Therefore, you seek resources to help fulfill orders and further your business.
At this point, your market is getting bigger, and you must ensure customer delight. So what, according to you, is the factor you cannot afford to ignore now? Is it your customers or the employees?
Undoubtedly, having a large customer base allows you to learn from experiences, even if you lose a customer or two due to unfortunate reasons. However, what would it be like to have unhappy employees? It will tarnish your brand reputation if things go unchecked. Moreover, your revenue-generating capacity would suffer.
Your employees are more important than your customers, and you cannot thrive without them.
A recent IDC survey says 85% of business owners agreed that a positive employee experience and increased employee engagement build better customer experiences and generate more revenue.
Keeping the statistics in mind, let us move ahead to learn the role of employee advocacy in employee branding.
Employee Advocacy: Why Does it Matter to Build Employer Brand?
- Increases brand awareness
Social media content shared by an organisation’s employees attracts more engagement than the content shared by the company. Admittedly, employee advocacy brings high-quality results for organisations by powering their market presence and bettering brand reputation among people.
- Influences customer relationships
Every employee of your organisation enjoys influence over some or all customer relationships. An unhappy employee can spread negativity and impact the team’s ability to serve customers well. Even worse, an unhappy workforce can throw you out of the market before you realise it.
- Generates high-quality leads
Market trends reveal leads that result from employee advocacy convert more frequently than other leads. In fact, today’s customers prefer seeing the faces behind an organisation before making a buying decision. This is because modern buyers believe in what they hear from people and what they see in advertisements.
- Builds powerful talent pools
The talent recruitment concept has changed in the last decade and is no more restricted to finding candidates through advertisements. Visibly, employer branding has taken over the recruitment sector. Moreover, job seekers prefer joining organisations having happy employees. When employees share their stories and experiences, potential employees tend to get attracted toward positive content and decide their course of action.
- Reduces cost per hire
Employers believe employee advocacy is the most cost-efficient way to make new hires. This is because an organisation that believes in and follows the concept witnesses reduced hiring costs. The reason is they can reach a broader base of potential candidates and make the right candidate choice among the ones who believe in the organisation’s culture, mission & vision.
How To Make Employees Your Brand Advocates?
In cognizance of the impact of building an employer brand, organisations have been managing their brands for a long time. Establishing a reputation is an overwhelming task, but employee advocacy can accelerate its success. Read on to learn what steps you can take to harness the power of your team and turn each member into a brand advocate.
- Set clear goals
Before you publicise your employee advocacy program, make sure to have set the objectives you want to achieve. The step will give you clarity to the employees on what needs to be achieved.
Be specific while setting goals and remove any ambiguity surrounding them. Simply put, there must be clarity of goals among your team.
- Have a clear and consistent brand message
Your brand’s message must be consistent, and you can achieve it by creating a guide for employees to follow. The guide must entail instructions your employees must observe while they post, promote, and interact on social media.
- Improve internal communication
If you want to reach the pinnacle of success, check for internal communications and the loopholes. In plain words, communication within the organisation must be clear, manage information overload and motivate & drive employee engagement.
MUST READ: The Connection Between Employee Recognition and Retention
- Be flexible
Identify your employees’ unique personalities and allow reasonable flexibility. To begin with, your guide must talk about flexibility so that your employees can create content reflecting their personalities. This will also boost the human touch and better connect the audience and the brand.
- Establish metrics
Choose the metrics wisely against which you will measure the success of employee advocacy. You can also measure the performance of employees who contribute to the program.
Summing Up
Every good thing that you hope to accomplish in your company will be possible with employee advocacy. On the other hand, if your employees aren’t happy with the company culture or job roles, it will crimp your ability to survive in the market. So, focus on your people first to map your success journey.
You must hire the right to have a great workforce that deserves to be made your organisation’s integral part. We are here for you to help you find top talent.
