6 Ways Enterprises Are Missing Out Without Employee Advocacy
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6 Ways Enterprises Are Missing Out Without Employee Advocacy
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__ Contents
Introduction 3
You’re Falling Behind Your Competition 5
You’re Limiting Your Brand 6
You’re Missing Sales Opportunities 7
You’re Not Fully Engaging Your Workforce 8
You’re Not Maximizing Communications 9
You’re Not Delivering a Great Digital Experience 10
The Missed Opportunity for Enterprises 12
6 Ways Enterprises Are Missing Out Without Employee Advocacy
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__ Introduction
Many enterprises are still wary of employees sharing on social networks. They claim
they’re going through a digital transformation, but they’re not allowing usage of
communication channels that employees expect.
There are many benefits to getting employees to share corporate content on social
networks, but let’s face it - it’s easier if you don’t allow employees to use social media at
work.
Why is this?
First off, there are compliance and governance issues. Legal needs to get involved in how
employees communicate externally, and that requires a lot of work. How do you create a
paper trail of what’s getting shared? Do you need to create a policy?
Second, there’s too much monitoring required. What are employees saying? You need to
make sure that employees aren’t saying something wrong. Are they sharing
inappropriately? How are people responding? You don’t want a communication crisis on
your hands.
So, the easiest way around this is not to allow employees to share corporate content on
social media at all, unless you send emails out specifically asking them to. But this
creates other challenges - where’s the visibility into who opened, clicked, and shared the
specified content? Who’s interested in doing this? You’re blasting employees with
messages they might not want to receive instead of having them act on their own. This is
also very hard to report on, and to show the value of these activities to the C-Suite.
But guess what? Employees are already sharing corporate content and using social,
whether you allow it or not. They are consumers just like anyone else, and networks like
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Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are where they create relationships - personally and
professionally.
When consumers need to understand something, they don’t turn to advertising for
answers. They go to friends, colleagues, and family, whom they trust more. Employees
are the same. Restricting access to these important networks impedes the exchange of
information they need to do their jobs properly. It also affects how employees stay
engaged at work, and doesn’t match their expectations of a modern workplace
experience.
There are many reasons why you should open up internal and external communication to
your employees, and encourage them to share information. This is the basis of employee
advocacy, the convergence of internal and external communication delivered in a
millennial workplace experience.
Leading firms have already adopted employee advocacy, and are using it to improve
internal communications, increase brand value, and deliver a better workplace
experience. Now let’s dig deeper into this - what value are you missing by not having an
employee advocacy solution in the enterprise?
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01 You’re falling behind your competition
Since 50% of employees already share about their employer on social media, some
enterprises have started capitalizing on the trend and encouraging more employees to
share. However, many enterprises haven’t adopted a formal employee advocacy program
yet. Here are stats about employee advocacy adoption:
• Interest in employee advocacy has grown 191% since 2013, with 45% of
respondents naming it a top external objective (Source)
• 16.6% of all firms have implemented a formal employee advocacy program
(Source)
• 53.3% of all firms are either piloting or considering options for employee
engagement on social media
• 31% of high-growth firms now have a formal employee advocacy program in place
• 33% of employers encourage their employees to use social media to share news
and information about the organization (Source)
• Of the employers that encourage social media sharing:
o 55% provide readily accessible tools for employees to use in social media
o 50% provide messages about the employer for employees to use in social
media
o 42% provide easy-to-understand guidelines to employees for using social
media
o 39% ask employees to stay alert to social media postings about the employer
o 37% provide training for how to use social media properly
o 35% provide access to social media at work
o 35% provide updates about changes in social media so that employees can
stay current on the latest tools and uses
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• Best-In-Class companies place emphasis on continuous employee learning, with
60% providing their employees with a central content hub for self-learning
(compared to 49% of all others), and 35% providing mobile access to corporate
content (vs. 29% of all others.) (Source)
• Best-In-Class companies are 60% more likely to give their employees
opportunities for “microlearning”
By not having or not thinking about implementing an employee advocacy solution at your
enterprise, you’ll soon fall behind your competition.
02 You’re limiting your brand
Getting your employees to be more engaged on social media clearly provides benefits
from a brand awareness and recognition standpoint. By not providing social messaging
and blocking access to social media at work, you’re missing out on the following:
• One in five employees (21%) is estimated to be an employee advocate, and
another 33% have high potential to be employee advocates (Source)
• 79% of firms surveyed reported more online visibility once implementing a formal
employee advocacy program. 65% reported increased brand recognition (Source)
• Measurable benefits include:
o Increased web traffic (44.9%)
o Better search engine ranking (32.4%)
o Increased content downloads (24.6%)
• Employees have on average 10x more connections than brand channels do
(Source)
• Messages shared by employees went 561% further than the same message
shared on a brand owned channel
• Brand messages are re-shared an average of 24x when distributed by an
employee vs. the brand
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• More than eight-in-10 global respondents (83%) say they completely or
somewhat trust the recommendations of friends and family (Source)
Since word of mouth has always been the best kind of marketing, setting up a solution
that makes it easy for employees to find and share the right corporate content can help
improve your brand value.
03 You’re missing sales opportunities
Employee advocacy solutions can help on a few
fronts. The more obvious benefit is getting your
employees to share corporate content on social
media. But there are also enablement benefits by
providing easily accessible corporate content to your
sales team when they need it most. Here are missed
sales opportunities by not having an employee
advocacy solution:
• Nearly 64% of advocates in a formal program credited employee advocacy with
attracting and developing new business, and nearly 45% attribute new revenue
streams to employee advocacy (Source)
• 27% of high growth firms (over 20% revenue growth) reported that an employee
advocacy program shortened their sales cycle.
• 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process
outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often (Source)
• 73% of Best-in-Class organizations have a centralized content library to help their
team sell in different situations (Source)
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• Users of sales enablement content average 69% more revenue growth year-over-
year compared to their peers who do not use sales enabled content.
Having the right corporate content accessible through web and mobile can help sales
reps stay informed with current offers, get ready for presentations, and maximize the
likelihood of closing deals.
04 You’re not fully engaging your workforce
Employees who aren’t fully engaged cost your enterprise a significant amount of money
every year. It’s estimated that 71% of employees aren’t fully engaged, which is a big
concern for enterprises. Here’s what you’re missing without employee advocacy from an
employee engagement standpoint:
• One in five employees (21%) is estimated to be an employee advocate, and
another 33% have high potential to be employee advocates (Source)
• 39% have shared praise or positive comments online about their employer
• Almost 86% of employees participating in an employee advocacy program
credited their involvement on social media as having a positive impact on their
career.
• Socially engaged employees are more optimistic, inspired, connected, and
tenured (Source)
o 27% more likely to feel optimistic about their companies’ future
o 20% more likely to feel inspired
o 20% more likely to stay at their companies
o 15% more likely to connect to co-workers beyond their core teams
• 79% of job applicants are using social media for their job search (Source)
• This increases to 86% for applicants who are in the first 10 years of their career.
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• 69% of applicants will not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation –
even if they’re currently unemployed.
• 94% of applicants are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages
their employer brand.
• Increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by
$2,400/employee, per year.
• 78% of job seekers say that ratings and reviews from those on the inside
(employees) are influential when deciding where to work.
Engagement and retention are on everyone’s minds at enterprises. Having happy
employees who are positive about their employer not only helps with overall productivity
and morale, but also with attracting top talent through social media.
05 You’re not maximizing communications
Although employee advocacy solutions help employees become more active on social
media, there are several other core benefits of having a successful solution in place. The
biggest one is employee communications. According to Weber Shandwick, employers are
not effectively communicating to employees:
• Only 42% of employees know enough to explain to other what their employer
does
• Only 37% understand their employer’s goals
• Only 29% say that managers frequently communicate with them
• Only 28% say that their employer listens and responds well to customers
• Only 26% say that their manager listens and responds well to them
• Only 26% say their employer surveys employees every 1-2 years on how well it
communicates with employees
• Only 25% say their employer does a good job of keeping them informed
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• Only 24% say their employer communicates frequently with employees
Employee disengagement costs
enterprises over $11billion a year. One of
the top contributors to improving
disengagement is communication. By
adopting an employee advocacy solution,
you’ll be improving the dissemination of
corporate content to your employees,
keeping them informed and engaged.
06 You’re not delivering a great digital experience
You are constantly competing for the attention of your employees. With all the
interruptions that are happening in the digital world, why would an employee pay
attention to an archaic communications system?
Internal communications is not matching the expectations of today’s consumer. And
guess what? Your employees are consumers too. They’re used to receiving information:
• From friends and colleagues on social networks
• From web, video, and visual content
• In bite-sized communication
• That’s mobile friendly
• Anytime, anywhere, at their choosing
Let’s look at how the communication landscape has changed:
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• On average people check their phones 150 times per day and spend 177 minutes
using them (Source)
• 91% of users turn to their phones for ideas in the middle of a task
• US adults spend 2 hours and 51 minutes per day on “non-voice” activities on
mobile devices
• 2.307 billion people are active social media users (Source)
• 1.968 billion people are active mobile social users
• 10 years ago, only 7% of the US population used one or more social networking
sites. Now that figure has increased almost tenfold to 65%
• Of those who use the internet, a massive
majority of 76% of Americans use social
media.
• Most generations spend more than 5
hours a week consuming online content,
with some consuming over 20 hours a
week. (Source)
• The most popular time to consume
content for Millennials and Gen X’ers are
late evening (8PM-11:59PM)
• 52% of content consumption happens on
mobile, with the majority being from
Millennials and Gen X’ers
• 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially (Source)
• 47% of consumers who use two or more screens at the same time do so “out of
habit” (Source)
• In 10 years, a $10,000 investment in design-centric companies would have yielded
returns 228% greater than the same investment in the S&P (Source)
• 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience
• Judgments on website credibility are 75% based on a website’s overall aesthetics
• First impressions are 94% design related
• Given 15 minutes to consume content, 66% of people would rather read
something beautifully designed than something plain (Source)
• Millennials are the largest generation after the “soon-to-retire” Baby Boomers
(Source)
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• By 2020, Millennials will be 50% of the global workforce
• Millennials have grown up with broadband, smartphones, laptops and social
media being the norm and expect instant access to information
• Millennials are the first generation to enter the workplace with a better grasp of a
key business tool than more senior workers
• Millennials tend to be uncomfortable with rigid corporate structures and turned
off by information silos
• Millennials want a management style and corporate culture that is markedly
different from anything that has gone before
• The companies that have already been the most successful in attracting talented
millennials are naturally innovative employers who are never restrained by “how
things used to be done”
The communication landscape has changed. The millennial workforce expects
information to be available instantly and delivered through a great mobile, social
experience. If you’re not actively evaluating an employee advocacy solution, you’ll be
missing out on bridging this technology gap that your workforce craves.
__ The missed opportunity for enterprises
There’s a missed opportunity if marketing and communications teams don’t get executive
buy-in for an employee advocacy solution. As we discussed, there are many benefits
across departments of having a formal employee advocacy solution in place.
Everyone knows that there are diminishing returns from using brand channels. The
visibility rate of organic social media has gone down significantly, which has led
marketing teams to invest more in social media advertising. However, there is an increase
in ad blockers and click fraud, which is counter-intuitive to the investment.
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On top of that, word of mouth from employees is more trusted than anything else when
it comes to delivering financial earnings and operational performance, business practices
and crisis handling, or treatment of employees and customers.
But trying to encourage employees to use legacy systems or ask them to share through
email is too manual. Doing this type of work repeatedly is very hard, and requires a
significant amount of human capital, which could be one of the reasons why many
enterprises haven’t tried employee advocacy yet.
Employee advocacy addresses challenges that are at the core of your business strategy.
Communication is one of the top contributors to workplace experience and for improving
employee engagement.
There are solutions that help bridge the internal and external communication gap for
large enterprises. A good solution would provide employees with a centralized content
library and a millennial experience.
The first step is to address
communication challenges and
improve workflows. Having a
solution that provides the right
corporate content and message
to employees, in a social, mobile,
and visual way is imperative.
Employees need to be able to
access corporate content when
they need it, not forced on them
through email blasts.
The second step is for that solution to show and suggest what messages are reserved for
internal purposes, and what is encouraged to be shared externally. This experience needs
to be seamless, and will ensure compliance.
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As a leading enterprise, you don’t want to be missing out. A true employee advocacy
solution creates one central location for employees to stay informed and engaged with
company initiatives.
Isn’t that something you’d be interested in?
Learn how PostBeyond can help modernize
communications at your enterprise by
requesting a demo.
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