The value of employee advocacy programs

Employee advocacy is defined as the promotion of an organization by its staff members. In a recent study by Social Advocacy Agency Bambu with the Aberdeen Group revealed the essential role employee advocacy programs play in driving measurable results that boost business performance at large organizations.

Benefits of a strong employee advocacy program is in place

Customer referrals soar in organizations who have strong employee advocacy programs in place. In fact customer referrals soar to levels that are more than three times greater than organizations who do not have this program in place.

Sales teams enjoy significant gains in overall sales of their annual quota, amounting to 2.7 times that of all others.

Eleven times the improvement in annual customer services cost over other organizations.

What Best-in-class organizations have in common

What do organizations with successful employee advocacy programs have in common?

• 30% more likely to have the capability for employees to view and share job openings
• 75% more likely to have a formal security policy in place in order to protect employee-generated content
• 70% have the capability to set up role-based social communities within the organization
• 50% enable social amplification - the ability for employees to share content with their social networks

Don’t forget - it starts with employee engagement

I have focused on employee advocacy here, but you must have strong employee engagement first in order to proceed to advocacy.

If you’d like to read more about employee engagement, I recommend our guide written by IC expert Andy Blacknell. He has identified the three areas within an organization for IC to focus on for increasing engagement:

1. The employee’s relationship with their line manager
2. The line of sight for employees within the organization
3. Two-way communication channels for employees

If you’d like to know more about how to use these areas to drive engagement, I invite you download Andy’s guide here. Included in the guide are examples of engagement strategies employed by Sears, Pernod Ricard, Avery Dennison and Aviva.