How Employee Engagement Drives Employee Advocacy

Speaking about how his sailors came to be such a tight unit, Mike Abrashoff former Commander of the USS Benfold, said: “It all came down to employee engagement. It all came down to recognition. It all came down to leadership, which led to every sailor feeling ownership and accountability for the results. You can ask a team to accomplish a mission but you can’t order excellence.” Similar to these sailors at war, having engaged employees in your company is key to driving employee advocacy and achieving excellence in your workforce. We at SOCXO have experienced this too, so here are a few ways how we have seen this made possible.

Engagement creates an atmosphere of loyalty and builds trust

Employee Engagement Edition by Ipsos Reid and Canadian Management Centre says that “an engaged employee is fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Engaged employees are committed, passionate and inspired – and they inspire others by example.” Here the word committed denotes loyalty to the company and its values and efforts. Creating an environment where your employees feel committed is a key to them being the best advocates for your brand, as only if employees really enjoy working for a company will they be willing to advocate for it.

Further, employees will only really feel confident in advocating your brand if they trust in it. For an employee, that trust is built on the workplace experiences that they have and the quality of life they get from working for this brand. Once they are engaged and happy, it will naturally drive them to advertise your brand to their social circles, telling everyone how great a place it is to work there and how fantastic the offered products and services are. They’ll have no qualms whatsoever in sharing content about your brand.

How do you achieve this level of engagement?

Beyond workplace culture, another great way to keep employees engaged is through giving them key, relevant information in an easy-to-read and quick way. Rather than overload them with non-relevant meaningless information, align their goals and interests with yours, and then cater for it. Once they have information that is valuable to them, they’ll be more likely to share such content with their peers and personal connections. Why? Because in addition to advocating for you, they’ll also view it as an opportunity to build their personal brand and share this value with others. The benefits are that your content will have a much larger reach, and it will be a lot more trusted because it’s coming from somebody who they personally know.

A key part of having your employees engaged is for them to have a sense of pride of working for your company. This can be done by getting employees more involved in higher level decisions and provide input on which direction the business should grow. When such opinions are seriously considered and acted upon, it will give employees a sense of pride that they have had a part in furthering the company’s growth. This will drive them to talk about this with others, thereby giving your brand a very powerful presence in their circles.

Yes, your employees can really boost your brands reputation by actively advocating for you. But first, get them engaged. Team SOCXO can help you do this – Get in touch with us to drive a successful employee advocacy program for your business.