It’s Time to Get Real with Employee Advocacy

By Gary Zurnamer

Ogilvy just published its guide to 2024 Influencer Trends You Should Care About. Number one on that list? Employee advocacy: “creating company-wide programs to craft employee-driven content, with the most persuasive champions being used in larger brand marketing campaigns.”

Employee advocacy is having a breakout moment, and it’s clear why. Across nearly every industry, companies are engaged in fierce competition for candidates at every level. Employee advocacy is shaping up as a critical tactic to enhance your employer brand and get ahead of the competition in the market. 

But while we understand the “why” behind the importance of employee advocacy, there’s a lot less clarity on the “how.”

The problem with traditional, one-size-fits-all employer branding

The traditional playbook for employee advocacy and employer branding needs a rethink. Corporate employer brand content is frequently overproduced with tightly controlled messaging — think slick, shiny videos that don’t tell the viewer what it’s actually like to work there.

Check out this spot from McDonald’s. A young man is working as a manager in a fast-paced restaurant. There are smiling faces, flashy camera work and the tagline “special people serving special moments.”  

Or maybe it’s something like this video from KPMG, where a professional voiceover artist (i.e. paid talent) reads out the company’s values while a perfectly diverse, never-not-smiling collection of employees moves through an ideal day of work and tasks.

But here’s the problem: neither of these tell the viewer anything real about what it’s like to work there. What makes either place unique? Are my colleagues really happy 24/7? Surely it’s not actually like this? 

James Ellis , founder of Employer Brand Labs, points out what is often the source of the disconnect in employer branding content.  “A lot of companies are under the mistaken impression that the CEO determines what the employer brand is… but that's not how employer brands work,” says Ellis. “Employer brands are perceptions of individuals about what it must be like to work there, which means the brand doesn't live in the C suite — it lives in everybody else's head.”

This is the old world of employer brand and advocacy: a one-size-fits-all approach where you invest all of your resources into a single, perfectly polished piece of content to make your “brand” shine. 

But we don’t live in that kind of world anymore, particularly as consumer apps have permanently changed our expectations on how we communicate with each other. We’re in the age of user-generated content (UGC), short-form video, and messaging targeted to our own unique values and interests.

The next generation of talent are inspired and persuaded by real people — those that can speak clearly and legitimately to our needs and interests. A one-size-fits-all video doesn’t say something to everyone — it actually says nothing at all.

The age of authenticity

So what does a potential candidate want to know from a company before they go through the hiring process? Above all, they just want to hear what their experience at work will truly be like. When real humans are contemplating one of the biggest decisions in their life — where they will work and spend the majority of their waking hours — it does more harm than good to hammer home corporate values, mission statements and overly-curated content. 

“Authenticity matters for today's employer brands because jobseekers aren’t just looking to work anywhere,” observes Alex Her , head of global employer brand at GoDaddy. “They can pick and choose pretty much wherever they want to be, whether it be hybrid or remote. They want to find a place that truly aligns with their values and what they believe in, and offer them the opportunity to grow.”

Good employer branding content makes your people the stars, letting candidates hear directly from their potential peers, coworkers, and direct managers. For employee advocacy content to work in 2024, it has to be authentic and real. Just let your own team tell your story.

Ellis agrees that centering real employees can make a difference, particularly in communicating more directly with individual candidates. “Candidates want localized data points and granular data points,” he says. “They don’t want to know what it's like to work there, but what it’s like to work there from a junior data scientist or from a manager who’s been there for two years. That’s where getting this granular information creates an authentic sense of understanding what it’s like to work there.”

Letting go of the reins… slightly

One of the most common concerns we hear from customers at Vouch is the unpredictability of user-generated content and what MAY happen when you empower your employees to share their stories and experiences. Our advice? You don’t need to go from control to chaos, but you will need to give them some breathing room. 

Instead of scripts and tightly controlled narratives, you can provide guidance, structure and prompts for your team to respond to. Set time limits, get creative with questions, lead the way with authenticity and encourage a diverse range of storytelling. Encourage your team to tell their personal stories with easy-to-use technology and guidance. It’s time to loosen the reins, just a little. You might just be surprised with what comes back.