Employee advocacy can help businesses attract and retain people, drive revenue and cut costs, so what’s it all about? Paris Callan explains.

Employee advocacy is one of the most authentically impactful tools a business can have at its disposal. Endorsement from the people working for you is a raw representation of your company’s culture and what can happen when your mission and values permeate every aspect of how your business operates.

When your people openly support and champion your business, they are acting as your advocate. A healthy company culture, executed with care and consistency, is what fuels employee advocacy.

This advocacy is borne of the pride people have in their job, materialising in how comfortable they are sharing this with others. The potential value-add here for employers lies mainly in two areas: faster, more cost-effective hiring, and better employee retention.

Faster, more cost-effective hiring

Collectively, employees have an average reach ten times greater than any social media following a company might have.

When an employee shares company news, events or announcements with their network, not only is the information likely to spread ten times farther, but prospective hires who know and trust this employee are also more likely to take notice.

So, how do you go about turning your employees into advocates for your business? Building a brand people want to be a part of is one of the best ways to boost organic employee support.

According to US software provider Jobvite, employee referrals account for 40 percent of all hires, even though they make up less than a tenth of all applicants. From a time-to-hire perspective, a the standard recruitment process takes 39 days from posting to hiring compared with a 29-day average for a referred candidate.

The Great Resignation

Cracking the code on how to keep a company's most powerful asset – its people – has gone from important to imperative amid the “great resignation.”

The Microsoft 2021 Work Trend Index released last July found that 41 percent of the global workforce was likely to consider leaving their employer within 12 months.

For employers, resignations can cause disruption, loss of productivity and additional costs associated with finding and hiring replacements.

Against the backdrop of the “great resignation,” employee retention matters now more than ever. This is where employee advocacy can lend a hand.

Employee advocacy: where to start

Much like reputation, employee advocacy is built over time. While the key components needed to inspire this advocacy do not generally bear immediate results, the long-term impact can be powerful.

Employee advocacy results from an organisation living up to its values. It is the outcome of a business establishing a fair, inclusive and diverse workplace, and fostering a positive culture that inspires productivity and champions transparency.

By delivering on these elements, businesses can inspire their workforce organically to become genuine advocates. This, in turn, can build a brand prospective hires want to be a part of, and customers want to support.

Handled correctly, employee advocacy can also help organisations to become more operationally efficient. There is, however, no one-size-fits-all approach.

It is paramount that the intent behind any employee advocacy drive be made clear to all involved, and that it is fully aligned with a strong set of values embedded in an authentic company culture.

Paris Callan is a Creative Strategist at The Pudding.