In a modern world where individuals value authenticity, transparency, and meaningful connections, encouraging employee advocacy is a strategic success driver for organizations.
Some companies implement employee engagement platforms to foster activities by employees that actively promote and champion a company's brand, values, products, and services—for example, employees resharing company posts on their social media handles and raising awareness.
As an organization, encouraging employee advocacy unfolds several benefits:
- Fosters greater trust and credibility among consumers and potential recruits.
- It makes the brand more relatable with a humanized approach.
- Expand your company's reach beyond its official marketing channels via employee networks
- Attracts a broader talent pool by enhancing reputation
- Fosters connection among employees, increases satisfaction, and reduces attrition.
- Mitigates damage during crises better with employees acting as a soft-power buffer
In short, it's a winning strategy that you must consider leveraging. Let's examine critical industry trends and employee advocacy stats validating these benefits.
19 employee advocacy statistics you must know in 2024 and beyond
The employee advocacy statistics we've gathered in this blog can be split according to four main trends:
- Social media and mobile advocacy are on the rise
- Employee-shared content resonates with audiences more than branded content
- Employee advocacy helps with new recruitment and employee retention
- Employee advocacy is excellent for communications
Trend 1: Social media and mobile advocacy are on the rise
There is a growing tendency for employees to use social media platforms on their mobile devices, with employee-generated content gaining currency among their followers.
- 90% of 18 to 29-year-olds, 82% of 30 to 49-year-olds, and 69% of 50 to 65-year-olds are active on social media today.
- 50% of employees are willing to share company-related content on their socials regularly, while 30% admit they already have.
- Out of these, younger employees (millennials and Gen Z) are comparatively more willing to share the company content on their socials.
In short, social media is a good starting point for setting employee advocacy in action.
Trend 2: Employee-shared content resonates with audiences more than branded content
- 76% of people trust the content that individuals share instead of companies.
- Employee-generated has a higher click-through rate on social media than branded content.
- It receives eight times more engagement than branded content (sometimes reshared 24 times more than branded content).
- 30% of LinkedIn engagement comes from employee-generated content.
- 83% of Americans feel more confident about purchasing a product or service if a friend or family member recommends it than if it is a marketing pitch.
- 52% of consumers believe employees' versions are better than the company or the brand.
- 59% of B2B decision-makers believe a company's thought leadership is more reliable than its branded content.
- 79% of companies encouraging employee advocacy programs have seen results like enhanced online visibility, while 65% have noted improved brand recognition.
Trend 3: Employee advocacy helps with new recruitment and employee retention
The positive reception of employee advocacy is broader than that of customers. People looking for jobs are positively influenced by it too.
Employee advocacy increases job awareness and creates a positive company impression. Here are some statistics to back this up:
- 79% of job seekers use social media while looking for new jobs.
- 30% of participants in a survey agreed that job postings on social media by their friends or families were the most helpful type of content.
- Referral hiring is inexpensive for companies. It sometimes costs nothing.
- 47% of referrals have a higher job satisfaction rate and remain in companies longer.
- 69% of applicants refuse job offers if the company has a bad reputation among employees, while 78% of job applicants agree that employee ratings and reviews are essential. Employee advocacy has a role to play here.
- Employee advocacy programs attract 58% more top talent and enhance retention rates by 20%.
Trend 4. Employee advocacy is excellent for communications
Employee advocacy also enhances communication both inside and outside organizations. Here are some numbers to prove:
- Using social media internally can help employees search for information about company policies quickly, reducing time spent searching by 35%.
- 87.2% in a formal employee advocacy program believed it helped expand their professional network. However, this necessitates policy changes that underscore the importance of confidentiality and non-disclosure.
Moving forward, we expect more organizations to leverage employee advocacy.
With that, some employee trends likely to take center stage include:
- Influencer collaboration is likely to increase in the future. With this, employees could jointly create and share content with external influencers to amplify pro-organizational messages.
- A growing investment in training and consolidating employee internal and external communication guidelines. This will avoid conflicts of interest and uphold NDAs and service level agreements (SLAs).
- An increased usage of employee communication tools to encourage and simplify monitoring of employee advocacy activity.
Finally, let’s move on to how to measure employee advocacy success.
Here are some employee advocacy metrics to track
- Active participation rate - The percentage of employees actively sharing brand-related content on their socials.
- Top contributors - Individuals sharing the most content and receiving the most engagement.
- Website traffic - This quantum of traffic generated from employee advocacy.
- Job applications - The number of people who apply for jobs in your company in response to employee advocacy posts.
- Lead volume - The number of leads generated by employee advocacy campaigns
- Sales conversion rate - The percentage of people who convert after reading employee advocacy posts
Bottom Line: Start with employee advocacy campaigns if you haven't
Employee advocacy can be a successful enabler at various levels. Implementing it is a great idea. However, you shouldn't force it; you should only encourage it with no negative consequences for non-participants.
Having said that, a clear plan is essential to get results. This must include handpicking appropriate employees to participate and guidance on key messages to echo consistently. In addition, tracking and rewarding those who perform can keep the momentum alive. Using specialized employee engagement tools can help you streamline and simplify communication, management, and tracking.