How to improve employee advocacy

Employee advocacy represents one of the most authentic forms of brand promotion available. At its core, it's about creating conditions where your workforce naturally becomes your most credible marketing channel. They’ll share positive experiences, recommend your organisation, and defend your reputation in professional networks.

Advocacy can be roughly split into 3 types, covering current and former employees:

1. Current employee advocacy constitutes your present team members who actively share content, recommend your organisation as an employer, or speak positively about your company culture and values. This includes both formal advocacy programmes and organic word-of-mouth promotion.
2. Alumni advocacy groups are formed of former employees who maintain positive relationships. Their perspective is unique as they've experienced your company culture, values, and organisational strengths. Importantly, they no longer have a vested interest in your company, so their insight comes from a genuine opinion.
3. Passive advocacy occurs through platforms like Glassdoor and LinkedIn and can have an impact on the brand. Positive reviews can influence candidates to choose your organisation, whereas negative reviews can highlight where your need to make improvements.

Understanding these different advocacy types allows organisations to develop targeted strategies that address each group's unique motivations and communication preferences.

Advocacy can occur organically, which emerges naturally when employees feel genuinely positive about their workplace experience. Organic advocacy can be nurtured through creating genuinely positive employee experiences. Structured advocacy programmes are more formal initiatives where organisations actively encourage and sometimes incentivise advocacy activities. These might include employee referral schemes, social media sharing programmes, or formal ambassador roles.

Employee advocacy and the lasting relationship you build through offboarding can sometimes see people come back to the organisation. These people are referred to as boomerang employees, and you can read more about how to create a boomerang culture and gain unique value through their return in our blog, ‘What are boomerang employees?’

Before implementing specific advocacy programmes, organisations should establish the foundational elements that make advocacy feel natural and authentic. Without these fundamentals, even the most sophisticated advocacy initiatives will struggle to gain traction.

Culture as a driver of advocacy

Culture shapes whether employees naturally want to advocate for your organisation. In environments where values are championed and where people feel proud of their work, advocacy emerges organically.

Consider how your culture manifests in daily interactions. Do leaders demonstrate the values they promote? Are mistakes treated as learning opportunities rather than failures? Does your environment encourage innovation and calculated risk-taking? These cultural elements directly influence whether employees feel comfortable representing your brand externally. An effective way to demonstrate a culture focused on growth is through your performance management where a continuous feedback culture encourages employees to innovate and grow.

Leadership behaviours

Leadership visibility and accessibility significantly impact advocacy levels. When senior leaders actively engage with employees, share transparent communications about company direction, and demonstrate genuine care for workforce wellbeing, they create conditions where advocacy feels natural.

Effective leaders for advocacy programmes typically exhibit consistent communication styles, acknowledge both successes and challenges openly, and create multiple touchpoints for employee interaction.

Employee experience optimisation

The employee lifecycle and journey provides multiple opportunities to build advocacy. Each touchpoint represents a chance to reinforce positive perceptions or address concerns before they become lasting negative impressions.

Organisations that excel at employee advocacy typically invest in comprehensive onboarding experiences, provide clear career progression pathways, offer meaningful professional development opportunities, and maintain consistent communication throughout the employee lifecycle. In short, these organisations allow employees to Do The Best Work of Their Lives.

Current employees represent your most immediate and scalable advocacy opportunity. They have knowledge of your organisation's strengths, understand your culture, and maintain active professional networks that extend your reach significantly.

However, transforming current employees into effective brand ambassadors requires strategic planning rather than simply encouraging social media sharing.

Developing formal advocacy programmes

Structured employee advocacy programmes provide frameworks for consistent, authentic promotion. These programmes typically include social media guidelines, content libraries that employees can personalise, and recognition systems that celebrate advocacy contributions. When developing formal programmes, consider your employees' natural communication preferences.

Creating shareable content and resources

Employees need accessible, high-quality content that they can authentically share with their professional networks. This might include industry insights, company achievement announcements, thought leadership pieces, or behind-the-scenes content that places people at the forefront of your organisation.

The key is ensuring content feels valuable to both the employee sharing it and their network receiving it. Generic corporate announcements rarely generate engagement, whilst industry analysis or professional development insights often resonate strongly.

Referral programmes that drive advocacy

Employee referral schemes represent one of the most measurable forms of advocacy. When employees recommend your organisation to their professional contacts, they're essentially staking their personal reputation on your employer brand. Successful referral programmes typically offer meaningful incentives. This can mean financial rewards for successful placements, recognition programmes, or exclusive access to professional development opportunities.

When employees feel genuinely valued and recognised for their contributions, they naturally become more invested in your organisation's success. This investment translates into authentic advocacy that extends far beyond the workplace, creating a powerful ripple effect that could significantly enhance your employer brand.

Building advocacy through benefits

Your benefits package serves as more than just compensation – it's a powerful tool for demonstrating your organisation's values and commitment to employee wellbeing. Consider how flexible working arrangements, professional development opportunities, or wellness programmes create stories that employees want to share. Rather than offering generic perks, organisations that allow employees to choose benefits that align with their individual circumstances could see higher levels of voluntary advocacy. Check out how Employee Benefits and Rewards can help you tailor benefits and encourage engagement.

Recognition programmes that drive advocacy

Effective recognition programmes go beyond simple 'employee of the month' schemes. They create multiple touchpoints throughout the employee journey where achievements are celebrated, and contributions are acknowledged in meaningful ways. For low cost recognition ideas that can help you create multiple touchpoints, read our blog, ‘What are employee recognition schemes?’.
 
The most effective employee advocacy emerges from authentic workplace experiences rather than manufactured campaigns. When benefits and recognition programmes genuinely improve employees' working lives, the resulting advocacy feels natural and credible to external audiences. 

When it comes to employee advocacy, departing staff represent one of the most underutilised opportunities as they take valuable knowledge, relationships, and most importantly, lasting impressions of your company. Yet many organisations view departing employees as lost opportunities rather than potential brand ambassadors. The reality is that ex-employees could become some of your most credible advocates.

How to offboard an employee effectively

Creating employee advocacy and brand ambassadors will hinge on several factors, including your company culture, values, benefits, management, and more. However, effective offboarding can also be extremely important. Without proper offboarding, you may let that good work and grace go to waste as you don’t establish a lasting relationship programme. We’ve written a detailed blog about ‘The offboarding process in HR’ which will provide extra details, however, the steps in offboarding that can help you promote employee advocacy include:

• Create a structured offboarding timeline with specific touchpoints 
• Conduct meaningful exit interviews focused on experience highlights, not just problems; check out our blog on ‘15 exit interview questions for successful offboarding - with free template’ to help you put a structured process in place and gain honest feedback that can help you improve your exit procedures
• Provide personalised farewell packages including company swag, LinkedIn recommendations, and reference letters 
• Offer transition support: career coaching, networking introductions, or skill certifications 
• Establish clear communication protocols for staying connected post-departure 
• Document positive contributions and achievements to reference in future recommendations 
• Create alumni onboarding packets explaining how to stay connected and engaged

To leverage corporate alumni networks effectively, you’ll need to invest both resources and time. Much like your current employees, former employees that can be brand ambassadors and advocates will require value from the enterprise. Success with a corporaten alumni network strategy hinges on building long-term relationships rather than using it as a short-term recruitment tactic.

Creating digital communities

The foundation of alumni advocacy lies in providing meaningful ways for former employees to stay connected. Modern technology offers several robust platforms for building these communities.

Salesforce Communities provides comprehensive functionality for organisations already using Salesforce systems, allowing seamless integration with existing CRM data. This can be particularly valuable for tracking engagement and personalising communications based on former employees' roles, departments, or tenure.

LinkedIn Groups offer the advantage of existing within a platform where professional networking naturally occurs. Alumni are already active on LinkedIn, making participation feel less burdensome.

Specialised alumni platforms like Hivebrite are purpose-built for community management, offering features like event management, job boards, and advanced networking capabilities.

Developing regular touchpoints

A successful alumni network relies on consistent touchpoints that don’t feel overbearing. Monthly newsletters work well when they balance company updates with content that serves alumni's professional interests. Consider including industry insights, career development resources, or spotlights on alumni achievements alongside company news. The key is ensuring recipients gain value beyond mere corporate updates.

Quarterly virtual events can give you opportunities to engage more deeply and focus on industry trends or networking opportunities. Annual reunions can then provide opportunities for reconnection and professional networking, whilst keeping your organisation at the forefront of former employee’s minds.

Referral programmes that work and provide real value

Successful programmes typically offer meaningful incentives. This can be in the form of financial rewards for successful placements, but also recognition, exclusive access, or professional development opportunities.

Alumni advocacy can flourish when former employees continue to receive tangible value from their previous employment relationship. This might include continued access to learning platforms, particularly if you use comprehensive systems like LinkedIn Learning or internal university programmes.

Industry event access can be valuable, especially for alumni working in related fields. This might involve invitations to conferences, exclusive briefings on industry developments, or access to expert speakers.

Anything that requires investment of either resources or time in an organisation will need to demonstrate some form of success and ROI. Employee advocacy programmes can demonstrate that ROI in several ways:

• Improved Glassdoor ratings and improvements – For those not actively engaged in alumni and employee advocacy programmes, an improvement in unbiased reviews can signal that your offboarding process is leaving a positive impression.
• LinkedIn engagement metrics – Whether through dedicated corporate alumni networks or general engagement metrics, increased engagement can signal an improvement in brand perception.
• Alumni network programme engagement – Higher engagement can be influenced by the value your programmes offer.
• Boomerang hiring rates – Brand strength and identity, employee advocacy programme engagement, and your overall employee value proposition can see employees returning to your organisation.
• External referrals for new hires – Referral schemes extending to former employees can indicate how positive an impression your organisation leaves.

Additional metrics to consider include social media reach and engagement from employee-shared content, brand mention sentiment analysis, and talent acquisition cost reductions attributed to referral programmes.

Many of these returns can have a direct impact on company revenue and bottom line. Boomerang employees, for example, can be easy to onboard and get back up to speed as they understand company values and systems.

Understanding how different organisations approach employee advocacy can provide valuable insights for developing your own programmes. These examples demonstrate various strategies across different industries and company sizes.

Microsoft's employee advocacy programme

Microsoft's approach combines structured social media guidelines with comprehensive content libraries that employees can personalise. Their programme includes regular training sessions on professional networking, industry thought leadership development, and recognition systems that celebrate employees who contribute to brand visibility.

Salesforce's Trailblazer Community

Salesforce has created one of the most successful employee advocacy ecosystems through their Trailblazer Community. Current employees actively participate alongside customers and partners, sharing knowledge, celebrating achievements, and demonstrating the company's values through authentic engagement.

Unilever's employee advocacy approach

Unilever's programme emphasises purpose-driven advocacy, encouraging employees to share content around sustainability, social impact, and corporate responsibility. This approach aligns with their broader business strategy whilst giving employees meaningful content to share.

McKinsey & Company

McKinsey's alumni network spans 34,000 former employees across 15,000 organisations in 120 countries, representing one of the most influential professional networks globally. Their Alumni Center provides sophisticated digital functionality where former employees can search for alumni and current firm members whilst accessing job postings and networking capabilities.

What makes McKinsey's approach particularly noteworthy is their strategic perspective. Former employees may become future clients, which justifies significant ongoing investment in alumni engagement. The programme demonstrates mutual benefit: alumni gain access to an elite professional network that opens career doors, whilst McKinsey benefits from referrals, business development opportunities, and enhanced reputation through alumni achievements.

Marks & Spencer Family

The M&S Alumni network, known as the M&S Family, operates on the principle that working at M&S brings you into a community for life. This approach leverages the retailer's consumer-facing brand strength and the emotional connection many people have with M&S. The "family" concept welcomes alumni regardless of role level or departure circumstances. This is particularly valuable in retail where staff turnover is typically higher than professional services. 

The programme's success lies in recognising that retail experience creates shared understanding of customer service excellence, operational challenges, and brand values that remain valuable throughout alumni careers.

An effective employee advocacy programme requires data management, personalised communication and engagement strategies that cover the entire employee lifecycle. Throughout the Do The Best Work of Your Life series, we’ve discussed how to attract the best candidates and how to engage them throughout the lifecycle, with templates like the ‘Employee Engagement Survey’, helping you understand what your people really need to stay motivated, loyal, and productive. These engagement strategies can fall under one umbrella of a modern HR system.

HR systems like PeopleXD Evo provide the technological foundation to support these complex requirements. With AI embedded throughout, you can get instant answers to HR queries, delegate routine tasks, and use generative AI to create content and guide HR best practice. For employee advocacy programmes, this capability proves invaluable for generating personalised communications, creating tailored engagement messages, and ensuring consistent messaging that reflects your organisation's values across all touchpoints.

By leveraging technology to streamline advocacy programme management, organisations can focus on building authentic relationships and creating genuine value for both current and former employees - the foundation of all successful employee advocacy initiatives.