Your Guide to a Best-in-Class Employee Advocacy Program

What is employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy is the active promotion of your organization's brand, values, products, and culture by your workforce. This can be through word of mouth and, increasingly, across social and digital networks.

In the simplest terms, employee advocacy transforms every team member – from HQ to frontline, C-Suite to shop floor – into a powerful brand ambassador. This amplifies your business’s voice, attracts top talent, and drives business outcomes.

How is employee advocacy different to brand advocacy?

While both employee advocacy and brand advocacy aim to build trust, amplify messages, and grow brand visibility, they differ in terms of who delivers the message and the type of impact they create.

Brand advocacy typically involves external parties such as customers or industry influencers. These advocates are valuable because they offer social proof and can reach new audiences outside your immediate network. However, their involvement is often transactional or campaign-driven, and the connection to your company may not run deep.

Employee advocacy, on the other hand, recognizes that your most powerful ambassadors already sit within your organization. These are the people who understand your culture, values, products, and purpose firsthand.

This gives it a level of authenticity that can be invaluable.

Why is employee advocacy important?

In the digital era, employees have one of the most important roles to play in how your brand is perceived. For example, LinkedIn stats show that 75% of jobseekers consider an organization’s employer brand before they even apply for a job. One of the most prominent measures of that brand is how well people who already work there are advocating for it. Plus, with workforce trends shifting toward purpose-driven cultures and flatter organizational structures, giving employees a voice is more than a PR strategy – it’s a business imperative.

In large and complex enterprises, leadership teams often face unique communication challenges – spanning geographies, languages, and organizational silos. Employee advocacy not only helps overcome these barriers but also unlocks powerful benefits that support business growth and culture. Here are a few benefits of employee advocacy:

1. Deeper authenticity

In an age of increasing skepticism toward branded messaging, authenticity is critical. While traditional marketing and PR campaigns serve a purpose, they might sometimes feel scripted or overly polished. Messages shared organically by employees, whether about a new initiative, a workplace milestone, or personal pride in the company’s mission, are perceived as significantly more credible by external audiences. 

When employees advocate for your brand, they humanize it. Their voices reflect real people, experience, and insights. This fosters trust with the outside world – not just potential candidates, but also customers. This kind of authenticity is difficult to replicate through paid or corporate channels alone.

2. Faster communication at scale

Enterprises can sometimes struggle with the speed and breadth of internal and external communication. Employee advocacy acts as a force multiplier. When staff members share company updates, product launches, or thought leadership on their own platforms, those messages spread quickly across a wide array of networks – including those the brand itself may not have access to.

This dramatically expands reach, accelerates information flow, and ensures that critical updates travel faster and further. In effect, it makes communication more agile – especially important when operating across multiple time zones and markets.

3. Enhanced talent attraction

In competitive talent markets, your employees are often your most persuasive recruiters. When they share positive stories about their work, team culture, or career growth, it paints a relatable and authentic picture of life inside the organization. These personal insights resonate more with candidates than polished employer branding materials alone.

By turning employees into advocates, you amplify your visibility among top-tier talent – especially passive candidates who might not be actively job hunting but are influenced by peers they trust. This helps attract individuals aligned to your values who are more likely to thrive within your culture.

4. Resilience during times of change

Whether it's a merger, leadership transition, digital transformation, or a public relations challenge, large organizations inevitably go through periods of change. This has been ramped up in a modern world marked by things like political uncertainty and supply chain challenges.

In these moments, trust and alignment are essential. Employees who are well-informed and empowered to share accurate, transparent messages can help stabilize morale and maintain confidence.

When your people become champions of change – communicating not just what is happening but why – it reduces resistance and helps unify teams.

5. Increased employee engagement

Employee advocacy isn’t just about external messaging – it’s also a strong internal engagement tool. When employees are trusted to speak on behalf of the organization, it creates a sense of ownership, pride, and inclusion. They feel heard, valued, and more connected to the company’s mission and impact. This empowerment can lead to higher job satisfaction and retention.

The dual benefits of having employee advocates

Employee advocacy is a win-win proposition, supporting both organizational and individual goals. Here are some of the key benefits:

Organizational Impact

• Increased brand awareness and reach
• Improved trust and credibility with stakeholders
• Reduced paid marketing and recruitment costs
• Greater control over core brand messaging
• Better ability to target niche or local markets

Employee Value

• Professional development and personal branding
• Recognition and a sense of belonging
• Expanded professional networks and an improvement in personal brand
• Deeper connection to the company mission
• New skills in digital and social engagement Improved employee engagement  

Building an effective employee advocacy program: Best practice tips

The organizations who see the best results are the ones who plan a formal employee advocacy program. While this might seem counter-intuitive when you’re trying to make things authentic, it helps to keep things consistent, and to keep your people aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.

Here are three key elements of a strong employee advocacy program.

Create a positive and transparent culture

Programs succeed when built on a foundation of trust and pride in the brand. Foster an environment where employees genuinely want to share company successes – and feel equipped to do so. This includes:

• Promoting open communication and transparency from leadership
• Recognizing employee contributions and feedback
• Reinforcing the company values and mission

Set clear goals and KPIs

Establish measurable objectives for your employee advocacy program. These could include:

• Increasing brand awareness by X% over 12 months
• Generating qualified sales leads via employee networks
• Boosting engagement on strategic topics (such as ESG or innovation)
• Improving recruitment metrics

Track metrics such as participation rates, post frequency, click-throughs, and leads generated.

Identify and support advocacy leaders

Not all advocates are C-suite executives. Look for passionate employees who are skilled communicators and naturally influential. Train them on digital best practices and compliance, and remove friction by making it easy for them provide them with handy templates that they can use.

It’s also worth having some recognition or incentives for people who go out of their way to champion your brand. You could even profile top advocates in newsletters and intranet features.

The role of digital workplaces in enabling employee advocacy

Modern digital workplaces – also known as intranets or employee experience platforms (EXPs) increase the speed, scale, and effectiveness of employee advocacy. At a time when digital noise can overwhelm people, a modern platform can be an enabler for your organization.

Here are some of the things it can help you achieve:

• Unite siloed teams across geographies and functions, providing a single source of truth for communications, resources, and announcements.
• Empower employees by integrating shareable assets – such as social templates – into the daily workflow, so they’re always informed and equipped.
• Accelerate feedback loops by providing spaces for real-time sharing, collaboration, and recognition.
• Provide in-depth analytics to track engagement, identify top performers, and inform future strategy.
• Support mobile and frontline workers with accessible, intuitive interfaces, keeping everyone connected wherever they work.

HR and Internal Communications leaders that we work with often note that a unified digital platform helps embed advocacy at every level of the company. Meanwhile, the key for IT leaders tends to be integration – your advocacy tools must work seamlessly with existing ecosystems. This helps with adoption, efficiency, and ROI.

Real-world employee advocacy examples

The world’s top-performing companies are harnessing employee advocacy to drive results. Here are some examples which you might take inspiration from.

Your framework for an employee advocacy program

Building a successful employee advocacy program in a large enterprise requires more than enthusiasm – it needs structure, strategic alignment, and sustained engagement. Here’s a step-by-step framework to help leaders drive advocacy at scale:

1. Executive alignment

Start at the top. Securing C-suite sponsorship is essential – not just for budget, but for cultural endorsement. When senior leaders actively participate in advocacy (such as sharing company updates on LinkedIn or recognizing employee contributions), it signals to the entire organization that advocacy isn’t just a marketing tactic – it’s a boardroom business priority.

2. Enable with technology

Choose a platform that removes friction and empowers participation. A modern employee experience platform can streamline sharing to social networks, and ensure data privacy and compliance.

Look for solutions that:

• Integrate with existing tools (e.g. Teams, Slack)
• Offer analytics and dashboards
• Allow personalization based on role, region, or interest

3. Segment and support

Speaking of personalization, it’s good practice to tailor programs for different employee groups with relevant training and content. For example:

• Sales teams may benefit from content that supports social selling
• Product teams might highlight innovation and engineering culture
• HR and talent acquisition can share employer branding and DE&I stories

Many Unily customers use the platform’s Journeys to provide role-specific onboarding and content to meet employees where they are.

4. Incentivize and recognize

Reward active advocates through recognition in internal comms, tangible incentives, and even gamification. Most importantly, don’t just celebrate volume – but impact. Highlight stories where employee posts led to customer engagement, media mentions, or recruitment success.

5. Monitor and measure

Establish governance for compliance, data security, and appropriate use. Measure success against well-defined KPIs, then iterate for continual improvement.

An enterprise-scale program must be governed carefully to ensure compliance, brand consistency, and data security. Define clear policies around:

• What can and cannot be shared
• Tone of voice and branding guidelines
• Approval workflows (where necessary)

Then establish KPIs to measure success. These might include engagement rates, web traffic, or talent acquisition metrics. Regularly analyze what’s working and iterate on your employee advocacy program as required.

Futureproof your enterprise with employee advocacy

The business landscape is evolving fast. To stay relevant and deliver on key strategic goals, enterprises must empower their greatest asset – their employees.

Employee advocacy isn’t simply a one-off campaign tool. It’s a key building block for enterprises that want to stay agile and ahead of the competition in a world where standing still sees you move backwards.

With over 20 years’ leadership in enabling digital workplaces, Unily is proud to partner with some of the world’s most iconic brands. These are organizations that don’t just talk about employee experience – they live it. By moving fast and knowing exactly who their most powerful advocates are, they’re able to supercharge growth.

Ready to join them? Contact Unily today to discuss how our award-winning platform powers the world’s best employee advocacy programs and delivers on your boldest business goals.

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