What is employee advocacy on social media and why it is important for the banking sector?

By: Joe Ghantous

We all know that a company’s employees are its most valuable asset and a happy and productive workforce leads to growth, retention, and strong culture. But many organizations are not fully aware about the true potential of their teams.

In a world driven by digital and social, employee advocacy is essential.

• What is Employee Advocacy on Social Media?

Employee Advocacy is defined as the promotion of a company by employees who share their support for a company’s brand, product, or services on their social networks. The goal of employee advocacy is to inform, educate and engage the workforce allowing them to become brand ambassadors or “employee advocates.”

• Why Employee Advocacy is important to the Banking Sector?

Then the equation is easy; the more satisfied and engaged employees the more advocates. Many industries already adopted and is implementing this solution and some have a shy use of employee advocacy due to various constrictions. In this blog post I will be shedding the light on the importance of employee advocacy on social media mainly in the banking sector.

According to “Edelman Trust Barometer” 2018, financial service institutes are from the least companies trusted by their audiences (45% - check more details in the below graph) & on the contrary they are the most trusted companies by their employees (80%). These findings stresses on the importance of implementing employee advocacy in the financial industry.

In addition to the above reason, here’s why banks must adopt employee advocacy program:

1. Translate bank vision to action

Most of people consider banks evil and only focus about their greed and unclear actions to put them in debt. But what they miss is the real mission of banks and the benefits they present. Therefore having an army of advocates from employees will make it easier for them to promote and spread the word about their goodwill and mission.

2. Reinforce trust

84% of people trust recommendations from people they know, while only 15 % trust recommendations from brands. This result will be booming in the banking & financial sector due to the big number of employees & high level of trust these employees have.

3. Attracting new talents

Most organizations are making emphatic efforts to foster high workplace morale through employee perks, company outings, personal development initiatives, and more. But it’s difficult to promote these efforts from up-top without sounding self-congratulatory. Therefore by empowering employees to share experiences and impressions from their own perspectives this can communicate these benefits in a more relatable way and attracts more talents to join the company.

4. No one is seeing the banks’ content

Are you aware that nowadays the organic reach of brands’ accounts on social media platforms is around 1-2 %, and is still decreasing?

Well, now you are aware!

In order to make their messages reach more people, brands can either use paid online ads or employee advocacy programs. Various studies about employee advocacy programs have been proven to be a valuable & cost-effective asset to any marketing program especially that employees have 33 times higher organic reach & much higher credibility.

So, there is no clear reason for banks & financial service institutions to hold back from using & implementing employee advocacy in house.

Therefore, Right Service had initiated a complete employee advocacy solution including: The Know-How, The Supportive Material & The Platform, that can be implemented for all types of businesses - click here to check our solution.

I want to implement "Employee Advocacy on Social Media" program in-house - Help Me

Here below you can find the presentation slides that were shared during a breakfast briefing prepared by Right Service and presented by our founder Mr. Joe Ghantous targeting the Lebanese Banks under the title of: Employee Advocacy for the Banking Sector.