Employees are considered the greatest asset of a company, whether small or large. They are the individuals who know companies’ brands more than anyone. By harnessing their potential, companies can tap into a rich source of brand advocacies and accomplish their organizational goals. A team of employees with a positive attitude is reported to better engage targeted customers. According to reports, around 68% of customers shift to another company as a direct response to poor employee attitude.
Therefore, it is essential for companies to have active employees. One way to ensure this is to implement employee activation programs wherein employees are honed to present their best marketing skills. Employee activation provides an elaborate framework to assess how employees feel about their jobs and responsibilities. Additionally, company policies should comprise innovative ways to motivate its staff so that they can become strong and thoughtful leaders in their industry.
This blog talks about employee activation and further delves into the benefits of employee activation programs. The idea is to demonstrate a few tangible tips to build an effective employee activation program.
What Is Employee Activation?
Employee activation is a program that usually larger companies implement to encourage their employees to brainstorm about content organically and authentically. The content can be about the topics in which they are interested.
In the business world, word-of-mouth marketing is considered one of the most effective marketing techniques to generate leads and boost sales. Employee activation takes this particular step further, increasing employee morale and encouraging them for share content with their social connections. This inevitably augments brand awareness and personalized brand outreach programs.
Employee activation makes a huge difference. According to research, the social networks of each employee in an in-office or virtual teams are 10 times larger than the social following of the entire company itself. Activating all employees to be brand ambassadors can help the company achieve the power of social selling nationally as well as internationally.
Companies are putting more focus on company culture as well. Visionary companies are seeing that the next step is to not limit themselves solely to building a more intensive relationship with customers through technology, but it’s time to re-examine internally. Empowering employees for creating and sharing content for marketing a company’s brand can prove to be more fruitful than other marketing tools.
What Are the Benefits of an Employee Activation program?
Employee activation program acts like training programs in which employees are encouraged to share brand-promoting content with their social networks. With active employees, a company will experience myriad positive effects as the work of employees is aligned with the company’s mission and purpose.
Taken further, not only does the company gain the benefit in the form of an increased customer base, but there are a lot of positives for active employees too. They share their insights, vision, and expertise which further results in their development supporting their careers in the long run. Here listed are some major benefits of an employee activation program that leads a company to success.
#1 Improved Reputation
Every company’s vision is to earn a good brand reputation in the market. Increased brand advocacy gained by sharing company content library by employees on their social networking platforms further improves the company’s reputation. As per a report, a company can achieve a 43% more favorable public image with brand advocacy.
#2 Easier to Attract Fine Talent
Potential recruits trust employees of the companies more than their top management. Employee activation programs enable employees to represent the company’s brand on different social media platforms. Now that employees are visible to the world as brand representatives, it becomes easier for companies to attract skilled and qualified talents.
#3 Increased Employee Retention
Employee activation program is just not about encouraging the employees to market the brand of a company but also about increasing employee satisfaction. Employees exemplifying higher satisfaction quotient lead to quick accommodations concerning company outcomes. Moreover, satisfied in-house or remote team are more likely to openly advocate for their company as an employer of choice, and are proven to be 80% more unlikely to leave the company.
#4 Boost Sales and Revenue
Customers find it easier to connect with active employees. And one of the primary company core values to implement an employee activation program is to develop a positive attitude among employees. With employees sharing positive and high-quality marketing content on their social media platforms, the sales leads of a company can be increased by around 58%. The more increase in the sales leads, the more a company can earn revenue.
#5 Better Brand Storytelling
To overcome barriers to success, companies are looking for innovative ways and high quality, genuine content to market their brands. As such, personalized content and putting a face to company products and services goes a long way in trust building. Therefore, encouraging employees to voice their opinions is the most efficient way to promote a brand.
How to Build an Employee Activation Program?
#1 Assess the Company’s Current Situation Honestly
The first and foremost step is to get anonymous employee feedback to know what they feel about their job and the company. This will help the company figure out employees’ engagement levels to make changes to improve employee relationships accordingly. This can further help companies achieve their strategic goals of increasing employee engagement as well.
#2 Formulate a Social Media Strategy and Plan
In this step, the management needs to take the company’s professional goals and objectives into consideration. This should ideally motivate them towards the best tactics for reaching targeted customers on preferred social media platforms. This includes a road map for identifying the content and key messages that can be used to promote the brand. Also, KPIs for monitoring the performance of marketing campaigns are determined.
#3 Consider Starting Small
Before implementing the employee activation program, consider selecting a small group of employees for the program. This will allow a company to get the employee appreciation idea and identify the problems that need to be addressed before implementation of the program in all departments of the company.
#4 Educate Employees on the Company’s Social Media Guidelines and Best Practices
Usually, top management teams find it difficult to ask their employees to promote the company’s brand on social media platforms. Employees must be conditioned to a company’s stance and be constantly reminded of and updated on the DOs and DON’Ts of social media – especially with regards to sensitive information.
#5 Align Employees With the Brand
For the organizational success of the employee activation program, it is crucial to align employees with the brand and its mission. Employees should understand that they are being given ownership of the brand’s outreach programs. This sense of ownership will encourage them to join and continue being the brand’s real ambassadors.
#6 Work on the content
It is the responsibility of top management and employees to continuously generate fresh content and also see what can be reused and bettered to promote the brand on social media channels.
#7 Reciprocate With Incentives and Awards
Companies should reward employees that choose to perform additional duties towards brand awareness. Employees should take a mental note that working at the forefront of brand marketing will provide them with useful insights and develop them to become thought leaders. Additionally, reciprocating the participation and efforts of employees by providing them with lucrative incentives can further motivate them.
#8 Monitor the KPIs and Adjust Accordingly
This is the final step when companies get to know the returns on their investment. Setting up KPIs to monitor the performance of employee social activation programs can help managers identify what is working and where adjustments are to be made.
Wrapping Up
Employee activation helps companies establish an online presence of their brands, enhance customer engagement, and boost their reputation. Sales leads generated from employees sharing marketing content are reported to convert seven times more often than other leads. This specific marketing strategy not only increases sales but also establishes the brand as a trustworthy company. Additionally, paying attention to the potential of employees leads to better employee engagement and helps in reducing employee churn rates.
Companies that constantly empower their team, and tap into their passion for their respective fields are often the witness to successful activation programs. By implementing employee activation programs effectively within personal offices, enterprises are more likely to earn way more than what they invested in. They can develop activated employees who can advocate their brands optimally and also gain the trust of their employees in the employers.
FAQs on Employee Activation Program
What is a brand activation specialist?
A brand activation specialist contributes to business development efforts by establishing marketing strategies, creating content, and enticing goods and experiences to attract future clients and maintain existing ones. Simply put, a brand activation specialist is responsible for the conception, development, and communication of brand marketing initiatives.
What are the three phases of employee onboarding?
1. The ‘hype’ phase: Company shares information about its vision, mission, and brand positioning.
2. The ‘immersion’ phase: The newly recruited employees are immersed in the company’s culture.
3. The ‘cultivate’ phase: Employees learn and grow within the company.
What is an activation team?
An activation team in a company is made up of representatives from its key functional areas, including sales and marketing, human resources, purchasing, manufacturing or production, engineering, and finance. For forming a better activation team, it is better to include middle management representatives.
How do you acclimate a new employee?
New employees can be acclimated to your company’s work culture in the following ways:
1. Make them feel comfortable
2. Introduce them to already working employees and other staff
3. Consider following up with them
4. An employer can take the new hire to a casual office lunch
Which of the following is the first step in the performance management process?
Planning is the first step in the performance management process. It is further sub-categorized into the defining stage, the feedback stage, and the approval stage. For better performance management, it is crucial to develop an effective plan.
