A Glossary of Core Concepts & Terminology in Employee Advocacy

In today’s competitive talent landscape, leveraging the power of your employees as brand advocates has become a strategic imperative for HR and recruiting professionals. Understanding the foundational terminology and concepts behind employee advocacy is crucial for designing effective programs that not only enhance brand reputation but also streamline talent acquisition efforts. This glossary provides clear, authoritative definitions tailored to equip HR leaders, recruiters, and talent acquisition specialists with the knowledge needed to harness the full potential of their workforce.

Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy refers to the promotion of an organization by its employees. This typically involves employees sharing positive information about their workplace, culture, products, or services through their personal social networks, word-of-mouth, or other channels. For HR, employee advocacy programs are powerful tools for strengthening employer branding, attracting top talent, and boosting employee engagement. In an automated context, platforms can facilitate content sharing, track engagement, and even gamify participation, making it easier for employees to consistently represent the brand positively and for HR to measure the impact on recruitment pipelines.

Advocate (Employee)

An advocate, in the context of employee advocacy, is an employee who actively and voluntarily promotes their employer’s brand. These individuals genuinely believe in their company’s mission, values, and offerings, and are willing to share their positive experiences with their personal and professional networks. From a recruiting perspective, employee advocates are invaluable as they serve as authentic, trusted sources of information for potential candidates, often outperforming traditional recruitment marketing in terms of credibility and reach. Identifying and nurturing these individuals is key to a successful advocacy program, often supported by automated content feeds to simplify sharing.

Content Curation

Content curation in employee advocacy involves the process of identifying, selecting, and organizing high-quality, relevant content for employees to share. This content can range from company news and blog posts to industry insights, job openings, and thought leadership articles. For HR teams managing advocacy programs, effective content curation ensures that employees have a consistent supply of valuable and on-brand material, simplifying their role as advocates. Automation tools can significantly streamline this process by aggregating content from various sources, tagging it by relevance, and even suggesting optimal sharing times, freeing up HR professionals to focus on strategy and engagement.

Social Sharing

Social sharing is the act of disseminating content across various social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In employee advocacy, it refers specifically to employees sharing company-approved content on their personal profiles. This expands the organization’s reach far beyond its owned media channels, tapping into the extensive, trusted networks of individual employees. For recruiters, increased social sharing by employees translates into wider visibility for job postings, employer branding messages, and company culture insights, significantly enhancing talent attraction efforts. Automated platforms provide one-click sharing options, making it effortless for employees to participate.

Brand Amplification

Brand amplification is the strategy of increasing the visibility and impact of a company’s brand messages, often through the efforts of its employees. When employees share company content, their collective networks dramatically extend the brand’s reach and influence, amplifying its message organically. For HR and recruiting, this means their employer brand gains greater exposure to a relevant audience, making it easier to attract passive candidates who might not be actively searching job boards. Employee advocacy programs are designed precisely for brand amplification, turning every employee into a potential channel for disseminating the company’s story and values to a wider, more receptive audience.

Employee-Generated Content (EGC)

Employee-Generated Content (EGC) refers to any content — whether text, images, videos, or audio — created and shared by employees about their organization. Unlike curated content, EGC is original material that offers authentic, unfiltered insights into the company culture, work environment, and employee experience. This authenticity is highly valuable in recruitment marketing, as prospective candidates often find EGC more credible and relatable than corporate-produced materials. Encouraging and facilitating EGC can profoundly humanize an employer brand, providing a powerful testimonial that resonates deeply with job seekers and helps them envision themselves within the organization.

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership involves positioning an individual or an organization as an authority and innovator within their industry, sharing unique insights, perspectives, and expertise. In the context of employee advocacy, employees who contribute original content or share industry insights become thought leaders, enhancing both their personal professional brand and the company’s reputation. For HR, nurturing employee thought leaders can significantly elevate the employer brand, attracting high-caliber talent who seek to work for forward-thinking organizations. Platforms can automate the distribution of employee-authored content, amplifying their voices and reinforcing the company’s position as an industry leader, thus appealing to top talent.

Employer Branding

Employer branding encompasses an organization’s reputation as an employer, including its values, culture, and employee experience. It’s how a company markets itself to potential and current employees. Employee advocacy is a critical component of a strong employer branding strategy, as authentic employee voices are far more credible and impactful than traditional corporate messaging. For recruiters, a robust employer brand, bolstered by employee advocacy, directly translates to a stronger talent pipeline, reduced time-to-hire, and lower recruitment costs. It ensures that the company is seen as an attractive and desirable place to work, drawing in candidates who align with its values and culture.

Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is the process of attracting, engaging, and nurturing talent using marketing principles and tactics. It involves creating a compelling employer brand and communicating it effectively to target candidates through various channels. Employee advocacy significantly enhances recruitment marketing efforts by providing an authentic, trusted channel for disseminating employer brand messages. Instead of solely relying on job boards or company career pages, employee advocates organically share insights into company culture, employee benefits, and job opportunities, reaching a wider and often more passive pool of talent. This approach humanizes the recruitment process and builds stronger connections with potential hires.

Social Recruiting

Social recruiting is the use of social media platforms to find, attract, and engage with job candidates. It’s a proactive approach that leverages the extensive networks and communication capabilities of platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for talent acquisition. Employee advocacy complements social recruiting by turning every employee into a potential recruiter or talent scout. When employees share job openings or positive stories about their workplace, they effectively extend the reach of the recruitment team, tapping into their personal networks where passive candidates might reside. This direct, authentic approach can lead to higher quality applications and more efficient hiring processes.

Reach (Social Media)

In social media, “reach” refers to the total number of unique users who saw a piece of content. In the context of employee advocacy, when employees share company content on their personal networks, they significantly expand the organization’s social media reach far beyond what official company pages can achieve alone. For HR and recruiting, increased reach means that job postings, employer brand messages, and company news are exposed to a much larger, more diverse audience. This expanded visibility directly contributes to a stronger top-of-funnel for talent acquisition, attracting candidates who might otherwise never encounter the company’s opportunities.

Engagement (Social Media)

Social media engagement refers to how users interact with content, including likes, comments, shares, and clicks. High engagement indicates that content is resonating with the audience, fostering interaction and building community. In employee advocacy, when an employee shares content, their personal network is often more likely to engage with it compared to content from a corporate page, due to the inherent trust. For HR, strong engagement on shared content translates to increased visibility for employer brand messages, more conversations around job opportunities, and a more dynamic online presence that actively attracts and nurtures prospective talent, signaling a vibrant company culture.

Return on Investment (ROI) in EA

Return on Investment (ROI) in employee advocacy measures the financial benefits gained from an employee advocacy program relative to its costs. For HR and recruiting, calculating ROI involves assessing metrics such as improved recruitment efficiency (e.g., reduced time-to-hire, lower cost-per-hire from advocate-referred candidates), enhanced employer brand reputation, increased job application quality, and improved employee retention due to higher engagement. Automation platforms play a crucial role in measuring these metrics, providing data on content reach, candidate source, and referral success, enabling HR to demonstrate the tangible value of employee advocacy to the organization’s bottom line and talent strategy.

Gamification (in EA)

Gamification in employee advocacy involves applying game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts to engage and motivate employees. This often includes features like points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges for activities such as sharing content, inviting referrals, or creating original content. For HR, gamification can significantly boost participation and sustained engagement in an advocacy program, making it more fun and rewarding for employees. It fosters a sense of friendly competition and recognition, which can lead to more consistent advocacy efforts, ultimately amplifying the employer brand and generating more talent leads for the recruiting team.

Talent Acquisition Funnel

The Talent Acquisition Funnel is a conceptual model that illustrates the journey of a candidate from initial awareness of a company to becoming a hired employee. It typically includes stages like Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Application, Interview, and Hire. Employee advocacy plays a vital role across multiple stages of this funnel. At the top (Awareness, Interest), advocates extend the reach of employer brand messages and job openings. In the middle (Consideration), authentic employee stories build trust and provide insights into company culture, helping candidates decide. By building a stronger, more qualified pipeline, employee advocacy significantly optimizes the overall efficiency of the talent acquisition process.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Supercharging Talent Acquisition: Leveraging AI and Automation in Employee Advocacy