Advocating Beyond Call of Duty: How to Unlock the Potential of Employee Advocacy Platforms
(A2022-107543)

AUTHORS

Laura De Kerpel, Ghent University; Anneleen Van Kerckhove, Ghent University; Gudrun Roose, IESEG School of Management

ABSTRACT

This paper scrutinizes the use of employee advocacy—the voluntary promotion of an organization and its goods and services by its own workforce. Nowadays, organizations often rely on employee advocacy as a significant marketing asset. This is exemplified in employee advocacy programs and platforms and anonymous employee review sites becoming increasingly popular. Despite its popularity in today's business environment, the use of employee advocacy programs and platforms, and also the content/messages that should be shared on these platforms to gain traction, is still a rather underexplored academic topic. By means of a content analysis, we try to uncover features that render messages shared on employee advocacy platforms to be more effective. As such, this study adds to extant employee advocacy research, while at the same time offering valuable insights for organizations that (want to) make use of employee advocacy programs and platforms.