What if your employees continued to promote your company long after they’ve left? It’s a powerful question—and one that challenges the traditional views of employee loyalty and engagement. We often focus on keeping employees engaged while they’re with us, but how can we create a culture that keeps them advocating for our brand even after they’ve moved on to new opportunities?
In this episode of Sticky From The Inside, Andy Goram speaks with Kristina Vaneva, an expert in employee experience and author of Beyond Employee Engagement. Together, they dive into the intricacies of creating an employee advocate programme that doesn’t just benefit the company, but also elevates employees' personal and professional brands, making them lifelong ambassadors for your organization.
But before we dig deeper, let’s ask some important questions:
How do we foster a sense of belonging so strong that employees become true advocates, not just while they’re employed, but long after they leave?
Are we missing opportunities to empower our people to be proud of where they work and share that with the world?
Could we, as leaders, be doing more to align our employees’ personal growth with the success of our brand?
These are just some of the challenges Kristina and Andy tackle in this episode, which is all about moving beyond employee engagement as we traditionally know it.
Key Topics and Insights Covered in the Episode
1. The Power of Employee Advocacy: In today’s world, trust in people far outweighs trust in brands. As Kristina explains, your employees are your most valuable ambassadors, and their voices can resonate far louder and more authentically than any marketing campaign. But advocacy must be earned. It stems from employees who feel genuinely engaged, connected, and valued. The real magic happens when your company culture is so strong that employees continue to advocate for you, even after they’ve left.
2. Building an Employee Advocate Programme: Creating an employee advocate programme that’s effective requires intentionality. It’s not enough to expect employees to promote your brand—you need to equip them with the tools and motivation to do so. From leadership buy-in to clear policies and ongoing recognition, Kristina breaks down the essential steps to turning your workforce into a loyal team of advocates who believe in the mission and values of the business.
3. How Employee Engagement Fuels Advocacy: It’s impossible to talk about employee advocacy without addressing employee engagement. Kristina reveals how the two concepts are intrinsically linked, sharing the importance of building a workplace culture that makes people proud to be a part of your organization. The episode dives into how creating a strong foundation of engagement early on can have a lasting ripple effect on advocacy—both inside and outside the company.
4. Long-Term Loyalty: Employees Who Advocate Beyond Their TimeOne of the most interesting parts of this episode is the exploration of how companies can maintain strong relationships with former employees, turning them into lifelong advocates. Kristina shares examples of companies that have built alumni programmes or offer long-term perks that keep ex-employees engaged, long after they’ve moved on to other roles. These strategies challenge us to rethink employee loyalty and how we can create value for our people beyond their tenure with us.
Listen to the Full Episode
This episode of Sticky From The Inside is packed with actionable insights for any leader looking to strengthen employee engagement and foster authentic employee advocacy. Whether you’re aiming to build brand loyalty, boost your employer brand, or simply create a better culture where employees feel proud and excited to share their experiences, this conversation with Kristina Vaneva offers valuable takeaways.
So, are you ready to transform how you think about employee loyalty? Click the player below to listen to the full episode and learn how to build a culture where employees don’t just work for you—they work with you, promoting your brand for years to come.
If you prefer to read along, the full transcript is available below.
Beyond Engagement: Loyalty That Lasts A Lifetime
00:00:10 - Andy Goram
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier competition, smashing consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host, Andy Goram, and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them, and create tons more success for everyone.
This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that. Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses. The sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work, and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
What is Employee Advocacy and Why It Matters
00:01:10 - Andy Goram
Ok, then imagine a workplace where your employees aren't just there to do a job. They believe in the mission of the business so deeply that they give them their best effort and ideas day in and day out with passion and purpose. They're not just working for you, they're working with you as true partners in success. And here's the best part. Even when they move on to pursue new opportunities, they continue to advocate for your company, sharing their positive experiences, promoting your brand, and championing your values wherever they go. Now, what does it take to create that kind of culture, to foster a sense of loyalty so deep that your people become lifelong advocates, not just because they have to, but because they want to?
So today we're exploring how to turn that vision into reality. Specifically, we're diving into the process of building an employee advocacy programme that doesn't just drive brand awareness, but one that weaves its way into every aspect of the employee experience. I'm delighted today to be joined by Kristina Vaneva, a true expert in the world of employee experience and author of the book Beyond Employee Engagement. Kristina will, I hope, walk us through the nuts and bolts of creating a programme that transforms employees into those lifelong advocates. We'll explore how advocacy programmes integrate into the entire employee journey, from onboarding to development to when they leave, and how it benefits not just the company's brand, but the personal brands of the employees associated with the system too. In a world where we trust people more than we trust advertising, your employees are your most valuable ambassadors. And if you can harness that energy, the benefits can be extraordinary, not only for your employer brand, but for the personal and professional growth and reputation of your people too.
So whether you're looking to strengthen your brand's voice build deeper loyalty or empower your employees to become true ambassadors. I hope this episode will be packed with insights that can change the way you think about employee experience. Welcome to the show, Kristina.
00:03:32 - Kristina Vaneva
Thank you so much. I love the sound of your voice. I love, if I ever need to do a voiceover, I'm definitely not going to get it from AI. I'm going to reach out to you because your voice is so, so it's just, it's got this really nice undertone to it. And I love the way you pronounce your words. It's just, ah, it's perfect, by the way.
00:03:58 - Andy Goram
Wow. Oh, yeah. Well, let's just do the podcast. Let's just sit here and get flattering comments all day. Lovely to have you here. I am really curious about this, this chat today around advocacy or advocate programmes because we've used the word advocacy loads in employee engagement and all related to net promoter scores and all that kind of good stuff. But we're talking about something a little bit different today, which I'm really looking forward to. But before we get stuck into all of that, Kristina, do me a little favour. Give us a bit of a background into you, what you do, what you're up to now, all that kind of good stuff.
00:04:38 - Kristina Vaneva
Very exciting. Thank you, first of all, for having me on your lovely show. I'm very excited to be able to share the opportunity or to take this opportunity to share a little bit about what I'm passionate about. So for the last, I would say six, almost 17 years, I have spent and really dedicated my career, my professional experience, my studies to this topic, which is the topic of employee engagement, employee experience. And how do we create a journey for employees, such a journey that would be conducive to, of course, their personal happiness, but also conducive to them going above and beyond and delivering an amazing experience for guests, which, of course, turns into an incredible experience for investors as well. And it builds loyalty, it builds brand loyalty.
But more importantly, and I talk about it in my book, shameless promotion, more importantly, how this experience that companies build together with their employees, how does this experience affect the employees families, their loved ones, their neighbors, their communities, and then society in general? So I have spent a long time in the UAE, in Dubai particularly. I've been here, where I am in Dubai right now for 16 and a half years. But my work with communication and with HR started a little bit. Before that, I lived in Malta. Before that, I grew up in Greece.
So I've kind of lived in several countries and continents. I spent my childhood in Libya. I'm Bulgarian, by the way, by origin and by passport, but I only lived there for five years. So I grew up in Libya, went to boarding school and school in Greece and Malta. And I spent about 13 years at Atlantis Resorts, where I would say a big part of my employee engagement, where my passion for employee engagement was born and developed. And really the company had given me the opportunity to flourish and to soar and to use my creativity and create a culture, a strategy and a culture in a company that during a period where employee engagement really wasn't a thing, you know, especially in this region, there were very few vacancies around that topic, let alone, you know, managers and leaders really being coached and taught about the importance of employee engagement. So I would consider myself probably a maverick, that I can call myself a maverick right in the field. And I think because I'm so passionate about it, it really helps to really create and consult, because I currently consult companies on how to create an extraordinary employee experience because my passion comes through quite authentically. I think that gives me an extra edge over people that maybe have just studied it in the last few years because since the pandemic, it's really become a popular profession.
What Is An Employee Advocate?
00:08:23 - Andy Goram
Sure. And we're going to tap into that passion, I'm sure, today as we sort of get stuck in. I mean, what a wonderfully exotic and varied background you have, Kristina. Right. So I think that's going to shine through today. Now we're going to talk about employee advocacy or employee advocate programmes. I mean, that's maybe a split definition in itself, but I. Let's go back to brass tacks here. When we think of a genuine employee advocate, what does that person look like to you, and how does being an advocate go beyond just promoting the company?
00:09:04 - Kristina Vaneva
I love that question. So a genuine advocate is obviously someone who's authentic, you know, someone who's a not feeling pressured or paid to talk about the company. There's a model that concentric uses for employee engagement, and they do their employee engagement survey with several questions, like 40 plus questions. But the really six important questions in their formula to measure engagement is, say, stay and strive questions. And those are say questions. Do employees say good things about your company? Do they strive? So do they go above and beyond? And then do they stay in your company? Are they loyal? Do they stick around or they want to leave after a year or two?
So the say questions are really important because you measure to what degree the employees really want to authentically come out and talk about the company, whether it's on social media, whether it's at a conference, whether it's, you know, at a dinner party, employees are advocates, positive or negative ones, of course, at any occasion. It doesn't need to be. You know, when we talk about employee advocacy programmes, a lot of people think about, you know, platforms and technology and creating or pre-creating content that people can post on their social media. Of course, that's a huge part of it. But there's so much more, you know, when you go to an HR fair, for instance, or when, if you're presenting something on stage or you're talking about your company during a, like, if you're up for an award and you're presenting about your company, these are all ways to advocate positively, of course, hopefully about the organisation. If you're running a recruitment fair, for example, if you're looking for fresh graduates or interns, management trainees, the way you talk about your company there as a representative of that company is also part of employee advocacy.
So I want to kind of make that clear that oftentimes we want to refer back to technology, and we want to say, oh, yeah, we don't have a budget for this programme, or it requires a lot of training. People don't have time to post. It's not just posting the way you talk, what you say and what you don't say.
00:11:40 - Andy Goram
I think this is what's going to be interesting about this conversation today, because often employee advocacy is limited to, would you recommend this place to friends and family? And what we're trying to go here with this, today's conversation is a bit deeper into how can we maybe corral or orchestrate a programme that captures the very essence of this advocacy, but comes from having an employee experience where this promotion of the business and the people that work there just comes naturally. Right. It comes authentically, it comes willingly. But maybe not everybody is on the same page when we think about this corralling. Right. Or this, this forming of a programme. So in your mind, what is an employee advocate programme? Kristina, what's that?
What Is An Employee Advocate Programme?
00:12:34 - Kristina Vaneva
So, of course, let's start off with the presumption that the employee has now been hired into the company and he or she or they have now begun their first day. How does that actually, let's take it a few steps back. They've been contacted by the recruitment team or the talent acquisition team, and their journey has now become a little bit more real and a little bit more tangible. So how are the questions asked? What questions are asked? How does the recruiter or the hiring manager help you feel you can already start planning the employee experience and the employee advocate advocacy from that moment onwards. So by training your HR team, by training the team that is in charge of potentially reaching out, it could be even the recruiters, the way a recruitment company, if you're using headhunters, the way a recruitment company talks about your company, right. Because oftentimes they say, oh, this is a great company with a interesting, open culture. You have flexibility in the workplace. So they have a little bit of a spiel about how to promote your company. So you can already start from there by preparing those little tiny but crucial steps in the way that an employee feels as they're joining.
00:14:07 - Andy Goram
So even in the very start of your employee experience journey that you're mapping out. Right. You're already seeding the fact that you would encourage employees to talk openly about the company, what it does, what it stands for, all this stuff, right from the get go.
How to Build an Effective Employee Advocate Programme
00:14:24 - Kristina Vaneva
Absolutely. And, you know, a lot of the times people are unsure about whether they can post on social media what they can post, when they can post, what are the brand guidelines? So an employee advocacy programme needs to make this super easy for new joiners. So I have a few steps that I've put together and that I really like to follow, and I think they're quite sequential. And those steps are crucial when it comes to creating such a programme. And first and foremost, of course, you need to want to do it. And to have, as a company, I'm talking about in general, you need to either have a person doing it or a department, or if you're working on a global or regional scale, perhaps volunteers in different countries, and to help to build that team of brand ambassadors together that will take the employee advocacy journey on a real journey.
So once you have someone responsible for that, there is someone that's accountable, someone that's really motivated. And ideally, they must know what they're doing as well. But I've been in situations where people didn't really know what they were doing. They were winging it. But because of their passion and their love for the company, they created some outstanding employee advocacy programmes. So the person themselves or the department themselves that are taking care of this important part of the employee experience must be engaged. Let's put it that way. You start, so that's the first step. And then the second step, of course, is to put together policies, to put together guidelines, training on, first of all, what does it mean? What is this employee advocacy programme? Who can participate in it? How often can they? Why should they participate? You answer all the who what? When? Where, why questions.
And then you have to create, obviously, policies around all the questions that people ask. Sometimes they're concerned with what they've posted. Sometimes marketing reaches out to them and says, this is completely against our brand guidelines. So many times people have been kind of burned and they just prefer not to post anything. So ideally, I'm talking about if you're working in a company where, where things are not confidential. When we're talking about a company or an organisation that's open and has customers that really want to hear about what the organisation is doing, that's when an employee advocacy programme really works well. So create that culture where people feel safe and they feel well trained to communicate and to promote the company.
The third one is get the culture right. And this is something that I always talk about. If you create a company or an organisational culture where people feel, first of all, proud of their company, and second of all, proud of the work they do, authentic, recognized, rewarded, the company's taking care of their well being. And I'm not talking about necessarily it has to be something super expensive and super big and, oh, it's going to take us a year to build it. I'm talking about small steps if you're starting off. So create that culture where people will want to share. They'll want to talk about the company, they'll want to tell people where they work and what they do. By the way, that's a huge part of, of a sustainable and ongoing advocacy.
00:18:13 - Andy Goram
100%. We've got 104 other episodes of this podcast you might want to listen to to hit item three, which is get the culture right, because that's huge, right?
00:18:25 - Kristina Vaneva
It's crucial. And, you know, culture is evolving and it's like a living organism. The minute you stop paying attention to it, it starts getting sick or, you know, something infects it. Because we're people, right. And people change, leadership changes. So the company has to always be on the top of your list. It has to be done intentionally. Fourth one is get leadership buy in. But really true buy in. So help them understand what is in it for them. First of all, so how can they become thought leaders? How can their personal brand flourish? And second of all, how does this help the company once you've got the leaders buy in? I think this is a no brainer. Once you have them also using the advocacy programme, whether it's a platform or whether they're just simply sharing information on social media, I think people in general start to feel a little bit more comfortable because if you, your GM is doing it, then why can't I do it?
What’s At The Core Of Employee Advocate Programme?
00:19:36 - Andy Goram
And you keep saying, using the advocacy programme, and you've mentioned platforms and bits and pieces before. What does this look like when you're going to a prospective client and you utter the words,
“Oh, yeah, let's build an employee advocacy programme”,
and they look at you with a blank face and go, well, what is that, Kristina? So at it's very core, what are we talking about here?
00:20:01 - Kristina Vaneva
So if you're looking at it from, it's a little bit of a marketing, I would say, tactic in a positive way, of course. So if you're looking at it from a marketing perspective, you're looking at what are the pillars? What is the information that you want to communicate out there? So do you have pillars that are talking about, you know, employment? So join the company because ABC, or do you have another pillar that talks about why your company is the best or amongst the best? So you create your different pillars. You create with topics. You create your Personas. Who are those messages going out to? Who are you trying to target?
And then you start with either doing it through a platform. You create the content. Of course, I would strongly advise at least a month ahead before you have even launched the programme, to have content in this platform or in a common folder that people can often refer to. And if you don't, let's say, worst case scenario, you don't have a platform because there's no budget for it. You don't have time to really create so much content specifically for people. If you have employee engagement activities or a social calendar, or if your company is up for an award, or they have just launched a new product, or they've opened a new, if we're talking about, for example, hospitality, they've opened a new restaurant, there's always some information that is worth sharing. And if you have that kind of culture where the internal communications team is always making this information readily available with images or videos, you can even start off your employee advocacy programme by saying, guys, we're going to share this newsletter or stuff on the Internet on a daily basis, weekly basis, help us to promote it, or we're going to share it on our Facebook or Instagram page, or on our LinkedIn page. Help us by resharing it, or help us by taking bits and pieces, repurposing it, making it your own. We will provide you the pictures. Just help us spread the news.
00:22:23 - Andy Goram
So it's just a resource platform where employees who feel inclined to promote the company, its values, what it's up to, to its own network, can get resources that, I don't know, fit the brand, match up, but is easy for them to get hold of. I guess on the other side, they can create their own stuff, though, right? Programmes evolve. That's what you want. Organic stuff.
00:22:48 - Kristina Vaneva
This is actually even better than people relying on your content, because once you have people, or once you have employees creating their own stuff, you know that they're, they're engaged, they're motivated, they're going to be there promoting your company, promoting themselves, at the same time, building their own brand name, their image, their reputation. Of course, this is, this is the biggest reason why employees should be encouraged to participate in a programme. It's not a cheap and free way of promoting your company, but it's a way to make sure that the people within your company look like subject matter experts no matter what level they're on, right?
00:23:31 - Andy Goram
Yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, it feels disingenuous and will be seen straight through. And I interrupted you taking us through the steps. I think you've got a step further.
00:23:41 - Kristina Vaneva
So I think it was a good interruption because it added value to what I was saying and what I'll continue talking about.
00:23:50 - Andy Goram
Okay, cool.
00:23:51 - Kristina Vaneva
So once you have the buy in, the leadership, the communication, the policies established, you've reached out to people that you think might begin to be your first cheerleaders. So you build your brand ambassador team. You might start off with, I'm just saying random numbers here, but you might, depending on how large your company is, medium sized enterprise, you might want to start off with five people, ten. Make sure that you grow it to a number consistently and sustainably and have a number that you want to reach. But let's say you want to reach 100 people over one year, but do not limit it, because what you think is possible with 100 people, maybe the rest of the entire organisation, you'll never have 100% participation, but let's say another 200 within the same year want to jump on the bandwagon, and they really feel proud and engaged with what they're doing and what their company is doing, and they want to support this employee advocacy programme and strategy. So what I'm saying is, have a number in mind, but always be open that this number can and should grow beyond your expectations.
Employee Engagement and Its Role in Advocacy
00:25:11 - Andy Goram
And how do you go around encouraging participation without it feeling forced when you're thinking about those sort of numbers? Kristina, tell me about that.
00:25:21 - Kristina Vaneva
I love this question. So there's a company that I mentioned in my book, the company is called Innovisor, and they have created this 3% rule, this 3% rule refers to 3% of your company are the informal communicators or influencers within the company. So if you have your internal comms team, if you have your leadership team, your managers, all those are expected to be communicators, right? Officially, but unofficially, there are 3%. And so this company has devised a way to identify who these 3% are because ideally they should be on your side, because some of these 3% people could be negative influencers, right? So not everyone will be positive. And you want to turn those negatives or those maybe people that are a little bit disgruntled or they don't believe in what you're doing or what the company is doing, you want to turn them into supporters. Of course, that's not always possible with everyone, but there's a way to identify these informal influencers that have so much power over the way that the company is evolving from a culture perspective and what is happening when no one's looking and when no one's purposely listening, and, you know, what's happening from the back end of the company.
So I would say, of course, reach out, first of all, initially to people who you believe are engaged, who will be interested, who will be good at that, and those that already do it. You know, promote, go out there on social media, go to networking events. You already, if you're within the HR team and you have a good, I would say, pulse on the organisation, you would already know some of these people. And then if you don't, then start to know them, because that's a crucial aspect of HR, right? Get to know who your potential cheerleaders can be and then, of course, communicate the importance of the programme or the strategy or that this is going to become part of the culture from now on to the whole organisation. Have some mini workshops, have some focus groups, help people feel involved and included in this programme, whether it's from the beginning or let's say, from, let's say, the third or fourth step into the programme, but really help people feel engaged from the get go. Of course, you will have those that don't want to post anything, that are introverts, that don't really go to networking events or career fairs or anything out there in the open, except, of course, their families and their communities, which, again, is crucial. So you won't have everyone on the bandwagon of the employee advocacy programme.
But something I love doing is gamifying, rewarding, and recognizing and celebrating wins. So talking about what's in it for them, that's, I think that's the first and foremost crucial aspect of getting people to participate in the programme. Talk about, show them, of course, people that have been brand advocates in other companies what it's done for their career, how it looks internally, really, what's in it for me? Why should I do it? And then give me the tools. Empower me with the tools that I need to make you successful.
00:29:14 - Andy Goram
Sure. I'm keen to see if we can finish your steps to building this programme. How far have we got?
00:29:22 - Kristina Vaneva
Four more steps. So the reward, recognize, gamify and celebrate. That's crucial when it comes to, you know, keeping the programme alive. Then start. Well, this is, this is not really a sequential step, but I mentioned it earlier, which is start the programme as soon as people have onboarded.
00:29:46 - Andy Goram
Yeah.
00:29:46 - Kristina Vaneva
So if you have your employee induction or your orientation, go and speak to the new joiners and tell them about this programme. These are your, you know, your, your people that are in their honeymoon phase. They just joined the company. They want to shout out about it. They're proud. You know, they want to talk about, look at this wonderful experience that I've had. Look, these gifts, they've given me this, oh, my department, they've welcomed me so warmly. So these are, don't miss that opportunity. That's what I want to say.
00:30:20 - Andy Goram
They're most excited, aren't they? They're most excited. Capture all that energy.
00:30:24 - Kristina Vaneva
Of course, Yeah. And obviously to talk to them about how the programme is and what it entails. Create, I have two more steps. Cool. For easy ones, create content that is constantly fresh and exciting, of course, in the different pillars. And don't overcomplicate. Last one, because you never start and you never finished.
00:30:54 - Andy Goram
This sounds like this.... there could be so much in this. I think that's such a key step because I think starting small with these things, keeping it authentic and genuine sounds like exactly the way to go. But let's come back to the heart of, I think, well, in my opinion, the heart of it, you'll tell me whether that's true or not, is trying to understand how both parties benefit from an employee advocate programme, in your experience. So there are clear advantages for a business that has its people singing and praising what it does and sharing that with, however, whatever the network shape looks like. But then I'm really interested to hear, from your perspective, the employee side. So how out front, how part of the programme, how well do we communicate the benefits that can be sought after by an employee? And what do you see those as?
00:31:58 - Kristina Vaneva
Kristina, I would say first and foremost and I've mentioned this a couple of times already. How does communicating, let's keep it to social media for now. How does communicating about what you do at work help you look like or in an authentic way help you come across or be represented as a subject matter expert? Now, whether you're talking about the work you do personally, the work that your team does or the work that your company does, this automatically increases and improves your brand, your personal brand presence on social media. And people start noticing. Right. They start noticing what you're posting about. They start, especially if you're sticking to a particular topic. So, for example, the topic of employee engagement, non-biased here.
00:32:52 - Andy Goram
No, of course not.
00:32:54 - Kristina Vaneva
If you're talking about that, I mean, let's not go into the whole mechanics of how to become a subject matter expert on LinkedIn, but I think to get note. So first of all, subject matter expert, then to get noticed, you could get noticed by recruiters, you can get noticed by specific managers or leaders from a different organisation. And of course, we don't want to promote. Oh, please be a brand advocate because you might get recruited in another company.
00:33:27 - Andy Goram
I know that's a weird one to sell to businesses, right?
00:33:29 - Kristina Vaneva
It's weird, right. But at the same time, we want to be able to have our employees as a company look their best on social media. So whether they're promoting their work, whether they're promoting what the company does, this makes them look good. And this makes the company look good.
00:33:47 - Andy Goram
Makes them attractive, I guess, for future employers who look at someone and say, wow, they really got behind that company, they could do, they'd be a good person to have on board, not from a marketing perspective, but just from the ethics perspective and from, well, the work ethic, perhaps, and the connection between the business and the person's values and how that could really play a part in their business.
00:34:11 - Kristina Vaneva
Yeah, I agree. And I've worked in a company before where as part of the employee advocacy programme, I arranged professional photography for all. I think it was about 700 employees. Yeah, professional photography and a mini tutorial, a few hour tutorial on how to create your own LinkedIn and how to look professional on LinkedIn. How do you represent yourself and the company? So if you're working at a company, if you're looking at the company and you're saying, oh, these guys, they're really well trained. Oh, they look sharp. Oh, look at the stuff they're promoting. And posting. It raises the rating of your company just a little bit more.
Challenges in Building an Employee Advocate Programme
00:34:57 - Andy Goram
Sure. So we know what employee advocacy programme is. We know what the benefits are for a company. We know what the benefits are for an employee. And without me interrupting, we've managed to kind of outline the steps of how you would build such a programme. Now you're doing this all the time for clients, Kristina. Right. But I'm always interested to understand what hurdles do you see companies facing when they're trying to build these programmes on a personal level, on a technical level, how we main maintain authenticity, all these sorts of things. What sort of problems or hurdles do you see them having to deal with?
00:35:41 - Kristina Vaneva
You know, I don't want to scare people off.
00:35:44 - Andy Goram
No, no, you won't. You'll be positive.
00:35:48 - Kristina Vaneva
So I'll just keep it to, like three or maximum five. Getting buy in, really getting authentic buy in from the leaders, with the risk of sounding a little bit maybe biased towards a certain generation. Not everyone is tech savvy. Not everyone is, you know, willing to go out on social media and promote themselves or their company. Not everyone has time to do it. Not everyone knows how to do it. Some people prefer to be, you know, silent lurkers instead of being out there in the open. And I think this is a personality thing. I think it's a preference. So you will always have a percentage of the population within an organisation that just. They won't participate.
And the biggest hurdle, and I think the most important one, is really understanding who, I keep calling them cheerleaders, who are your cheerleaders? And engaging them and keeping them constantly motivated. Because if you don't, it's very easy to kind of forget about the employee advocacy programme to a point where it becomes part of their own personal culture. They post every Monday and Thursday at 12:00 p.m. because it's lunchtime. And whether they're on holiday or whether Kristina tells them to, there's not to. They're still going to do it because it's part of now their daily routine, and that's how it becomes authentic. Right. Another one is really having a company that is very precious about their brand. They're so precious that people are scared of what to communicate. They're scared of how and when and what not to say. So it becomes a very big wall, and that's very hard to overcome unless you live that culture of, hey, you know, this is what you can do. Let's do it. I'll show you that it's okay to do it. And, you know, people can start to really live an open culture of employee advocacy.
00:38:08 - Andy Goram
Nice.
00:38:09 - Kristina Vaneva
Yeah. So leadership buy in. Our top people buy in. Having a marketing team, that's really difficult. And then, I mean, if you're looking at people use this as an excuse a lot, and it could be real. I'm talking about budgets. So budgets. And it could be budget for a person or a department to take care of this. It could be budgets for, if you want a platform, for example, if you're talking about budgets for an internal communications team, not everyone has an internal communications team or an employee advocacy or an employee engagement team. So having that budget, having that understanding that this is crucial to the success of the company is, I think, another big one that we need to focus on and work on improving.
00:39:05 - Andy Goram
I think you try and come from life from a positive perspective anyway. Kristina. Right. So you're looking at this from a positive because it could be people listening to this episode going, well, that's, it all sounds lovely about getting people to talk about the business that they work in on their own network. And that's great when they say nice things, what if I've had a bad day and they say bad things? How do policies and rules and procedures kind of help or get in the way of that authenticity? I mean, it's an interesting question, right?
00:39:35 - Kristina Vaneva
It's a very challenging question, of course, because you don't want people, you don't want to tell your team members to not post anything negative because you'll get fired. But at the same time, you don't want them to feel inauthentic about it as well. I think it's all about communication and it's all about that training on how does it make, how does this make you look better and how does this make the company look better?
Long-Term Benefits of Employee Advocates After They Leave
00:40:04 - Andy Goram
I think this is the thing about, I mean, this is where cultures, for me, always comes together. When we understand how the benefit hits the company and the employee on whatever topic we're talking about, that's when things really work. That's when things really start to take shape. Have you got any examples that spring to mind of people who've put in great programmes where employees, well after leaving, still maintain talking about these companies positively after they've left?
00:40:37 - Kristina Vaneva
Talking? Yes. Posting, not necessarily because they move on, but I consult for a company now, and I do a lot of their employee events, and they have some really cool people working with them, younger generation, in their twenties that are just, they just love to brag about their company, and they do so on a regular basis. It's authentic and it helps them grow their network and it makes them look smart. So without naming any names, I have quite a few in my bag of tricks that are doing an awesome job. And I've even told them I want to steal you one day because you're amazing at this.
00:41:21 - Andy Goram
You know, I think this is the thing for me at the heart of this whole idea about having an employee advocacy programme is that it is sowing the seeds from day one that we want. You have a great time here. We're very proud of what we do. We want you to be proud of what you do. And we want to encourage you to tell people about what happens here and why things happen here. And it's giving them the resources to be able to do that, like professionally. But at the same time, it is sowing the seed that actually putting yourself out there in this kind of manner actually really helps and can fan your own professional Persona, your own professional growth, your career of the future. You can put yourself forward as an employee that other people would love to have inside their organisation. Right?
00:42:12 - Kristina Vaneva
Yeah. And there is also, let's not forget the, you mentioned it earlier briefly, people leaving the organisation and still talking about the organisation. If you look at certain companies have alumni programmes. So this is very often found in education. So people who have left the institute or the college or the university, they become part of the alumni. And it could be an insurance company, even. It doesn't matter what the industry is. But alumni, if you have a special way of engaging with the alumni, whether it's through a platform that allows them to still be somehow connected to the company, allows them to still use the benefits. For example, Emirates, Emirates Airlines, if you've worked there for 15 years, I believe, is the number 14, or I think it's 15 years, they give you free company tickets for life. I mean, you're going to be talking about this company all your life, right? In a positive way, hopefully. But not just that. You leave the company and you have a certain, it's called a face card. So this card gives you access to a lot of discounts in shops and bars and restaurants in different organisations that, because it's such a wide workforce. Right. So they still, they still benefit from these discounts after they've left. And, and I'm not talking about, yes, let's buy them and let's pay them out and let's have them talk nicely about us because we're still giving them these discounts. I'm talking about, yes, of course, that, that also works.
But I'm also talking about companies that reach out to people that have grown. What was the name of the company? Careem. So Careem is like an Uber company in the UAE in, well, it's Middle east. But I saw something a few months ago where people that have left Careem and have become extremely successful on their own, right, like they've opened their own companies, startups, and those have flourished tremendously. So they, they did a video with about five or six of them, and I absolutely loved it because they talk about how Karim gave them that platform, that open culture of learning and experimenting and trust, and how because of that, they have become this.
00:44:41 - Andy Goram
What a great example of the benefit of this sort of programme, Kristina, because that's really what we're talking about. Yes, we can talk about rewards and recognition and the cost of those things, and we could talk about top tier ideas like at Emirates, where they're, you know, free flights for life after 15 years. But then you'd come back to what you just talked about with Careem, and we're really talking about a strong connection and support of an employee who wants nothing more than to share their experiences there because they've been so beneficial on both sides. That's what we're looking at now.
Sticky Notes Of Wisdom
We have got to the part in the show, Kristina, called sticky notes, right, where it's time to summarize, my lovely. So if someone is listening to this episode today and they are thinking about putting together their first employee advocacy programme, what three pieces of advice that you could stick on little sticky notes would you give them?
00:45:36 - Kristina Vaneva
Okay, I've made a note of this, you know, because I don't want to go off topic. So first and foremost, and I'm going to repeat a little bit of what I've said prior, create a culture that is conducive to employee engagement, a culture that is conducive to trust, honesty and transparency, and this culture that promotes pride, pride in what you do, pride in what your company does so that people will want to say and share good things about your company. So without, with the risk of being repetitive, get your culture right. That's my 1st one.
The second one is communication. Big believer. This is no brainer. Again, strong communication, open, honest, get your communication right. Get your policies out there. Train people on how to become advocates, on how to use a platform. If you have a platform, talk to them about it. Create focus groups, visit them in departments, teach them, sit next to them and teach them how to do it. And then, of course, reward, recognize, and celebrate them for doing it. So that's the second sticky note and the third sticky note is, tell people what's in it for them and get leadership buy in through that and through everyone else, of course, but get the leaders by telling them what's in it for them. And again, the training, the communicating, the rewarding, recognizing gamification, get leaderboards, all this stuff.
00:47:12 - Andy Goram
You make it sound so easy that it fits on three sticky notes. Kristina, I'm sure it's a lot harder.
00:47:18 - Kristina Vaneva
Culture. Yes, it is. Culture. Communicate. That's why they've got me. Culture, communication and buy in.
00:47:27 - Andy Goram
Brilliant.
00:47:28 - Kristina Vaneva
What's in it for us? Me, them, you.
00:47:31 - Andy Goram
Thank you so much, Kristina. It's been lovely to have you on the show today. You have. You're such a warm, fun, expressive individual. So sat here, connected on screens, having a chat over the mics today has been absolutely fantastic. If people would like to find out a little bit more about you and what you do in the book and all that kind of good stuff, where can they go?
00:47:55 - Kristina Vaneva
So, my book, beyond employee engagement, can be found on all the social, on all the platforms, first of all, where books are bought. So Amazon orders, et cetera, in the UAE. You can find them in Kinokunya, you can find them on my website as well. You can order from there, especially if you're ordering in bulk and really wanting to perhaps engage with me for workshops or for consultancy so that all that good stuff is on my website. Beyondemployeeengagement.com, linkedIn, of course. That's, you know, one of my favourite places to be nowadays. It's just. Yeah, it's fun. I like it.
00:48:38 - Andy Goram
It's been lovely having on the show. I know we'll talk again.
00:48:42 - Kristina Vaneva
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me for these thought provoking questions, and thank you for our listeners for listening.
00:48:51 - Andy Goram
Okay, mate. You take care. Take it easy. Bye bye. Okay, everyone, that was Kristina Vaneva. And if you'd like to find out anything more about what we've talked about today or Kristina herself, please check out the show notes.
00:49:07 - Andy Goram
So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please, like, comment and subscribe. It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.
Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.
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