Remember that once in class we had a debate on whether employers should be allowed to access applicants’ social network profile? Most of you don’t agree doing that because companies shouldn’t cross the line of privacy. What if companies encourage their employees to post or share about their work? Positively, of course.
Recently, there’s a new term called employee advocacy, which means encourage employees to participate in communications efforts and motivating them to share interesting professional content to their external social media networks. It is named by a Finland entrepreneur who created the system to evaluate this.
For more details, take a look at this video by BBC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128tqdsVqRg
It will definitely generate a lot of doubt and concern, as asked in the video, companies might use this to judge an employee’s performance. Although, the inventor said it is on voluntary bases, people still feel pressure when there’s really a competition to reward the person who makes most approved post about their job. In addition, they may somewhat feel forced to do so in order to impress their boss. For corporation, this might have side effect when your workers are reluctant but forced to do something.
Personally I think it is not a good idea to do so. First, the post won’t be convincing unless the authors like it themselves. Secondly, if a company really satisfies its employees, they will post compliments and true condition automatically, because one of the reason people use social media, like Facebook, is to show off to their acquaintances. For example, people working in Google, Lego might want to show how good their working place is to make others envious or admire them.
All in all, I think companies should focus on improving working environments since it is way easier to post complaints rather than compliments. And that their employees will be much happier to share the firm in a positive way.
Would you like to be an ambassador for your firm if they encourage you to do so? Do you think it is a good idea for companies to adopt this employee advocacy system in the future?
Not only would I think it is strange that an employee must share information about the company he works for, but I also can imagine that it also harms the reputation of the employee. The employee might change his job a couple of times and if I would see that he is positive about every single job, I wouldn’t take him serious.