Employee Generated Content: How it Benefits Your Company’s Communication & Culture 

Yes, employee generated content is indeed an effective way of letting members of your workforce express themselves and even flex their creative muscles. But it’s also a surprisingly useful tool for boosting your communications and creating company culture.

Incorporating it into your comms strategy will have positive effects in regards to both communication efficacy and the public perception of your organization at large. In this article, we’ll explain what employee generated content is, and explore the specific ways it can benefit your company.

Employee generated content: What it is and why it matters

A good place to start is with a definition. What exactly is employee generated content? Well, “EGC” is any content that is created by the employees of a company, such as blog posts, videos, photos, or text posts. It can be used to promote the company’s products or services, but it also serves as an important part of brand-building and culture-building within the organization. 

The term itself comes from the better known “user generated content,” or UGC, which is part of almost all marketing strategies. In fact, according to research by the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of B2B marketers use UGC in their content marketing strategies. 

By leveraging UGC, users become brand advocates and businesses can build a sense of community around their brand and engage with their audience in a more authentic way. This type of content, mainly on social media platforms, is seen as more trustworthy than traditional marketing messages, since it comes directly from the customer.

UGC also provides a low-cost way to create content that resonates with the target audience. Overall, incorporating UGC into a marketing strategy can help increase brand awareness, drive engagement, and ultimately lead to more sales.

Employee generated content as part of a marketing strategy 

The same applies to EGC, which is basically just a more specific kind of UGC. According to a study by LinkedIn, employees are the most trusted source of information about a company, with 70% of people trusting them more than any other source. Furthermore, research from PostBeyond found that EGC can generate up to 10x more engagement than regular brand content on social media platforms.

In short, employee generated content makes communication more effective. And effective communication is essential for any organization. It allows employees to understand their roles and responsibilities, as well as encouraging them to cooperate and collaborate with each other.

A strong culture also helps build trust between the employer and employee, which in turn can lead to greater productivity, better customer service and more satisfied employees.

What makes employee generated content so effective, however, is that it can be used to facilitate effective communication between employees, customers and other stakeholders, while also providing a platform for employees to share their opinions and experiences–which helps build trust and strengthens relationships within the organization. 

Additionally, it enables companies to engage with their audience in a more personalized fashion, helping to create a stronger connection with them. Finally, it can also be used to collect and analyze data in order to improve processes and increase efficiency. All these benefits of employee generated content contribute to a stronger corporate culture overall.

Benefits of employee generated content for communication

We’ve discussed the general benefits of employee generated content. But what are the specific results that it can help you achieve in communications? What, specifically, can you expect to gain from incorporating it into your communication strategy? 

Fosters open communication

Employee generated content encourages employees to share ideas and insights. It also creates a sense of inclusion within the organization, breaking down barriers between departments and hierarchy levels, while providing a platform for employees at all levels to voice their opinions and showcase their expertise. 

This sense of empowerment can help level the playing field, as individuals are valued for their contributions rather than their titles or positions within the company. 

Additionally, it builds trust and transparency. When employees openly communicate through content creation, it demonstrates a commitment to transparency within the organization. This openness can help build trust among team members, as they become more aware of each other’s roles, responsibilities, and challenges.

Improves knowledge sharing

Employee generated content allows employees to learn from each other’s experiences and expertise. When employees create and share content, it often sparks conversations and encourages interaction between team members from different departments and levels of the organization. 

It also facilitates cross-departmental collaborations; employees share their knowledge and experiences through employee generated content, and they create opportunities for others to learn and grow. 

This culture of continuous learning can help break down barriers, as employees across departments and hierarchy levels come together to exchange ideas, ask questions, and seek advice. 

Boosts employee engagement

Employee generated content gives employees a voice and platform to express themselves. When employees are encouraged to voice their opinions, they feel more connected to the organization and its goals. 

This sense of ownership and belonging fosters a deeper commitment to the company’s success, leading to higher engagement levels. 

It also makes employees feel valued and heard; allowing employees to express their opinions sends a clear message that their thoughts and ideas are valued and respected. This recognition boosts their self-esteem and motivation, making them more likely to be engaged and contribute positively to the organization.

Lastly, it leads to higher job satisfaction and retention rates. Employees who feel heard and appreciated are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. Job satisfaction is a key factor in employee engagement, as satisfied employees are more likely to be committed, productive, and invested in their work. 

When employees are encouraged to voice their opinions, they just feel more connected to the organization and its goals. 

Benefits of employee generated content for company culture

However, the benefits of encouraging employee generated content go beyond enhancing communications. They actually contribute toward building a stronger culture all around. These are the specific ways it helps to achieve this. 

Strengthens company identity

Employee generated content showcases company values through real-life examples. It embodies the company culture through stories, and helps create a cohesive brand image. Content generated by employees can contribute to building brand image by showing daily events in company life.

Clients begin to feel informed about what is going on at the heart of the brand, and perceive the consistency of what is told to them and what the company really is inside.

Additionally, it attracts like-minded talent and clients; conveying values and culture through EGC contributes to attracting candidates and clients that share those same values. Employee testimonials provide a window into how the company works.

Builds a sense of community

Employee generated content creates opportunities for employees to connect on a personal level, which is especially important in our modern digital workplace, where casual chats around the water cooler are less and less common. 

It encourages team bonding and camaraderie–when employees openly express their opinions, it paves the way for better teamwork and collaboration. 

Open communication allows team members to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, leading to more effective collaboration and a stronger sense of unity. 

Beyond that, employee generated content fosters a culture of learning and growth. As employees share their knowledge and experiences through employee generated content, they create opportunities for others to learn and grow. This culture of continuous learning can help break down barriers, as employees across departments and hierarchy levels come together to exchange ideas, ask questions, and seek advice.

Empowers employee advocacy

Employee generated content allows employees to become brand ambassadors by sharing positive experiences via employee advocacy. Basically, people love stories. And EGC is created by employees themselves, which makes it more authentic and relatable compared to corporate-generated content. 

This authenticity resonates with audiences, making the content more credible and influential, ultimately leading to the employees becoming effective brand advocates. 

It also increases the company’s reach and credibility on social media. When employees share their content on social media platforms and other channels, they expand the organization’s reach and visibility. 

As a result of employee advocacy, they contribute to the company’s online presence and reputation, attracting potential customers, partners, and talent. 

Attracts new talent

Talent makes a big difference. And enhancing employer branding with EGC helps to attract top talent. People tend to trust recommendations from friends, family, and colleagues more than advertisements or endorsements from unfamiliar sources. 

Employee generated content leverages this peer influence, as employees become trusted ambassadors for their organization, promoting its products, services, and values.

To summarize :

Implementing employee generated content

We know that employee generated content matters–that it can make a big difference in both the quality of communications and in corporate culture. But how do you start incorporating employee generated content into the existing communication framework? What’s the best place to start? Here are a few basic guidelines.

Establish clear guidelines

• Define the purpose and goals of EGC initiatives.

For example, to erase communication barriers among different departments or countries, build a new corporate culture, or strengthen employee engagement and interpersonal connection. 

A good example of how the right tool can help you accomplish this is Sociabble’s instant translation feature. Thanks to automated real-time translations in more than 50 languages, Sociabble helps streamline internal comms and content creation for international companies.

• Set boundaries for appropriate content and tone.

It’s important  to establish a code of conduct and ensure that content fits with the brand image. Not just any content should be publicly shared.

With Sociabble, it is possible for administrators to moderate any EGC in order to verify content, even giving them the power to set words and phrases that are not allowed if there are confidentiality or profanity concerns.

• Provide resources and training for employees to create quality content.

Not everybody can master techniques or be instantly at ease with content creation. Some people can use a little help when it comes to creating high-quality content. 

This is why Sociabble makes it easy to train employees, give tips and tricks, and show best practice. It’s also possible to promote and award the best content with badges and peer-to-peer recognition.

Create an inclusive environment

• Encourage participation from all levels and departments.

Employee generated content provides a platform for employees at all levels to voice their opinions and showcase their expertise.

This sense of empowerment can help level the playing field, as individuals are valued for their contributions rather than their titles or positions within the company.  

• Recognize and reward outstanding contributions.

Encouraging and recognizing employees’ content creation efforts can motivate them to continue advocating for the organization. This positive reinforcement helps to maintain a strong sense of pride and loyalty among employees, further solidifying their role as brand ambassadors. 

For example, Sociabble’s badges and peer-to-peer recognition features are perfect for facilitating this. 

• Ensure diverse perspectives are represented.

Engage all employees, even frontline workers, and empower them to create content. Content creation should not just be the domain of specialists or influential content creators; everyone should be able to create employee generated content. And content created should be easy to share.

Sociabble allows everybody, even those who are not provided with professional devices, to connect with the company and produce content, thanks to its easy-to-use mobile app. Employees in the field can create and share content created across social media accounts just as easily as their colleagues at office desks. 

Utilize the right tools and platforms

• Choose user-friendly tools for content creation and sharing. Sociabble functions as an effective solution because it allows for different formats, easy sharing on social media with one click, as well as comments & likes.
• Use internal communication channels to promote EGC. An internal communication software solution like Sociabble allows admins and users to target content to specific audiences by set channels and criteria in order to engage them in a way that is relevant and meaningful. 
• Leverage external platforms for broader reach, when appropriate. Sociabble allows administrators to decide when to allow sharing of content created by employees as social media posts, meaning that reach can be expanded for content that is not confidential, and that can enhance the public image of the brand. 

Using employee generated content to achieve business results: the case of Renault Trucks

Renault Trucks is a brand of the AB Volvo group, which develops, assembles and markets industrial and utility vehicles. Representing 40% of the group’s overall activity, Renault Trucks France has 3 regional hubs and 310 locations. 

Across 4 industrial sites, more than 4,000 employees work together within the Renault Trucks organization. Keeping them all connected, united, and part of the Renault Trucks team was a challenge they decided to tackle using Sociabble, to co-create their own platform specifically for employees called “Tous.”

With “Tous,” many field activities that weren’t previously shared across the enterprise have found a new, broader source of visibility thanks to employee generated content created by frontline workers. 

This content is very successful because it conveys authenticity, thanks to the use of Renault Trucks garage codes and terminology.

In particular, photos of sales, vehicle deliveries, training and workshop reports generate strong support and commitment, and help to reinforce the feeling of belonging to the brand.

Authentic, realistic and very representative of Renault Trucks employees, the images and messages published on “Tous” also find a favorable reception on social networks. 

With a single click, employees can share the content on their own social networks. It’s handy when they want to show their pride in the company, and when they just want to share their expertise.

This ease of use is also a powerful asset when employees participate in events. For example, at trade shows, Renault Trucks now regularly takes first place in terms of share of voice, thanks to the content offered by the marketing team and the posts made directly by the employees on site.

Which platform is best for encouraging Employee Generated Content (EGC)?

Using a platform can help a lot. With Sociabble, you can easily create and share employee generated content because it’s content-focused, and it has a host of features that encourage and empower employees to create and share content. 

In addition to being fun and easy to use, the Sociabble platform allows any type of content format (image, video, gifs, audio) with the possibility for users to like, comment, or re-share across their own social networks.

Admins have total control over sharing parameters, as well as over the targeting that allows different audiences to receive the content that’s relative to them. 

Sociabble has already worked with industry leaders like Coca-Cola CCEP, Primark, Renault Group, and L’Occitane, and we’d love to discuss ways we can help your company too. 

Just click here for a free personalized Sociabble demo.