Empower Your Employees: Boost Engagement with Employee-Generated Content

Discover how to empower and engage your workforce with employee generated content.Employee generated content has become a powerful tool for encouraging employee engagement and participation. When employees have the power to make their voice heard, while also contributing to the overall voice of the company across social networks, it makes the information they receive more relevant, and gives them a motivation to be engaged with company news and industry trends.

In this article, we’ll examine employee generated content in depth, and explain its role in boosting employee engagement across the board. 

What is employee generated content?

A good place to start with is the definition of employee generated content. So what, exactly, is it? Well, it’s content that is created and shared by employees themselves, rather than content created by corporate leadership. It can take many forms, from text to images to videos, and it can be shared only internally on a collaboration platform, or externally across the web via social networks. 

Some examples? If a frontline worker makes and posts a short video sharing their best practices for explaining product features to customers on LinkedIn, that’s employee generated content. If someone in accounting shares a list of what can be expensed and what can’t on Teams, that’s employee generated content. And if Linda in the art department decides to post some funny pictures from the company retreat on her own private Instagram page, that’s employee generated content, too.  

How user generated content makes employees engaged 

Empowering your workforce to create employee generated content is much more than just a nice gesture, or a tip of the cap to their own experiences. In fact, when employees share their opinions and thoughts, it plays a crucial role in increasing engagement for several reasons:

Sense of ownership and belonging

When employees are encouraged to voice their opinions, they feel more connected to the organization and its goals. This sense of employee participation and belonging fosters a deeper commitment to the company’s success, leading to higher engagement levels.

An employee communication platform like Sociabble enables content creation, in various formats. It makes it easy for employees to connect and get to know each other, thanks to comments and likes, and thanks to its translation feature, they don’t even need to speak the same language.

Valued and respected

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.

Sociabble helps companies accomplish this thanks to peer-to-peer recognition, badges, and praise features. By recognizing team members,they in turn feel recognized and appreciated, which encourages participation and engagement. 

Recognition and awards can be given to a specific person, or a group of employees, when team recognition is merited.

Increased job satisfaction

Employees who feel heard and appreciated are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. Job satisfaction is a key factor in engagement, as satisfied employees are more likely to be committed, productive, and invested in their work.

With Sociabble, for example, employees can easily be made aware of job openings within the company, and also share those openings across their networks. Training sessions are also easy to plan and deliver thanks to its live video feature and video sharing capabilities. .

Open communication and trust

Encouraging employees to share their opinions helps create an environment of open communication and trust. When employees feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, they are more likely to raise concerns or propose innovative solutions, ultimately benefiting the organization as a whole.

For example, Sociabble’s CSR feature “Support My Cause” empowers employees to share their thoughts and ideas around potential social responsibility initiatives, and even vote on a winner, giving them a voice in the company’s charitable activities as well. 

Personal and professional growth

Sharing opinions and engaging in constructive discussions with colleagues can lead to personal and professional growth. Employees can learn from each other’s experiences and perspectives, enhancing their skills and knowledge. This continuous learning and development further contributes to increased engagement levels.

Thanks to Sociabble’s versatility, it’s possible to share best practice content from one department to another, and content can be addressed to a specific audience in order to share feedback, solutions etc. 

For example, an instructional and targeted video that shows how to display products in a store can be shared across departments and regions, and used by retail workers as a learning opportunity. 

Enhanced teamwork and collaboration

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.

Sociabble’s chat feature, for example, makes instant collaboration possible, with individual or group chat options and, with emojis and reactions included. And if text-based chats aren’t enough, instant video conferencing can be added, so the conversation becomes live. 

Reduced turnover rates

Engaged employees are more likely to stay with their current employer, resulting in lower turnover rates. By allowing employees to express their opinions in the form of content, companies can create a positive work environment that encourages employee loyalty and commitment, reducing the cost of talent retention and recruitment marketing for a company.

Edenred Case Study: Building a Strong Company Culture with EGC across Social Media Platforms

Edenred, leader in special-purpose payment solutions for the world of work, has been involved in sponsoring ocean racing for several years, serving as an opportunity to unite all Edenred teams worldwide (10,000 employees in 46 countries) and to strengthen their pride in belonging to the Group.

The Challenges

However, inviting all of their employees to the big Trinité-sur-Mer race during the launch of their latest Class40 boat was obviously not realistic. Thus, the challenge: to find a strategy to involve all the employees from a distance as ambassadors for the employer brand. This is how the “Red Boat Trip Challenge” project came about.

The Solutions 

“Red Boat Trip Challenge” was deployed to employees through the Sociabble platform, with content linked to the new Class40 yacht. The objective was first to arouse the interest of more employees in the sponsorship campaign, then to engage them in an employee advocacy approach, with the aim to create employee generated content.

In the end, the “Red Boat Trip Challenge,” a campaign designed to leverage user generated content, took place in 4 stages, from June to September 2021:

1. A miniature model kit of the new Class40 boat was sent to each of Edenred’s 10,000 existing employees. It was then the focus of a challenge on their Sociabble digital platform.
2. All current employees were then asked to search for, find and comment on a hidden photo of the Edenred boat, to be found on the platform.
3. Each employee was then encouraged to participate in the content creation process via an online photo challenge, by sharing social media posts with an original photo of their own assembled boat model as employee generated content. 
4. Finally, after being asked to share employee generated content, employees also shared the Group’s content on their own social media accounts as brand advocates, regardless of whether or not they were influential content creators or had their own personal brand.

The Results 

In the end, the campaign marketing strategy to create content was a great success. Thanks to the commitment of the employees and the content created, the “Red Boat Trip Challenge” campaign considerably increased the awareness of the sponsorship project, both internally and in external communications. 

During the employee advocacy campaign, Edenred noted that 90% of employees became active users of the platform, with a 276% increase in internal actions related to content, a 100% increase in external shares, and a paid media savings of €63,130.

Sociabble for an effective employee generated content strategy

As illustrated above, the right employee communication platform will not only enable employee generated content, it will encourage its creation and distribution.

With Sociabble, your employees will be able to create content in a variety of formats (photos, videos, gifs, etc.), post content across their own social media networks, and engage via comments, likes, and reshares. And to fine-tune your approach, a full package of data analytics is available to admins. 

Sociabble is already used by industry leaders like Coca-Cola CCEP, Renault Group, L’Occitane en Provence, and Primark, and we’d love to discuss ways we can help your company, too.

To learn more, you can click here for a free demo.