In 2020, the Renault Group Doubled Its Reach in Employee Advocacy

Despite a challenging year, the Renault Group was able to adapt to new circumstances, and has succeeded in expanding its visibility on social networks significantly. Positive results were made possible thanks to a solid Employee Advocacy program, which managed to double its reach over the course of 2020.

For more than 120 years, Renault has designed, built, and sold vehicles around the world. Founded in 1898 in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, the brand has gradually transformed into a truly international group, providing automotive mobility for people all around the world. The Renault Group is present in more than 130 countries, and they sold 2.95 million vehicles in 2020 alone. And to manage the human side of this global venture, more than 170,000 employees work on behalf of its various brands. (In 2021: Renault, Dacia/Lada, Alpine, Mobilize).

Given the considerable variety of its activities and its products, brand recognition and identity have become important issues for the company.

The challenge arose: how can an international and diverse company solidify the coherence of the overall group?

In 2016, a project was launched to empower the group’s employees to help convey a consistent brand image and messaging, aligned with the corporate strategy.

Being aware that this fresh communication directive would have to take advantage of new platforms and technologies—social media and mobile networks, in particular—the communication teams decided it best to deploy an Employee Advocacy program.

By promoting the feeling of belonging to the same brand, based on values and a common vision, the initiative would transform employees into brand ambassadors of the Renault Group. Once mobilized and engaged, employees would help to amplify the brand’s share of voice, both internally and externally as well.

The basic objectives of this Employee Advocacy program can be summarized as follows:

• Develop the brand’s online reputation and relay the leadership and expertise of the Renault Group across social networks. Follow the analytics of the campaign and its impact on sales
• Enhance the digital skills of Renault Group employees, on social networks in particular
• Promote the image of the brand as a top-notch employer, especially among the younger set of pro-spective hires
• Communicate the new strategy and contribute to the engagement of all 170,000 employees

In the absence of a tool to centralize and share brand news and information across social networks, the Renault Group decided to seek out the best platform for the job.

Ideally, they wanted a tool that could aggregate attractive content from different sources: social feeds, curated third-party content, content offered by the users themselves (UGC), and content exclusively for communication.

Users needed to be able to find, react to, and easily share content that was relevant or of interest to them, on a single platform, while still helping to increase the visibility of the Renault Group content across social networks.

For its Employee Advocacy program, the Renault Group chose to recruit employees that represented the actual diversity of the brand: in addition to employees in communication and marketing roles, managers and employees in factories around the world (including operators) would serve as the daily users of the platform. Thus, accessibility, multilingual management, and availability on mobile were crucial criteria.

Finally, backed by analytics for precise measurement of content-related activity, the platform had to offer tools for engaging the full community of users.

In light of these criteria, Sociabble’s proposal quickly convinced the Renault Group. Available on mobile and on the web in a host of languages, designed for the aggregation and sharing of rich and visually-branded content across social networks, and open to the creation of user generated content—not to mention its administrative and engagement features—the Sociabble platform provided an effective solution. By using Sociabble, the ambassadors from each country represented by the group would be able find relevant, interesting content available in their own local language.

But above all, with the option of real-time monitoring for content performance, users can adjust their content offering over time to optimize engagement and sharing.

During the implementation of the project, the Renault Group benefited from one of Sociabble’s strengths: personalized support and monitoring, over time, from a team of specialized consultants. Getting started with the tool, honing the content strategy, optimizing publication and sharing methods, administering and observing the platform performance indicators—the advice from the Sociabble team helped the program run smoothly and effectively.

Exclusive and high-quality content for ambassadors

Today, for the 1,200 employees involved in its Employee Advocacy program,the Renault Group offers a version of the Sociabble platform in the brand’s own colors called “Share It!”. The Renault Group publishes quality content there, covering all its major subjects: group news to promote team spirit, those of its various brands, and of course, content to facilitate product knowledge and the competitive landscape.

Additionally, the platform is the place to promote innovation and transformation—the environment, new models, electric and hybrid vehicles—it’s all there. And to achieve the group’s strategic objective of becoming the leader in electric vehicles in Europe, the Renault Group relies heavily on the curation of external content via the platform as well.

Through regular publications on the theme of energy transition in the automotive sector as well as others, communication teams and ambassadors contribute to the dissemination of a whole new culture.

Here, the major challenge for the Renault Group team was to come up with an editorial line that served an Employee Advocacy program, while also remaining consistent with the communication plan. Sociabble’s content creation possibilities, particularly for visual and interactive content (multi-image posts, video, surveys, quizzes, etc.) made it possible to quickly overcome this obstacle.

From the brand’s social feeds, aggregated on the platform by means of scheduled curation or by user contributions, these publications can enrich the community with content, and generate positive brand awareness.

Diverse and active ambassadors

From the launch of “Share It!”, the Renault Group has chosen to integrate employees from the various branches of the brand into its platform. This includes representatives from communication and marketing, of course, but also employees in factories as well as engineers. All users have been made aware of the specific objectives of the program thanks to dedicated support.

Because Sociabble is a simple and intuitive platform, fifteen minutes of training were enough to ensure an operational command of its functions. And to support employees over the long term, the Renault Group communications team publishes fresh support content on best practices related to social networks every week.

Sociabble is a simple, useful, fun, and secure tool!

Barbara Marzari Wibaux Managerial coms and employee engagement manager Renault Group

The primary mobile communication tool for the Renault Group

Sociabble’s overall ease of use was a decisive factor for the Renault Group. In their daily lives, ambassadors have access to “Share It!”no matter where they are, including:

• For frontline and factory workers, the availability of a mobile-native application in the brand’s colors has not only made it possible to receive and immediately share information that is meaningful to them but has also helped to strengthen the collective sense of pride and belonging. Every hour, they can view news that exposes the positive results of their work to the whole world.
• In offices, for administrative and management functions, the integration of Sociabble into the Microsoft Teams interface makes it possible to immediately find within the Teams environment the important communication elements to share on social networks.

More than a flow of information, it’s a tool for engagement

To ensure the involvement of its users on its platform, the Renault Group has relied on the many engagement features included with Sociabble.

First, there is the newsletter module. Perfectly integrated, it allows administrators to compose the most attractive custom newsletter for their audience by selecting the relevant content from the platform. A few clicks are all it takes to compose the titles, design, and layout. And thanks to Sociabble’s native multilingual features, newsletter content automatically arrives in the user’s preferred language. Once designed and distributed, the newsletter becomes a crucial tool for attracting recipients to “Share It!”, contributing directly to their knowledge and commitment to the brand’s content.

In a company the size of the Renault Group, the relevance of communication also requires precise targeting. Indeed, sending all messages to all employees risks distracting them from the information that’s actually essential for them. This is why, in order to reduce the noise of its communication and strengthen the engagement of ambassadors around content, the Renault Group has chosen to develop a content targeting strategy that utilizes the audience targeting features included with Sociabble. For example, it can send the most relevant content specifically to motorsport enthusiasts based on that specific interest, ensuring that dedicated content reaches the right ambassadors for the topic.

In addition to attracting employees with content that’s most interesting to them, the Renault Group takes advantage of the admin and gamification features of Sociabble to generate friendly competition between employees and reward the most committed. Campaigns, challenges, and badges are all motivators for users who can shine through their involvement with Employee Advocacy.

Everyone should be comfortable with digital tools and social media. With the help of Sociabble, we are very active in training and promoting increased skills among employees of the Renault Group.

Barbara Marzari Wibaux Managerial coms and employee engagement manager Renault Group

And to significantly reward its most committed ambassadors, the Renault Group relies on one specific CSR program integrated into the platform: Sociabble Trees. With this platform-native module, the brand can reward the most active ambassadors with trees planted in their name, in reforestation programs around the world. According to Barbara Marzari Wibaux, the Managerial Comms and Employee Engagement Manager at the Renault Group:

“We are very satisfied with Sociabble Trees, which gives us additional leverage. For ambassadors, it’s often a nice surprise, and that makes them happy. We regularly publish our results (number of trees planted and carbon offset). Today, we even offer a tree as a welcome gift to all new ambassadors.”

First place in share of voice

By equipping hundreds of employees with an Employee Advocacy platform, the Renault Group quickly laid the foundations for an innovative and effective program. Just in the first weeks, the results confirmed the importance and relevance of the initiative, and the Renault Group was able to reach first place in terms of share of voice at major motor shows.

In 2020, “Share It!”, coupled with the content it offers and the partnership between the Group Renault and Sociabble teams, has practically doubled the reach of its Employee Advocacy program. And the initiative’s performance data, consolidated in real time on the platform, makes it possible to adjust the strategy for specific campaigns as they are rolled out, for maximum results.

Additionally, thanks to the enduring commitment of Renault Group employees, more than 400 trees have been planted over the past 4 months, together with the Sociabble Trees program.

“Sociabble is a simple, useful, fun, and secure tool,” summarizes Barbara Marzari Wibaux, the Renault Group’s Managerial Comms and Employee Engagement Manager.

The range of possibilities is important, but above all, it’s accessible and easy to implement. There really is a lot you can do with it, and you can do it your own way!

Barbara Marzari Wibaux Managerial coms and employee engagement manager Renault Group