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26 First, how internal brand ambassadorship can have a positive influence on employer branding.
We see that an employer brand strategy can be everything that presents an employee value proposition (EVP) and internal brand ambassadorship should be part of this proposition as this can add value to the corporate brand.
We have experienced this concept in the way potential employees were considered more attractive and had a higher probability to apply for a job offer that included the internal ambassadorship program as part of the organization’s proposed benefits.
Also, related to the advertisement that mentioned ambassadorship, potential employees were also more likely to engage in social actions related to the company, digital or not.
Diving deeper into the job advertisement in question, we see that the internal ambassador program comes in fifth, in the list of criterium that participants classified as making the described organization attractive. It comes behind four factors that are coming on top in important research in the field of employer branding such as Randstad Employer Brand Research.
This is an important listing, putting internal ambassador programs very close in the list of criteria that potential employees consider when choosing a workplace and highlighting the importance that these programs can have when implementing an employer brand strategy.
Second, we have found that corporate brands that implement in their strategy a program of internal brand ambassadors, are considered to be more attractive to potential employees and we confirm this on how the program itself had an impact on the participant's likelihood to apply, making it a factor to include in their choice process.
Following this thought process and focusing on employer branding, the research also
concluded that brands that have employer branding strategies are more likely to be chosen as a place to work by potential employees, and this was tested with a variety of real brands that have their own strategies in place. IKEA, Google, and Microsoft were the most chosen brands and participants already followed these companies' activities with attention.
But what makes an internal ambassadorship program? We’ve seen that the impact of
employee-generated content can be stronger than content created by companies, in terms of feelings of potential employees as well as becoming a source of company review and even creating motivation to apply to the company.
If companies want to start an internal ambassadorship program, EGC (employee-generated content) must be a part of it, as it engages employees but also creates an organic movement of content that is seen as reliable by social media users that can become potential employees.
Social media has proven its place in terms of engagement with brands and employer branding (Kaur et al., 2015), so companies should include employee-generated content in their internal ambassadorship frameworks, to ensure every time an employee shares their experience working in the company, it can have a positive impact in the corporate brand, attracting new workers but also engaging the ones that are currently working there.
Even though, most social media users still don’t feel comfortable taking the first step in becoming EGC creators, a brand ambassadorship program can motivate this action with a reward and recognition system as a starting point.
27 Lastly, we also validated how age is important, seeing that younger employees are more prone to become internal brand ambassadors and share their experiences with other professionals outside the brand. Age can also impact the will to apply for a certain job offer. This can be explained by the uncertain feeling of change, that older employees experience
(Dechawatanapaisal, 2019).
There are also some relevant points to take into consideration in a choice of place to work. For example, what sources do potential employees consider to be reliable? Is there a preference for online reviews or word-to-mouth (WOM) is more trustable? Our research helped to answer these questions.
We see that potential employees consider more trustable the online reviews from current employees working in their target company. On the other hand, online platforms such as Glassdoor, and the employer brand website, are also considered to be reliable.
Glassdoor has over fifty million reviews, gathering all types of useful information about organizations such as real work environment described or perks, it also gathers employee reviews, making this platform the most reliable source of work reviews for potential
employees, by joining the best of both worlds (40+ Stats For Companies To Keep In Mind for 2021 – Glassdoor for Employers, 2021.).
We see that a potential employee's journey to choose a workplace can be defined by a series of important factors and that organizations can help build this path with an employer brand strategy that includes honest communication with the outside. This can be done with internal ambassadors that can share their work experience by becoming employee-generated content creators, being a reliable source of information from the organization, and advocating for the corporate brand, being truly corporate influencers.
This research further helped to understand the impact that a brand ambassadorship program and employee-generated content (EGC) can have in a company, by engaging employees and therefore promoting retention, but also motivating potential employees to apply to the company that has this program, showing the inside perspective of the work environment and promoting attraction of new employees.
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