At some companies, managers will instruct employees to post certain messages on their personal social accounts. It could be positive news about the company. Or marketing material that needs to reach more eyeballs.
Whatever the case, the aim is to turn employees into brand ambassadors.
At Booking Holdings, the company behind brands such as Booking.com, Priceline, KAYAK, and OpenTable, the leadership team tries to avoid putting its more than 24,000 global employees in this position.
“We’re very careful not to ask our employees to be advocating for the company,” said Leslie Cafferty, chief communications officer at Booking Holdings.
While all employers, including Booking Holdings, want employees to share uplifting content about their place of work, it’s best for the motivation to come from within the individual staff member, rather than be a top-down expectation from their boss.
To help foster this desire, Cafferty explained, companies should focus on two things: building trust through clear communication and investing in the employee experience.
As Cafferty put it: “Advocacy cannot be manufactured.”
How do companies build trust through communication?
Before anything else, employees should feel good about their place of work. If they don’t, they likely won’t have anything nice to say about it.
Much of what shapes an employee’s attitude toward their employer comes down to trust. If a staff member suspects their company isn’t being honest with them — which means talking about both the positive and the negative — chances are they won’t be willing to promote it among friends, family and followers.
To help build this trust at Booking Holdings, the company debuted an internal podcast earlier this year called Earnings Unpacked. The series features the company’s CEO, Glenn Fogel, and CFO, Ewout Steenbergen, discussing the company’s latest quarterly earnings report in a plainspoken, jargon-free manner.
During the 20-minute podcast, the two executives make sure to address what’s working and what needs improving.
“When we think about transparency, that trust is knowing that we won’t over-index on trying to just communicate the positives,” said Cafferty.
Another way Booking Holdings aims to build a garden that lets advocacy grow is by hosting Q&A sessions with company executives every 4-6 weeks. Employees can submit questions either in advance or during the event.
Cafferty noted these Q&A sessions aren’t set in stone. During COVID, when the travel industry came to a standstill, they provided weekly CEO updates and hosted Q&A sessions more frequently.
“People really needed that,” said Cafferty.
Booking Holdings continues to adjust how often they occur and which executives answer questions based on employee surveys, attendance rates and circumstances happening across the business.
“We see advocacy from our employees when they genuinely feel like they can trust what the company is telling them — good times, bad times, and everything in-between,” said Cafferty. “It’s challenging because you’re going to be communicating on things that are not the most pleasant topics or the most fun topics all the time.”
How can companies get employees involved in creating content?
Another way Booking Holdings creates an environment where staff members want to spread word of what’s happening on their own accord is through the employee experience.
Over the past decade, for example, Booking.com — the company’s largest brand — has published a report on the year’s top travel predictions. It’s based on a survey of adults around the world who plan to travel for business or leisure in the coming year or two.
For the next edition, however, the company plans to turn to its employee base for their expertise in articulating what’s next for travel.
“We’ve got thousands of employees who are obsessed with travel, so we’re going to help crowdsource,” said Cafferty.
The thinking goes that if employees have a hand in shaping the input, they’ll be proud to broadcast the output.
Booking Holdings saw this situation play out before.
Prior to the pandemic, Booking.com ran a marketing campaign that consisted entirely of employee travel footage. It was purely their adventures from all over the globe.
Cafferty said employees were “super excited” about the opportunity and submitted tons of videos. Naturally, they were more inclined to post about the campaign when it went live, too.
“We didn’t approach this saying, ‘How do we get our employees to be advocates?’” said Cafferty. “We approached this in the general culture of the company, which is really trying to bring our employees on the journey.”
Why do employees share positive content about their company?
Overall, Cafferty explained, the idea is to cultivate an atmosphere where employees want to be brand ambassadors. Not because it’s encouraged by management or there’s some incentive program that awards the top performers, but because it springs up organically.
“Our main objective is to have an engaged employee based,” said Cafferty. “To have our employees believe in our business, our brand, our mission, our vision.”
With these values in place, she added, “advocacy, hopefully, is a nice reflection of those efforts.”
