Forcing staff to post rarely works. A LinkedIn strategist explains how onboarding, leadership and a social media policy build buy-in
Employers hoping to turn staff into employee advocates on LinkedIn should stop asking them to share every company post and start treating participation as optional, according to Kylie Chown, a LinkedIn strategist and founder and director of My Digital Brand.
Employee advocacy – where staff promote their employer’s brand, expertise or job openings through their own social media profiles – is a common goal for HR and marketing teams. Chown says organisations often bring her in wanting their teams to share all the content the company publishes, then wonder why it doesn’t happen.
“At the end of the day, those profiles are individual team member profiles,” she told HRD. “So sometimes people feel a bit funny or a bit awkward and they feel like maybe it’s a little bit of a breach into their private world.”
Participation rates show the scale of the challenge. Research by employee advocacy platform DSMN8 found that the average share of employees posting company content at large Australian-headquartered organisations was 4.92 per cent in July 2024, while top-ranked Randstad Australia reached 20.31 per cent.
Why employee advocacy can’t be forced
Chown’s first piece of advice is to frame advocacy as an invitation. “If we try and force people to do something, it typically doesn’t land well and people don’t like that,” she said.
Asked whether employers can legally require staff to post, she was clear about her view. “At the end of the day, that individual profile is the person’s personal profile. So I don’t believe that they can mandate and say that you must,” she said.
What employers can do, she said, is set expectations for behaviour. “What they can do is they can have a social media policy which can become an internal policy which influences how people behave.” She likened it to a code of conduct for an in-person event. “They might have a social media policy on what you can and can’t do on LinkedIn, but they can’t force you to be active.”
Employers vary widely in their approach. A survey of 1,931 respondents by the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) found only 51 per cent of respondents’ organisations used social media for work activities, while 38 per cent banned personal use entirely. For leaders weighing how hard to push, it’s worth revisiting why LinkedIn has become critical to strategic success.
How to build an employee advocacy program
Chown says a policy alone is not enough. She recommends building social media guidance into onboarding, so new starters understand how the business uses LinkedIn from day one – and into offboarding. “So giving that support when they join the business, but also as well when they exit… you’re helping them exit their association with the business as well,” she said.
Involving staff in the content itself also works better than asking them to repost marketing material. “For more technical businesses, it might be, hey, let’s interview you. What are you seeing on the ground?” she said.
She advises HR to accept that uptake will be uneven. “There are going to be people who are enthusiastic adopters, but you might also have people who are just never going to engage with this. So just really focusing on those ones that can.”
Leadership visibility is non-negotiable. “We can’t be telling people in that kind of middle operational level to do this if their senior leadership team isn’t engaging,” Chown said.
She also recommends raising advocacy in regular team meetings rather than treating it as a one-off launch, and acting on staff feedback. That cross-functional approach mirrors how Flybuys’ HR and marketing teams rebuilt its employer brand.
What do employers gain from employee advocates?
Chown says buyers increasingly connect with individuals rather than corporate brands, pointing to the legal sector, where she does much of her work. “Historically it’s been go to this firm with this name. Now what we’re seeing is go to this lawyer, which is a particular individual,” she said.
“If you can elevate the individual profile of your key team members, by association that’s going to lift the business brand,” she said. When it works, she said, clients engage directly with key people and the sales process becomes more concise.
The company page still matters. “We still need the company page to have content and that’s the credibility,” Chown said. “But conversations happen with people, right?” She added that as more artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content floods feeds, material from individuals who are positioned as professional brands “really does stand out”.
The benefits extend to recruitment. Chown cited data suggesting around 78 per cent of potential employees look at key team members’ profiles before applying for a role. “They’ll look at the company page and go, okay, but cool, who’s my manager? Who will I be working with?” she said.
That scrutiny, she argues, makes advocacy part of the employee value proposition (EVP) – a point that ties closely to the difference between employer brand and talent brand. “People are checking out… who is going to be my manager? What’s been their journey? What do they care about?”
