How to create internal employee ambassador roles with purpose

Each time your employees talk about their day, meeting, or even just that amazing muffin they had in the office kitchen to someone they know, they’re an ambassador.

Every single person at your company has an important internal brand ambassador role. As Lauren Weatherly said in Forbes, “All of the paid advertising in the world cannot top word of mouth from a trusted source.”

With this in mind, how can you elevate this essential role to enhance your brand’s reputation as the go-to place for top talent and clients?

Here are five tips to get you started.

5 ways to develop the internal employee ambassador role

1. Create leadership buy-in to the concept itself

First, make the business case. If you have 80,000 colleagues, that’s 80,000 potential influencers who can be talking about your brand. Let your C-suite be aware – if they aren’t already – that 98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, and 50% of those will post about their company.

Leadership support will make the next three suggestions easier to activate too.

1. Be honest

Does your company or organisation have a great, or at least good, company culture which deserves talking about? And where internal sharing and recognition can flourish and be celebrated? Before even thinking about purposely creating internal brand ambassadors, ask yourself if the right time is now or if you want to make some improvements first. Not sure? Talk to us.

1. People will remember how you made them feel

In the words of Maya Angelou, “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how they made you feel.” So, don’t worry too much about what you want people to say.

If you do something good that aligns with your values, things will fall into place. Your people will be proud of you, and you’ll find that all those conversations and online shares will happen organically – internally and externally.

Create purposeful employee ambassador networks to advocate for your brand and give them the toolkits/ information necessary. But training can go a long way. So, co-create, test and learn with a pilot community.

4. Reward your people

Acknowledge the extra work and time that it takes to step into the shoes of an internal brand ambassador role.

Outline the aim, recruit enthusiasts transparently and make it appealing with a clear value exchange and responsibilities, from providing opportunities to speak at global conferences or having their content promoted on LinkedIn Elevate.

Allow an amount of broad freedom and give them the time they need to fully engage.

1. Try to embrace warts-and-all

It’s important to know that when you give people a voice, not everything they say will be perfect.

If you open the floor to employees, they are going to paint an authentic picture. Try to get comfortable with this. Being real, and honest, while clearly wanting to do your best and doing good things (see point 3) has huge value.

Develop your brand employee ambassador programme today

If you’re thinking about how an employee brand ambassador programme could work within your organisation, explore our solution for living your brand internally.

At McCann Synergy, we’ve helped many global brands turn employees into loyal ambassadors to help elevate growth, enhance work culture and make it easier to attract and retain the best talent.

Email Blair Meyler, our Head of Growth at blair.meyler@mccannsynergy.com to find out more.