Ricoh Canada’s Strategic Launch of an Employee Advocacy Program

No matter the size of your organization, having a strong social media presence can be a tough task. 

Natalie Chung, Brand & Communications Manager at Ricoh Canada, knew she needed to adopt a new approach to their social media strategy for the 2019 fiscal year. At an employee level, she identified a strong employee following for Ricoh Canada’s social media platforms and utilized this internal audience as a starting point in actively promoting Ricoh Canada’s messaging, initiatives, and content. By choosing to enable them through an employee advocacy program, she turned to GaggleAMP. 

"The company has increased its reach on social media from over 500,000 people over its three-month pilot program, to 2.6 million in the following 6 months."

Natalie Chung

Brand and Communications Manager at Ricoh Canada

“Our social platforms have experienced steady growth in followers, impressions, and reach,” Natalie said. “Many of our users noted an increase in engagement within their own personal audiences as well as LinkedIn connections. Overall, everyone is very happy with how easy it is to use the platform and how the functionality of the platform offers our employees complete control over the content they choose to reshare.”  

Starting Out Small But Strategic  

To get started, Natalie focused the employee advocacy program around nine sales reps who were already very active on social media and regularly shared company-curated content. 

From January to March of this year, during Ricoh Canada’s three month trial period, the nine sales reps used GaggleAMP to promote company posts, content, and respond to activities that were requested through the tool. There are over 50 activities program managers can request of their employees, including post content on LinkedIn, like a post on Facebook, retweet a post on Twitter, write a review on Glassdoor, watch a video on YouTube, and much more.  

During the three-month trial, the nine sales reps generated a collective reach of 534,000 people on social media. Each of them experienced a notable boost in engagement on their personal accounts and agreed to advocate for the program as it was rolled out to other departments across the organization. 

Expanding the Program

After noting a significant improvement in KPIs through a small group of employees who were already active on social media, Natalie decided to expand the program to more departments across the organization. This process started in April and continued throughout the summer period.  

The nine sales reps from the original pilot group were assigned the roles of GaggleAMP ambassadors and tasked with identifying colleagues in Sales who they thought were ready and could benefit from performing employee advocacy. The GaggleAMP platform was also rolled out to other departments including Marketing, Human Resources, Services, and the Executive Management Team. These new groups of program members took part in training sessions where Joe Quigley, Customer Success Manager at GaggleAMP, presented and demoed the concept of employee advocacy, how to use the GaggleAMP tool, and more. 

In the training sessions, the pilot users shared their experiences alongside the functionalities of GaggleAMP they liked, such as the ability to schedule posts. The training has been successful, with all employees adopting the platform easily and getting active and involved in Ricoh Canada’s employee advocacy efforts on social media. 

“One of the most notable successes is how willing and engaged our employees are in using the platform. Their usage and dedication to encourage social amplification have over-exceeded our expectations.”

Natalie Chung

Brand and Communications Manager at Ricoh Canada

Long-term Strategy

Ricoh Canada continues to expand its program by adding more employees and keeping ones already in the program active and motivated. 

To create a little friendly competition, Natalie regularly shares the leaderboard to employees so they see who is participating the most in the program. Simply sharing this acknowledgment gives a little extra motivation to those involved. The company hasn’t implemented gamification into the program but is considering the option. 

Ricoh Canada has expanded its reach to over 2.6 million people on social media since launching GaggleAMP and continues to grow as employees in the program get more acclimated while also expanding the platform to other employee groups across the company.