Maximus Helps Employees Grow Their Personal Brands With the Adoption of GaggleAMP

Maximus is a government contractor who does work on the state, local, and federal levels. They help the government communicate with people through call centers, customer service, and technology for their programs.

It is crucial for Maximus to consistently promote themselves and their brand. This helps them secure important contracts and attract new employees. By doing so, they can address areas where they need the most assistance. And when you need to promote your brand and increase brand awareness positively, there is no better place to do it than social media.

“For the most part, I think employees want to talk about their company on social media but are hesitant because they don't know how to go about it. Formalizing a program helps provide them with resources and guidance that will make them feel comfortable with speaking about their employer online.”

-Dianne Henderson, Communications Manager at Maximus.

Last year, they connected their employees with the right corporate content. This led to a 291% increase in brand reach and visibility through employee advocacy. This surpassed what their brand handle could achieve on its own, increasing their professional presence and networks. In just the last 90 days, Maximus has over 3.6M in reach, on pace to break their 2023 record.

Jumpstarting an Employee Advocacy Initiative Into High Gear

The idea of a brand advocacy program was not new to Maximus. In fact, GaggleAMP was their vendor of choice, but Maximus wanted to redefine their outcomes and start a fresh program.

“We already had a program in place when I started with Maximus. The program did okay, but I knew it would be much stronger with some structure and focus” says Dianne. “Having built a program in the past, I saw an opportunity to roll out a strategy to help our employees to become more strategic on social while supporting our company-wide initiatives.”

While the original program was ad hoc, their new program was rooted in strategy and documentation. “We hit reset on the program and prioritized creating an in-depth program guide—something that was lacking when the program first launched. This helped the program to be seen as official to those we were recruited to join” says Dianne.

Dianne and Communications Specialist, Jessie Moyer, made a list of KPIs to measure the success of their program relaunch. They centered the initial KPIs around their retention and recruitment strategy, choosing to focus on two metrics:

• Goal #1: 100 advocates in the Gaggle in the first eight months.
• Goal #2: Meet or exceed active participant benchmarks for similar size Gaggles.

Maximus crushed both goals early on while still focusing on quality versus quantity. “We are very selective about who is in the program. We encourage people to share content authentically and build a personal brand rather than having a ton of people in the program using it passively” shares Jessie.

The relaunch helped their Employee Earned Media Value to soar, driving over $86K in value. This helped the Maximus team prepare for the next step: Building a community and encouraging the authentic development of people’s personal brands.

Cultivating a Connected Community of People

“We’re cultivating a community of people that want to be using their social networks professionally. A continuous feedback loop helps make the program stronger and keeps our advocates engaged.”

- Jessie Moyer, Communications Specialist at Maximus.

Participation in the Maximus employee advocacy program hinges on employees being active on LinkedIn. Many employees have a LinkedIn account, but they may not use it for personal gain or benefit. Dianne and Jessie provided training for employees to enhance their LinkedIn profiles. They also encouraged them to participate in the company's advocacy efforts through GaggleAMP once training was complete.

This strategy was successful. They focused on involving their most engaged employees (employee resource group advocates and Maximus Foundation ambassadors) along with employees who can benefit from social media in their day-to-day roles (business development and recruitment teams).

Maximus provided employees with a program guide to demonstrate why and how to use GaggleAMP on social media. As an active participant in the program, Maximus employees saw their direct impact on the program results. They saw, backed by numbers, how important it was to have their voices included in telling the brand story to their trusted networks. Understanding the importance of being active participants, and being armed with an in-depth program guide, helped drive results from their employee advocacy efforts.

A page from the Maximus Advocacy Program Guide describing 
achievement levels open to employees.

As they continue to build their team of advocates, Dianne and Jessie are also focused on changing some behaviors that will help to improve the quality of their advocates and give them an opportunity to inform the future strategy of the program. For example, they’re teaching their community to:

• Personalize content before sharing it, using the AI-powered paraphraser to help.
• Schedule content using the social media content calendar.
• Reject activities versus not sharing them to give better insight into what resonates with their advocates and what doesn’t.

This focus is helping advocates succeed too. The average advocate accrued 77 additional followers this past year, yielding almost 15,000 new followers to their Gaggle participants. With more followers comes more interactions and stronger reach, helping Maximus to grow their visibility with new people and markets.

The emphasis on advocate success not only drove internal results but also helped Dianne and Jessie win their company's internal Values Icon Award for Innovation. This award is given to employees who demonstrate excellence in one of their six company values.

What Worked When Relaunching the Maximus Program

When starting a new employee advocacy program or changing platforms, it's important to understand which strategies work best.

Lead With Employees First, Your Needs Second

Maximus needed employees to discuss employer branding initiatives, DE&I, and demonstrate the value proposition from an employee perspective. But, Dianne and Jessie understood their ask is a lot of work. Leading with professional training, they helped employees before helping themselves. This ensured that program participants engaged with "What's in it for me" before "What's in it for you."

Employees Like Gamification and Rewards

Employees can earn swag and different achievement levels based on the accrual of points and the sharing of content. When gamification is tied to employee advocacy programs, there is something to look forward to. The company goes above and beyond to customize its profile images, letting everyone know they are an ‘Advocate.’ Plus, participating in the program may lead to recognition as their Advocate of the Month.

A page from the Maximus Brand Advocacy Guide

Assume Nothing and Teach Everything

Dianne and Jessie assumed nothing and that everyone needed help understanding their part in the Maximus social media advocacy program. Teaching about their role and how to use the tool helped advocates feel comfortable with their company's requests. Every advocate receives the advocacy program guide and is invited to join the Microsoft Teams group for tips, tricks, and real-time engagement with the company and their fellow advocates.

Identify an Executive Ambassador

To help with the buy-in of their brand advocacy program, the CHRO relaunched the program to other senior leaders. Senior leadership support helped Dianne and Jessie promote it to other teams with their approval.

Include Employee Advocacy in Onboarding

Starting this year, Maximus will introduce employee brand advocacy with GaggleAMP to every new employee on day 75.

They discovered this is the ideal time for an employee to join a new program. This is when the employee is settled on items like pay and benefits, but also not too busy with daily tasks. This focus on employees promoting the company's brand highlights the importance of participating in programs like this. It benefits both the employer and the employee.

Learn how to create a Gaggle and engage your employees on social media through employee advocacy. Contact us for a demo today!