Building culture and employer branding with crowdsourced comms

Comms pros hold the key to keeping employees engaged through thoughtful messaging and well-timed announcements. But the most engaging material doesn’t always originate in a meeting within the communications department. Sometimes it begins with the employees themselves.

Anne DeAngelis, executive vice president of employee engagement at Zeno Group, told Ragan that crowdsourcing is much more than just a way to harness ideas — it’s a foundation of a positive work culture through communication.

“Crowdsourcing is a different way to show your commitment to two-way communication,” DeAngelis said. “You’re asking for employees’ ideas. That helps people feel respected and heard, and it builds a culture of innovation. Use crowdsourcing to improve the work by going to people grounded in the day-to-day.”

Here are a few other tips and tactics for internal communicators seeking to enhance employee engagement through crowdsourcing.

An ‘always-on’ and people-first approach for engagement and employer branding

A great way to ensure you’ve got a rich pipeline to crowdsource from is by providing employees with a platform to share their ideas and perspectives. Abby Sturgill, director of associate communications and engagement at Kroger, told Ragan that her team keeps a close eye on Viva Engage at all times to figure out new employee stories to share.

“We have it set up with pages for every division, pages by role and communities where associates post about their wins, uplift each other and recognize each other,” Sturgill said. “We use that quite a bit to source content for our internal channels.”

In many cases, what’s internal is external, and Kroger’s employee engagement efforts are no exception. Sturgill said that the comms team mines internal posts to then display them on an employee-focused Instagram page in the hopes of recruiting new employees. She shared the example of crowdsourcing friendly competitions that can go from internal-facing to shared with the world.

“A lot of the divisions run contests like who can post the best floral display for Valentine’s Day to encourage associates to post more,” she said. “Our engagement efforts are organic and always-on in nature.”

Boost belonging by tying crowdsourcing to the company mission

A major benefit of crowdsourced communication is increasing a sense of belonging to a larger organizational culture. Crowdsourced content allows employees to see themselves and their colleagues reflected in company-branded campaigns, which can contribute to a unified sense of culture — especially when it’s tied to the company’s larger mission.

Sturgill told Ragan about a crowdsourced campaign around the holidays that reaped benefits both internally and externally.

“The holidays mean food, and that’s what we do at Kroger,” she said. “The past couple of years our corporate ad campaign has been about the ties that bind us and how the holidays and food are at the center of that. So, we’ve crowdsourced associates’ favorite family recipes — sometimes with a photo of who they made it with — so they can then see themselves in the consumer marketing.”

 Crowdsourcing is just as valuable for communicators in the tough moments as it is in the happy ones. Sturgill said that in times of major transition at Kroger, the comms team holds listening sessions with employees to learn their perspectives and inform how they might respond in their messaging.

“We’ve had divisions nominate folks to be in these listening sessions so that we’ll get a cross-functional look at what people are thinking,” Sturgill said. “We can ask some probing questions to hear what people are saying — and that can help us drive future messaging, change HR practices or whatever is best to support them in those moments.”

Measure your crowdsourced successes

As is the case with so many comms initiatives, crowdsourcing for employee engagement works best when communicators can measure their successes. This allows them to show leadership that their tactics are working and gain more buy-in to experiment even more.

“If you see an area that’s leaning into crowdsourcing, see if there’s any correlation to their employee engagement scores,” DeAngelis said. “We know that when you people feel heard, they tend to stay. You could look at rates of promotions and if you can tie those to existing measures, that’s great for communications.”

DeAngelis suggested that comms pros showcase crowdsourcing successes to leaders by compiling before-and-after profiles that feature employee crowdsourcing initiatives.

“Every quarter, do a roundup of the improvements based on the crowdsourcing,” DeAngelis said. “Reward and spotlight the employees — everyone likes to know how the job gets done. When you spotlight a solution, other teams read it, and they call the inventor and adopt it. Report to leaders that the idea spread — that outcome can be powerful.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.