Would you let your boss examine your social media? For many of us, the answer would be a firm no. What about allowing your manager to tell you what to post? It may sound dystopian but increasingly workers are willing to post on their employer’s behalf. A number of companies have identified marketing potential in staff’s personal X, LinkedIn or Instagram profiles and, in what are innocuously known as “employee advocacy programmes”, are encouraging workers to share positive news about the company.
Whether employees are paid for promoting their company on socials differs from firm to firm, says Jenna Jacobson, research fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Social Media Lab. “Some companies have formal arrangements ” she says, generally involving employer-approved posts. In other firms, programmes are unpaid.