4 Reasons You Want Your Employees Using LinkedIn

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is the place to be for job seekers. In fact, over 49 million people use the platform to search for jobs every single week and it’s been reported that in every minute, 6 people get hired on LinkedIn.

Pretty wild, right?!

But LinkedIn is no longer JUST for job seekers. It’s also for people who are perfectly happy at their current job, but want to be seen as a thought leader in their industry and build their personal brand.

If you scroll through your LinkedIn feed for any amount of time, you’ll notice that people are posting on the platform every single day sharing their expertise and personal insights to tell stories. 

It’s content like this that really starts to build an audience and get you connected with more of the right people. The only issue that some employees are seeing is that their employer or leader doesn’t want them to be active on the platform because they don’t want their employees to be recruited by other companies.

As someone that preaches LinkedIn for EVERYONE and as a leader myself, this breaks my heart a little because your employees being active on LinkedIn can be one of the BEST things for your company!

Here are the 4 reasons ⬇️

• Increased Brand Awareness

Your employees are among the top group of people who will engage with your company's LinkedIn posts. What this means for you as a leader is that your company page will get more eyeballs just by your employees engaging with the content because when they like or share company posts, that content instantly becomes visible to their connections. 

This means that people who don’t yet follow the company page will see the content and it increases the chance of them hitting that “follow” button. 

Don’t believe this is true? Here’s some proof for you!

• Build Brand Advocates

When your employees are active on LinkedIn, they really become a spokesperson and advocate for the brand itself.

There’s truly no one else that can speak more accurately about a company than the employees as they have an inside experience of how things run. 

If your company is designed well and takes care of its employees, then they will have no problem shouting your name from the LinkedIn rooftops.

This will attract MORE people to your brand because people love to support a company that supports its people.

• Employee Morale Boost

When you encourage your employees to create a personal brand and let them freely display that through LinkedIn, you’re ultimately giving them a bigger purpose outside of their day-to-day work duties. 

They’re able to share their expertise and experiences in a way that inspires others, which in turn boosts their morale and gets them more excited about their personal and professional growth. 

I’m sure at some point in your life, you’ve had a job that was just that - a job. You went to work, clocked in, did your tasks for the day, clocked out and repeated it day after day with no real excitement behind it. 

That’s not a good feeling, which is why it’s so exciting that you have the opportunity as a leader to help your team recognize that what they do is so much more than just a job and help them put their talents on display in a way that they’re proud of.

The happier your employees are, the longer they’ll stay! Hellooooo employee retention 👋🏼

• Professional Development 

Lastly, your employees being on LinkedIn is kind of like free professional development and this is a huge bonus because as a leader, you want to know that your employees are growing their mindset and skillset, right?

Well, many professional trainings are an investment and it’s not always in the company budget. As an alternative, you can allow your employees to be active on LinkedIn and know that they are being surrounded by other professionals who have lots of expertise to share that can impact your employees in a major way.

How To Encourage Employees To Use LinkedIn In The Right Way

If you’re still unsure about your employees actively using LinkedIn, I get it! I also want to know that my team members are all in and committed to their role. 

There’s a few things you can do on your end to encourage your employees to use LinkedIn in a way that still benefits your company, including:

• Make LinkedIn a part of their onboarding

One of the best ways that you can set the precedent for how your employees should use LinkedIn is by making it a part of their onboarding process!

During onboarding, you can have them update their LinkedIn work experience so that your company appears on their personal page, thus bringing more awareness to your brand as a whole.

You can also create a standard LinkedIn banner for employees to use so that your brand remains cohesive all across the platform and they aren’t left having to create this on their own. 

• Set guidelines

If you’re among the group of people who have hesitations about letting your employees be active on LinkedIn, remember that you can set guidelines for how employees should use the platform. 

Encourage them to be themselves and build their personal brand, while also upholding the brand values. Remind them that they are a face of your brand and represent your company online so make sure they’re well versed in what the company stands for and how that should be communicated. 

• Create a LinkedIn break for all employees

Just like you have a lunch break for employees, create a “LinkedIn break” so that there’s a designated time for your employees to create their own content and engage in the company page content during work hours.

I always say that engaging on LinkedIn can be a 10 minute daily habit that truly skyrockets your business, so if you want your employees to engage with your company content, make it a part of their work day!

• Provide LinkedIn training for all employees 

If you worry that your employees won’t use the LinkedIn platform correctly, the best thing that you can do is provide training to set them up for success.

This could be a fun office professional development day that you host 1-2 times per year to get your team members excited about using the platform and educated on how to use it properly.

A training like this is the perfect thing to outsource so that you don’t have to piece everything together on your own. Instead, you can rely on the expertise of a LinkedIn mentor and strategist and know that your employees will be trained in how to use the platform daily and how to create content that connects!

Overall, there is a way that your employees can use LinkedIn to build their personal brand AND build your brand simultaneously. 

It’s a win/win that’s insanely overlooked, so I encourage you to be among the leaders that recognize this as opportunity versus viewing it as a threat!