Employee-Generated Content vs. Employee-Owned Content
(30-second read / 1:58 watch)
Conceptually, employee-generated content feels like a good idea.
You’re giving employees a voice while simultaneously creating authentic employer branding content.
And tech companies are jumping at this idea, making tools that enable employees to record themselves talking about how much they love their company.
Yay!
Here’s the problem: Tech companies have no idea what it takes to pull this stuff off internally.
They’re creating tools that don’t actually enable execution.
What enables EGC is:
Employer branding has buy-in (aka trust and respect).
The culture is worth talking about.
Employees are willing to participate at scale + share publically.
Proper guardrails: This can’t be a free-for-all. There has to be some QC.
For the majority of companies, executing an EGC strategy is next to impossible.
And for the few employer brand leaders who can check these boxes, EGC ends up being too much work for the low amount of usable content they get in return.
Giving your employees the autonomy to create for themselves is not the same as buying a piece of technology in hopes that they will care enough to record videos for you to post on social.
One is empowering. The other can be frustrating and limiting.
Your time and budget are finite. Choose wisely.