Episode 20 – Advocacy in action

Katie’s guest this week is Keith Lewis, UK Social Media and Social Business Manager for Zurich Insurance – one of the world’s largest insurance groups with 55,000 employees in more than 170 countries – who is well placed to talk about employee advocacy and empowering people to tell their own stories. Earlier this year, the Edelman Trust Barometer asked 33,000 people around the word how credible they would view information from a series of different people when forming an opinion of a company. Those answering said the most credible would be the company’s technical expert, while fourth on the list was a regular employee. In eighth place was the CEO. Edelman’s advice to organisations is to activate our employee voices – not just official spokespeople, but our specialists and regular employees. In the course of their conversation, Keith tells Katie about the strategies he has employed to encourage employees to open up about their experiences and expertise, as well as the value of internal social networks such as Workplace by Facebook and Yammer.