Employee Ambassador & Alumni Programmes

In this series we are looking at creating, implementing, and executing Talent Acquisition and Retention Strategies. There are 10 components of your TARS and together they elevate your employer and employee experiences and bolster your business resilience.

Employee Ambassador and Alumni Programmes

 An ambassador programme equips your current employees to effectively represent your brand online and offline, and an alumni programme keeps your past employees engaged and advocating for your business in exchange for incentives. 

These programmes rely heavily on the other 9 components of your TARS being effectively implemented because current and past employees need to feel valued by the business, have strong relationships with the leadership teams, and have an affinity with the brand to enthusiastically engage.

Ambassador and alumni programmes are rare in New Zealand so implementing them will give you a competitive edge in your industry sector elevating employee engagement, gaining greater market and social media reach, and increasing sales and conversion rates.

There are 5 key considerations in your ambassador programme.  Participants need to:

1. Be of good character within and without the business

2. Have a sound knowledge of your brand and company values and vision, products, and services

3. Know your target markets and how your products and services address pain points and benefit consumers and clients

4. Be trained in your company communication guidelines and languages. 

5.Know what benefits if any are available to them when they meet programme milestones.

In the alumni programme participants have already gained the knowledge and experience from your ambassador programme so now all they need to know is what you require of them and what incentives are available to them e.g., product discounts.  

So how do you get started creating your programmes?

1. Introduce the programmes, their purpose, and the incentives to your employees past and present and get their feedback and input.

2. Upskill them on your brand, company values, vision, and communication guidelines and languages, products, and services.

3. Establish how you will measure your ROI.

Implementing these programmes will elevate your employer, employee, and customer experiences, increase sales with your employees having 10 times greater market reach than can be achieved with your brand alone and open new and unexplored communication channels for the business. 

So, I encourage you to start creating these programmes as soon as you can to improve the performance and resilience of your business.  If you need help remember RIPPLE has all the services you need to plan, implement, and execute all components of your Talent Acquisition and Retention Strategy.