Dive Brief:

• Marketing departments today are all-in when it comes to social media, spending millions on strategies such as boosted posts, influencer programs and ad campaigns. However, a new report from Bambu by Sprout Social finds that brands are ignoring a social media-savvy, largely untapped market: their own employees.
• The report, “Putting Downtime to Work: A Marketing Data Report” found that 7 in 10 people check social networks in the workplace. Despite employer efforts to discourage it, people will continue to log in). 
• Yet, the survey found, nearly 60% of employees polled reported that they aren’t given ample guidance from marketing departments on how and when to advocate for their brand. Plus more than half of people actually feel "discouraged to use social media at work," and 52% don’t think that the marketing team makes it easy for them to advocate for the company on social media.

Dive Insight:

Rather than employers using that time and lost productivity to their advantage, they are ignoring or, mostly unsuccessfully, stifling it. Employer brands should be using their teams’ social media engagement to their advantage by encouraging and enabling those employees to advocate on their behalf. And, according to the folks at Bambu by Sprout Social, people are 16 times more likely to read a social media post from a friend than from a brand themselves.

While marketing the employer brand isn't a typical HR concern, this would seem to a great chance for HR to go into strategic mode. With some employee guidance and support, it seems like a great opportunity to improve the reach and efficiency of a brand’s marketing efforts. There is much talk within HR these days that the profession should be more marketing-oriented, in recruiting for example. Here's a chance to work with the marketing folks on a potentially profit-boosting situation.