I used to think the hard part of employee advocacy was getting people to post

The challenge of employee advocacy was not convincing staff to share company news, but getting them to start writing about it. The initial hurdle was the blank page – employees wanted to post but struggled with how to begin. Some feared sounding too formal, while others worried about saying the wrong thing or lacked time to polish their thoughts.

To address this, the HR team created a ChatGPT project that provided shared context, including company tone, social media guidelines, examples of acceptable posts, phrases to avoid, and reminders about confidentiality. This streamlined process resulted in cleaner, more readable posts. However, a new problem emerged: the drafts began to sound too corporate, blurring the line between personal reflection and official company messaging.

While the project made drafting easier, it inadvertently encouraged the production of company-sounding posts, which could confuse readers and potentially breach company policies. The solution was to refine the project's instructions. The team added a step requiring ChatGPT to identify the type of post it was drafting – whether it was a personal reflection, hiring-related, event recap, project update, or repost of official company news.

This adjustment ensured that the output aligned with the appropriate tone and boundaries. For personal reflections, the draft had to mirror the employee's experience without making broad claims on behalf of the company. For hiring-related posts, the tone had to remain consistent with approved messages without adding unauthorized details like salary or career progression promises.

Project-related posts had to avoid confidential information, client names, or internal numbers. The team also incorporated a "check before posting" note under each draft, prompting users to remove confidential details, confirm the post reflects their personal view, verify the accuracy of role or event information, and seek approval if the post appeared to be an official company statement.

Despite these improvements, the project still required manual oversight for approvals. The next step was to integrate a workflow that routed approved drafts to the appropriate departments, such as Marketing, Legal, or HR, ensuring proper validation before publication. This shift transformed employee advocacy from merely generating posts to fostering a safe environment where employees could share genuine work moments without the risk of sounding corporate.