ASSESSMENT ON THE INFLUENCE OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION ON EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY ON SOCIAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY ON A LEADING CONGLOMERATE IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

The drastic changes in business organizations have today challenged relationships of an organization. As former studies have suggested, at present this has led to the problem of lack of proper employee advocacy where with low level of engagement of employees have worsened the practical context. As a result, an existing requirement to assess the need of strategic communication to promote employee advocacy was identified. This growing trend of need for positive word-of-mouth and employee engagement has been researched by different authors. However, an existing evidence gap was identified to identify how strategic communication promotes employee advocacy through an internal focus of the organizational relationships. Hence, the research study was conducted, as the philosophical stance the positivism was selected, taking a deductive approach, to conduct a quantitative study using simple random sampling technique focusing on the cross-sectional time horizon. As a case-study approach was adopted, as the unit of analysis a leading conglomerate of Sri Lanka was selected. Out of a population of 2100 employees, a sample of 386 participants were selected and an online questionnaire-based data collection was undertaken. From such data has been analyzed taking IBM SPSS Software to derive inferential statistics. According to the findings of the study it has been identified that there is a significant relationship between strategic communication and employee advocacy. As r = 0.681 a significant positive relationship was observed. The study provided recommendations for strategic leaders and managers to develop foresight in promoting employee advocacy with a keen focus on strategic communication which allow the successful creation of positive brand image and enhance engagement, which will ultimately help organizations to achieve its strategic intent.