Key takeaways:
- Employee advocacy requires shared ownership across departments — not just social media. Sustainable programs succeed when HR, marketing, internal communications, and legal are active partners, not passive stakeholders.
- Resource planning is essential from the start. Even pilot programs can demand up to 50% of an FTE, prompting leaders to negotiate shared funding and staffing with HR and recruitment teams.
- Strategic, phased scaling is the difference between success and burnout. High-performing teams start with small, motivated advocate groups and grow deliberately — supported by clear expectations, training, and the right tools.
Employee advocacy has emerged as a key capability for healthcare organizations facing unprecedented recruitment challenges and community trust deficits.
Yet a recent confidential discussion among senior healthcare communications leaders revealed that the question of program ownership can be complex, and getting it wrong can doom even well, funded initiatives from the start.
We’ll examine how SocialMedia.org Health members are defining ownership of employee advocacy and effectively scaling these programs across their organizations.
1. Define Ownership to Build Long-Term Program Success
While social media teams typically “own” employee advocacy programs across healthcare systems, this ownership often comes with an overwhelming scope of responsibility.
One member at a large health system captured the challenge perfectly, stating, “I think people just naturally think that it writes itself. But it doesn’t.”
The reality is far more complex. Healthcare social media leaders report that successful advocacy requires partnerships across multiple departments — HR for employee identification and policy compliance, recruitment for content strategy and cost-sharing, internal communications for executive thought leadership, and strategic marketing for service line expertise.
2. Make the Case: Why Employee Advocacy Requires Real Resources
Perhaps the most striking finding from our private peer discussions was the significant time investment required. At one major hospital, their content marketing manager dedicated 60-70% of their role to advocacy during the pilot phase, settling into about 20% for ongoing management. Meanwhile, leaders at other organizations worry that advocacy “could very quickly become at least half an FTE, if not more.”
This resource intensity has prompted innovative cost-sharing arrangements. Several healthcare systems are successfully negotiating with HR and recruitment teams to fund advocacy tools, recognizing that authentic employee voices directly impact talent attraction.
As one leader noted, “Since we know there’s a halo effect there for prospective employees, we feel confident that we’ll be able to get our HR and recruiting team to share some of that cost.”
3. Build Cross-Functional Partnerships That Actually Work
The most successful programs avoid treating advocacy as a social media department project. Instead, they build genuine partnerships where each department contributes specialized expertise:
- Social Media teams provide platform expertise and brand guidance
- HR/recruitment identifies engaged employees and shares funding
- Internal communications manages executive participation
- Strategic marketing defines service line priorities
- Legal/Compliance ensures policy adherence
One leader emphasized this collaborative necessity: “I need the expertise from some of the folks who are in more of the weeds when it comes to things like research, for example.”
Amira Wynn, Senior Social Media Strategist at UT Southwestern Medical Center, also emphasized the role of collaboration across teams.
“Collaboration is key,” she told us. “Advocacy can’t and shouldn’t be owned solely by social. There needs to be an internal comms piece, brand and marketing piece, editorial piece, and more.”
Advocacy can’t and shouldn’t be owned solely by social. There needs to be an internal comms piece, brand and marketing piece, editorial piece, and more.
Amira Wynn, UT Southwestern Medical Center
4. Choose Tools That Support Your Strategy (Not the Other Way Around)
Among organizations actively implementing advocacy programs, Sprout Social was the leading provider among the members in our discussion. Multiple health systems reported either using or evaluating it.
However, the tool selection process itself reveals deeper strategic questions. Organizations are building business cases that outline benefits and demonstrate how peer health systems are adapting to advocacy trends — suggesting that competitive pressure is driving adoption as much as internal advocacy for the capability.
5. Start Small, Scale Smart
Most organizations begin with pilot programs of a select list (sometimes as few as 10) advocates before expanding. The phased approach allows teams to work through operational challenges while building internal credibility. At one hospital, they started with talent acquisition (“they were the most excited to do social media because they’re all very active on LinkedIn”) before expanding to other departments.
Agata Smieciuszewski, Senior Social Media Strategist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, described how starting with clinical partners improved results.
“Engage your clinical partners,” she said. “Getting one of our clinical admins into the system and excited about the program meant he was willing to help us recruit to bring in others from his service lines. This had a much higher success rate than cold emails from me.”
Charlotte Featherston, Social Media and Content Manager at AdventHealth, added the value of testing programs before scaling.
“Start with an initial pilot group when kicking off your employee advocacy program,” she told us. “This allows for a testing and learning period for your resources, training, and platforms that you are utilizing.”
Yet scaling reveals the sustainability questions that many organizations haven’t fully considered. The time investment for content curation, advocate training, and relationship management grows significantly as programs expand beyond initial pilot groups.
The solution emerging from successful programs involves clear guidelines and training on expectations: “Obviously, it’s not their full time job to be advocates. It’s something additional that we’re asking. Setting clear expectations is important in terms of posting cadence and engagement.”
Getting one of our clinical admins into the system and excited about the program meant he was willing to help us recruit to bring in others from his service lines. This had a much higher success rate than cold emails from me.
Agata Smieciuszewski, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
6. Treat Advocacy as a Strategic Capability, Not a Campaign
Healthcare employee advocacy is moving beyond the experimental phase. Organizations that approach it strategically — with appropriate resource allocation, genuine cross-functional partnerships, and realistic timeline expectations — are beginning to see measurable benefits in recruitment, employee engagement, and community trust.
For healthcare leaders considering advocacy programs, the key insight from these peer discussions is clear: success requires treating advocacy as a strategic organizational capability, not just a social media tool. The health systems that make this investment thoughtfully will establish sustainable competitive advantages.
