🐝🍊 What I Learned from the Be Orange Ambassadors

A Guide for Building an Employee Community Leadership Program

Nov 09, 2023

Once upon a time at a startup, I had the honor of creating and supporting the Be Orange Ambassadors, an organic internal movement that brought together passionate employees from diverse disciplines, experiences and backgrounds to infuse the culture with joy, connection, purpose and excellent puns like Orange You Glad for sharing happy employee highlights!

I cherish the community we built, the memories we made and the impact we made by inventing an internal brand mascot, hosting a howl-i-day pet show, celebrating every holiday, enjoying an artisinal honey tasting and more.

This article reflects on my lessons learned and best practices to help you launch or reenergize an internal Ambassadors program. It also includes insights and experiences from Diane Tate and Emily Busse, leaders featured on The Switchboard.

🛣️ Write your Mission, Goals and Plan
🎤 Secure an Executive Sponsor
✏️ Outline Responsibilities and Time Commitment
🎀 Name and Brand Your Program
💙 Recruit Diverse Employees
🍿 Find out Everyone’s Why for Joining and Connect People with Opportunities
⚡ Empower Employees
📅 Create a Calendar
📯 Host a Kickoff Event and Create Conversation Forums
🏋️ Keep the Momentum

Here’s the Guide in-detail:

1. 🛣️ Write your Mission, Goals and Plan

What do you hope to accomplish with your Ambassadors? Set the goals you aspire to achieve. Ensure alignment with your organization’s mission. Here are a few statements to fill in the blanks with actions and metrics to measure impact.

Build community by ______
Enhance morale by ______
Deepen diverse connections by ______
Bring leadership closer to employees by ______

Diane Tate who has led successful Ambassador programs at tech companies offers these suggestions for developing an Ambassador program:

Build a community so they can share ideas and support one another, and give you continuous feedback.
Keep them updated on program news, and show how their contributions make an impact.
Recognize them in relevant publications.
Encourage and support them in leveraging their contributions as part of their professional development goals e.g. add the experience to their LinkedIn profiles
Reward them with things like exclusive or discounted invitations to company events, and SWAG (sweatshirts, mugs, and more)!

2. 🎤 Secure an Executive Sponsor

Ensure your program is taken seriously by leaders and staff by recruiting a sponsor to help champion, guide and promote your program. This leader will represent employee voices and will become your close partner helping make the case for the work you’re leading.

3. ✏️ Outline Responsibilities and Time Commitment

Draft a volunteer “job description” with a twist. Treat the role as seriously as a full-time position by outlining realistic expectations — you want to recruit people who understand this is a time commitment, but it should also feel like an honor, not a second job. Consider the perks of being an Ambassador and emphasize those as well. Below are a few responsibilities and perks. Fill in the blanks with numbers that feel right for your employees.

Responsibilities

Plan ___ events per quarter
Write ___ internal posts
Welcome ___ employees during onboarding
Share ___ posts externally as employer brand champions

Perks

Invited to attend annual employee volunteers recognition event with leaders
Featured on the organization’s website and employer-branded materials
Sought after for culture feedback by leaders

3. 🎀 Name and Brand Your Program

What will you name the employees who hold this role? Perhaps Ambassadors, Council Members, Creators, or a unique phrase that’s organization-specific based on your brand. Develop assets and branding for recruitment purposes based on this vision.

4. 💙 Recruit Diverse Employees

To represent all internal perspectives, ensure a wide range of employees join your group, including roles, backgrounds, levels, teams and heritages. This inclusive and expansive group will enable you to fully understand the employee experience and reach employees through their peers.

5. 💡 Ask Why Employees Want to Be an Ambassador

On your interest form, find out why employees want to be a part of this internal community initiative. Their answers can be used to shape the direction of the Ambassadors.

Set up automatic personalized emails to send 30, 60 and 90 days into being Ambassadors. This will keep them on track and motivated to keep going. Their responses can also be shared with leadership to show why the Ambassadors program should be a priority for a team member to support.

6. 🍿 Find out Everyone’s Why for Joining and Connect People with Opportunities

Based on the interests of employees, group them around potential programs. Identify opportunities they can have specific roles. Here’s more from Emily Busse who led an Ambassador program at Loom:

Act like an anthropologist. Take a few days, and observe your team. What are people posting about organically? What are people engaging with the most when it comes to messages or chats? From there, you can identify pockets of interest and engagement that already exist, and then build programs that celebrate them. For example, we noticed at Loom that many of our new employees would mention musical talents when providing their new employee intros. We also noticed that our Fun Music channel was one of the most highly engaged communities. From there, we came up with the idea to launch a Tiny Loom Concert series; our own spin on the popular NPR Tiny Desk Concert series.
We then identified 5-6 Ambassadors who had already organically shared their talents with the team, and asked them to prepare a submission for the campaign before we launched. That way, upon launch date, we already had ambassadors engaged with the content and sharing their talents via Loom videos. Within a month, we saw 16 submissions with more than 1200 engagements (likes, comments, views). I've launched ambassador programs in the past based on what I thought were great ideas that fell completely flat. I've since learned that the ones that are borne out of your team's existing passions, interests, and culture prove far more impactful.

7. ⚡ Empower Employees

Provide employees with resources for organizing, publicizing and hosting programs. Show them examples of past successful gatherings. Suggest a first project for them to host. Ask for people to commit. Give them any guidelines, then empower them with the ability to make ideas happen.

8. 📅 Design a Calendar

For planning out programs and content, map out important organization-wide dates to host or avoid gatherings (such as major holidays). Identify the heritage months for DEI stories. Consider the categories you’d like Ambassadors to focus on in their programs and posts. Here are a few ideas to consider:

🧊 Connection: Ice Breaker conversation starters
💯 Company Pride: Great stories of impact
💌 Mission and Values: What we’re doing related to why we do it
🛴 Customers: Bringing employees closer to the field
🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏼 Team Members: Help employees meet each other

📯 9. Host a Kickoff Event and Create Conversation Forums

Once selected, bring your Ambassadors together to meet each other and begin planning. Create spaces for them to connect in between meetings. Give them an overview of the goals and calendar and encourage them to get started. In addition, introduce them to other employees to elevate their leadership roles.

🏋️ 10. Keep the Momentum

Start a tracker of the programs and content employees want to make happen. Set up automatic reminders to check in on progress. Send gentle nudges on progress. Celebrate successful gatherings. Keep going because this foundation will make a major impact on employee experience.

Have you managed an internal community Ambassador program — what would you add to the guide? Add your thoughts in the comments.

The Switchboard