“We have so many good stories to tell. Our challenge is that we need a PR strategy that speaks to investors and analysts, but also to customers, communities and trade media. … oh and budgets aren’t increasing this year. So how do we do it?”
That question came up during a recent strategy workshop with a JSE-listed industrial business preparing its 2026 communications plan. It is a familiar tension. Stakeholder expectations are growing, channels are multiplying, and communications teams are being asked to do more with less.
The most obvious opportunity is also the one most organisations continue to underuse: their people.
More specifically, employee-generated content.
What employee-generated content actually is (and isn’t)
Employee-generated content (EGC) is often misunderstood as a polite rebrand of “asking staff to share company posts on LinkedIn”. That approach rarely works and, when forced, can actively damage trust.
True EGC is something different. It refers to content created by employees in their own voices, drawing on their own experiences of the organisation. It might be a site supervisor sharing pride in a completed project, an engineer explaining why a particular innovation matters, a graduate reflecting on their first year in the business, or a regional manager speaking about community impact.
When it works, it humanises the organisation in ways that corporate messaging simply cannot. It builds credibility because it feels real. And it often reaches audiences that official brand channels never will.
International research supports this. Edelman’s Trust Barometer consistently shows that “people like me” and technical experts are now more trusted than CEOs or corporate spokespeople. LinkedIn data shows that employee networks collectively have far greater reach than corporate brand pages. The shift is not theoretical. It is already happening.
Why most EGC initiatives fail
Many companies like the idea of EGC, but few succeed in executing it.
The instinctive response is usually to draft a policy, send an e-mail, and ask staff to “post more positive content about the business”. The result is predictable: awkward posts, low engagement, internal resistance, and growing anxiety about reputational risk.
Employees will only advocate for a business publicly if they feel psychologically safe, if they understand the organisation’s purpose, and if they trust that they will not be punished for getting the tone slightly wrong. They also need practical support: guidance on what is appropriate, training on how to communicate well, and reassurance that authenticity matters more than perfection.
‘But how will I control the message?’
This is the question that almost always surfaces in boardrooms.
- What if someone says the wrong thing?
- What if confidential information is shared?
- What if criticism appears in public?
These risks are real – but they are not new. Employees already speak about their workplaces every day, whether leadership acknowledges it or not. The difference is that in unmanaged environments, those conversations happen without guidance, without alignment, and without context.
Well-designed EGC strategies do not remove control. They replace rigid control with intelligent governance. Clear social media guidelines, practical training, internal alignment around messaging, and strong internal culture significantly reduce risk while increasing the quality of external engagement.
The alternative is not safety. It is silence on official channels and uncontrolled conversation everywhere else.
The missed opportunity in investor communications
EGC is most commonly associated with employer branding and recruitment but its relevance can easily extend to investor communications.
Outside the Top 40, many South African companies struggle with visibility. Analyst coverage is limited and business media attention tends to spike only around results periods. CEO-led communications, while important, are often narrow and limited to results which are a couple of months old.
The result is that strong businesses fail to generate sustained interest in their investment case.
This is where EGC can play a strategic role. When executives beyond the CEO, operational leaders, technical experts and even high-performing middle managers are enabled to speak credibly about the business, the narrative broadens. Investors gain richer insight into strategy execution, culture, operational depth and long-term thinking.
Purple Group, the company behind EasyEquities, is a compelling local example. Much of its market engagement has been driven not only by formal investor communications but by consistent, authentic commentary from leadership and team members across platforms. It has helped demystify the business, build trust and deepen engagement well beyond traditional investor relations activity.
Leaning into EGC
Too often, we believe that organisations are too focused on PR and communication and work which showcases executives who are expected to talk around strategic decisions.
This tends to limit your earned media opportunities to periods where these executives have something to say, in very specific forums. The communications strategy then lives and dies by executives getting coverage in top tier publications where you have very little control of the newsflow. In contrast, if you broaden your spokesperson base and encourage your technical experts to build relationships with trade and other media, you can get far greater mileage where key stakeholders are also sitting.
Founded by former financial journalist and editor Marc Ashton, Decusatio Investor Communications is a B2B communications business working with businesses in the financial services sector and those doing strategic capital raising.
