by Emilie Toche on 11 Jun 2024

Should you grow your employee community?

Why and how to consider expanding the scope of your internal employee community

Your internal employee community has been up and running for some time, and both members and stakeholders are starting to ask … What’s next? Thinking about growth is a logical leap to make when it comes to community projects. However, with employee ones, there are a few things you need to consider.

Is expanding your community’s scope the right move?

Employee communities are often set up to benefit a very specific group of people. With that in mind, widening your audience needs to be a thoughtful and intentional process. 

• Revisit the purpose of your community and define the impact that adding others in will have on the goals you’re working towards.
• Consider who the existing community audience works most closely with outside of the group: Would they be strong candidates for expansion?
• Once you have identified potential teams, roles or profiles of individuals to invite to your community space, review which channels of communication they are using, and how those could be moved into the community.

Where to begin?

You’ve decided to expand: great! It’s time to focus on the nitty gritty and plan your next steps. We found that these three approaches work well:

• The umbrella strategy: If the group of employees in your community is part of a wider team, cast your community net one level up. This allows for a focused, easy to scope and roll-out expansion.
• The nominations scheme: This is a slow and controlled way to grow, where employees themselves are empowered to nominate who they think would be a good addition to the community. 
• The audience re-profiling method: Looking back at your community purpose, you might find that the profile of employees that you involved in the community was incomplete. If you can identify adjacent roles or speciality fields across your organisation that complement the expertise already gathered in your community, those teams or individuals are perfect additional fits.

How can you ensure a successful community expansion?

If you’ve carefully followed all the advice so far, the good news is, that you’re already on the right track. As you continue to refine your plan, here are three more considerations that will help you along the way:

• Keep your member base updated: Make sure those already in your community are not only aware of the changes but most importantly understand the reasoning behind them. This will guarantee their buy-in and support as new members are welcomed in.
• Focus on a tailored onboarding: Ensuring new members feel warmly welcomed, and grasp the purpose of the community and the role they play in it is key. Regardless of the expansion approach you’ve adopted, this needs to be at the top of your priority list.
• Take the pulse: Once your new group of members is in, closely follow how they are integrating into the community. To do this, you can use your judgement & intuition, ask both new and older members 1 on 1 for their insights, or organise surveys.

If you are considering opening up the doors of your employee community wider and need more guidance, our team would love to help!