RVO turns employee networks into a powerful communication channel

About RVO

The NetherlandsEnterprise Agency (RVO) helps entrepreneurs and organizations to invest, develop and expand their businesses and projects both in the Netherlands and abroad. But with thousands of employees working across diversetopics, one challenge kept coming up: how do you make that impact visible, both internally and externally?

For RVO, the answer came from an unexpected place. Not another corporate channel or bigger ad budget, but their own people.

With Haiilo, known internally as “RVOfan”, RVO has built an employee advocacy program that turns employees into trusted voices, helping the organization reach wider audiences, tell more human stories, and connect colleagues across teams.

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Challenges for RVO

RVO’s communication challenge wasn’t about a lack of content. Quite the opposite.

It came down to reach, relevance, and connection.

Declining visibility of corporate channels
Like many organizations, RVO saw a drop in visibility on LinkedIn company pages. Organic reach was becoming harder without relying on ad spend.

Untapped employee networks
With around 6,100 employees, each with their own LinkedIn network, there was huge potential sitting unused.

Fragmented internal visibility
RVO operates across topics like sustainability, innovation, agriculture, and international business. Employees often weren’t fully aware of what other teams were doing.

Sustaining participation over time
Getting employees to engage consistently with advocacy programs is a long-term challenge, not a one-off campaign.

Initially, RVOfan was introduced as a way to support client communication, helping employees share relevant content with entrepreneurs and external audiences through their own networks. Over time, however, limited ownership and capacity meant the platform lost some visibility and momentum across the organization.

When new opportunities around labour market communication emerged, RVOfan was revisited with fresh intent. By investing more actively in the platform and exploring its potential for employer branding, new energy wascreated, not just within recruitment, but across communication teams more broadly. What followed was a gradual shift: the same approach that worked for sharing vacancies and employee stories was expanded to support a much wider range of communication goals.

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Why Haiilo?

Haiilo worked for RVO not because it replaced their communication strategy, but because it made it e asier to activate what they already had: their people.

Three things stood out.

A low barrier to participation
Haiilo makes it simplefor employees to find, adapt, and share content. That ease of use is critical when you’re working with thousands of potential contributors.

Scalable employee advocacy
Instead of relying on afew corporate channels, RVO could activate hundreds of employees across different teams, topics, and networks.

Clear reporting and feedback
Visibility intoperformance helps the team demonstrate impact and keep improving the program over time.

Crucially, RVO neversaw Haiilo as “the solution” on its own. It became a smart enabler, supporting a broader strategy centered on activation, training, and continuous improvement.

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Solution with Haiilo

RVO’s approach combines technology with consistent, hands-on activation.

Turning Haiilo into “RVOfan”

One of the first steps was making the platform feel like it belonged to employees.

- Haiilo was rebranded internally as RVOfan
- The goal was to make it feel familiar and embedded in RVO culture, not like an external tool

This seemingly smallstep helped position the platform as something for employees, not just anothercorporate system.

From labour market communication tobroader communication

In the last two years, RVOfan has gained new momentum, evolving into abroader communication channel used across different teams and communicationgoals.

Today, it supports:

- Public and customer communication
- Sharing project updates and success stories
- Highlighting expertise across different domains
- Strengthening collaboration with partners like KVK

Employees now act asamplifiers for a wide range of topics, not just vacancies.

Activating employees at scale

RVO recognized early on that technology alone would not drive adoption.

They built a structured activation program:

- Training sessions and team presentations
- Monthly walk-in sessions for support
- Resource pages, help guides, and intranet updates
- Onboarding activities for new employees
- Internal campaigns, such as Social Media Day
- Regular sharing of results to show impact

This ongoing effort keeps RVOfan visible and relevant, rather than fading into the background.

Focusing on expertise, not hierarchy

Instead of targeting only senior leaders, RVO takes a more practical approach.

- Employees are encouraged to share content that matches their expertise and network
- Subject matter experts across teams play a key role in expanding reach
- Senior leaders are important, but not the only focus

This has helped create more authentic content and better engagement.

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Creating internal value as well

RVOfan is not just an external communication tool.

It also helps employees:

- Discover what other teams are working on
- Stay connected to projects and initiatives across RVO
- Understand the broader impact of their work

In a large, complex organization, this internal visibility is just as valuable as external reach.

A LinkedIn-first strategy

RVO made a deliberate decision to focus almost entirely on LinkedIn.

- Around 95% of activity happens there
- Other platforms were deprioritized
- This allows the team to maintain quality with limited resources

The result is a clear, focused approach rather than spreading efforts too thin.

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Next steps

Looking ahead, RVO is doubling down on what works while refining its approach.

Quality over quantity

The focus for 2026 and beyond is simple:

- Not more posts, but more relevant posts
- Not more activity, but more impact

RVO encourages employees to share selectively, based on:

- Their expertise
- Their network
- The communication goal

This keeps content authentic and avoids overwhelming audiences.

Empowering power users

RVO plans to give more responsibility to its most engaged users.

- Identifying 3–5 power users per domain or topic
- Encouraging them to act as ambassadors or “channel managers”
- Supporting colleagues within their own teams and networks

This creates a more distributed, sustainable model for growth.

Making sharing more personal

As AI-generated content becomes more common, RVO wants to keep things human.

- Employees are encouraged to adapt and personalize content
- Haiilo provides a starting point, not a finished product
- Authenticity and relevance are prioritised over volume

Continuing to improve adoption

Participation remains the biggest long-term challenge.

RVO will continue to:

- Invest in training and support
- Improve onboarding journeys
- Explore ways to localize and simplify the experience further

The goal is to make RVOfan relevant for everyone, from junior specialists to senior leaders.

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Conclusion

For RVO, employee advocacy is not about pushing more content into the world.

It’s about enabling employees to share meaningful stories, in a way that feels natural, relevant, and useful.

Haiilo plays a key role, but the real driver of success is the people behind it.

Or as RVO sees it:

It’s not the platform that makes the difference. It’s the network.