Your institution is a better employer than it is allowed to sound.
Somewhere in your organisation there is an engineer who understands the network better than anyone at the utility next door, and a case worker who could explain what the job is actually like. None of it is visible anywhere. Getting a handful of those people seen is a governance question long before it is a software question, so this page starts with the governance.
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We help B2B marketing teams turn their employees into authentic brand ambassadors on LinkedIn, combining AI content generation with strict brand governance to ensure every post is both personal and compliant.
Can a public institution run an employee advocacy program on LinkedIn?
Often yes, and the question that decides it is not about the software. It is whether anything a colleague writes about their work has to be cleared before it goes out. Three things settle that, and all three can be checked before you speak to any supplier:
- Whether a personal profile falls inside your clearance rules. A post published by a member of staff from their own account under their own name is not obviously the same object as a publication in the institution's name. Where that line sits is set in your house, not in the category.
- Whether your staff council will accept a system that records activity per person. Authira does record it. That is a conversation to open early, and the material for it is further down this page.
- Whether the people you would ask want to be visible at all. Willingness is the actual constraint in this sector, and no tool creates it. Five people who have been meaning to post are worth more than a department that was volunteered.
Disclosure before we go further: we build Authira, one of the tools in this category. The three questions above hold whether you buy anything or not, and the first two of them decide the outcome far more often than any feature comparison does.
One product fact belongs up here rather than in the small print, because it disqualifies a large share of this sector and it should cost you two minutes rather than an evaluation. Authira has no approval workflow and no administrator view of drafts. Nobody reads a post before it is published, and there is no route to add that. If mandatory clearance applies to what your colleagues write from their own profiles, stop reading here and look at an enterprise suite instead. We compare that market openly, and several of those products are built precisely around the review queue this one does not have.
If clearance is not mandatory, or if it reaches only the institution's own channels, three things decide the rest. This page takes them in order: what your governance will ask and what the system does, the shape of a pilot that can be approved, and how it gets bought without an award procedure. Everything to do with launching a program is the same here as anywhere else, and it is set out on launching an employee advocacy program. What follows is only the part that differs because you are a public institution.
A campaign cannot shift this. People can.
You are working against a perception of the category rather than a reputation event. Nothing happened, so there is no incident to answer and no announcement that closes it. You almost certainly know that already, so the only part worth our words here is the mechanism.
The register keeps it in place. Your organisation communicates in the voice it is required to use, and each time it does, it confirms the thing you are trying to disprove. That is why the employee portrait on the careers page rarely moves anything: it is still the institution talking about a person. Written by that person, published from their own account, it is the person talking.
The counter-evidence has to be individual, and it has to keep arriving for considerably longer than a campaign runs. That is the awkward part of this and the reason a one-off push does not work. Why the institutional channel cannot carry it either is covered in why your company page gets no reach.
What software supplies here is narrow, and it is worth being precise about it. Each person answers four questions about their own work and sets one tone preference. Every draft afterwards is generated against that profile rather than a house style, so it reads like them and not like a circular.
Topics come from their own expertise areas and stored anecdotes rather than from your desk, which matters because a supply depending on one communications team stops the first busy month. The drafting side is on the content assistant page. What none of it does is make an unwilling colleague want to be visible, and in this sector that is the binding constraint rather than a caveat.
Two blockers decide this, and neither is a marketing problem
Clearance and codetermination. Budget and channel and content are all negotiable in ways that these two are not. Both are answerable with product facts rather than with reassurance, so the table below sets out what the system does, in the order your governance will ask about it.
| The question your governance will ask | What Authira actually does | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| May a member of staff publish under their own name, from their own profile? | Posts are written in Authira and published by the author from their own LinkedIn account. Nothing goes out under the institution's account. | Whether that counts as publishing in the institution's name is your house rule, not ours. Settle it with your press office first. |
| Does anything need clearance before it goes out? | There is no review queue and no route for a second person to read a draft. An unpublished draft is visible to its author alone, and that sits in the database rather than in a setting. | If clearance is mandatory in your house, no configuration adds it. This is the disqualifier that ends most evaluations in this sector. |
| Does the tool record what individuals do? | Yes. Posts per person per week, a consistency streak, a leaderboard carrying colleagues' names, and a status showing who has published nothing recently. | The material fact for the codetermination conversation. Better in writing before an evaluation than during one. |
| Where does that data come from? | From a statistics file each participant downloads from their own account and uploads. There is no connection to LinkedIn and nothing is collected in the background. | Nothing appears that the person did not hand over, which is usually the most useful sentence in the staff council conversation. |
| Can any of it reach an appraisal? | There are no individual targets, no manager-facing scoring and no export shaped for a personnel file. The only shared goal is a monthly total for the group. | The product does none of this by itself. What an organisation later does with a figure it can see is beyond a supplier's control. |
| Who inside the organisation can see an individual's activity? | Colleagues see the shared team figures, and they see the month's five strongest posts by name. Nobody but an administrator sees how much any one person posted, and each person's own reach figures are visible only to that person. | Narrower than most people assume, and worth stating precisely, because the assumption in the room will be that everyone can see everyone. |
Clearance before publication
Row two is what ends evaluations, and what sits in its place is prevention rather than review. Terms your organisation cannot use are loaded as a list you maintain, then flagged while somebody writes and again before they mark a post ready. The author decides. How that works is on the compliance guardrails page.
There is a distinction here worth taking to your press office rather than settling from a supplier's website. Clearance rules are usually written for publications in the institution's name. Whether they reach what a named employee writes from a personal account is a local question. It is answered one way in a city administration and quite another in a university, where chairs publish on their own authority as a matter of course. We are not going to argue that it does not apply to you. It might, and if it does, you have your answer.
The staff council conversation
In Germany, a technical system capable of monitoring the performance or behaviour of staff is typically subject to codetermination. Which instrument applies follows the legal form of the body rather than the sector. A city administration or a state authority is generally looking at the staff representation act of its federal state or of the federation. A municipal utility or a clinic constituted as a limited company is generally looking at the Works Constitution Act instead, which is worth establishing early, because it changes who you are talking to. This is orientation written with German law in mind, not legal advice, and it covers no other jurisdiction.
The screen below is exactly what the question is about. Showing it to employee representation early tends to cost less than having it discovered during an evaluation.
Team Health Check
Publishing activity in the last completed calendar week.
Healthy (Active)
7 Users
Pending Sync
2 Users
Inactive
1 Users
Creator Activity Matrix
What shortens the conversation in many cases is not an argument, it is an accurate description and a bounded scope. Whether a particular voluntary pilot falls under codetermination is for your own staff council to work through. What you can hand them is a description of the system rather than a position on the law, and in many organisations that description ends up inside a written staff agreement.
The text below carries no legal assessment, deliberately. That assessment is not ours to make, and text written to be forwarded gets forwarded without its hedges. Note that the first four statements are facts about the product and the last two are undertakings your organisation gives, so read those two as something you are committing to rather than something we guarantee.
For your internal email
How the system works
Taking part is optional. Each person receives an invitation and decides for themselves whether to accept it, and anyone who has accepted can withdraw at any point without stating a reason.
The tool has no link to LinkedIn and collects nothing by itself. Every figure it displays comes from a statistics file that the person concerned downloaded from their own account and uploaded. Anything they choose not to upload does not appear.
The system holds no individual targets and no scoring that managers can see. The only shared figure is a monthly total for the group.
What participants see of each other is limited to the shared team totals and to individual highlights, such as the five strongest posts of the month or a note when someone reaches a milestone. How much any one person has posted is visible only to an administrator, and each person's own reach figures are visible only to that person.
What we undertake
No figure from the tool will be used in an appraisal, in a target agreement or in any assessment of an individual's work.
The scope is limited to [number] volunteers for [period], after which we review the result together and decide whether to continue, change or stop.
How far that text goes, and where it stops. Those six lines describe a voluntary pilot and nothing wider than one. They do not clear a rollout in which taking part is expected rather than chosen, and we make no claim that they do. If what your organisation wants is coverage across a department, the answers above stop applying and you are in a different negotiation.
One outcome ends the discussion outright. Where employee representation has already refused per-person activity tracking in any form, this product is refused with it. The health check is built from exactly that data, and nothing switches it off. Our data privacy page covers processing and retention, and employee advocacy in regulated industries adds orientation for sectors carrying a supervisory layer of their own.
None of the above is legal advice, and it is written with German law in mind rather than any other. Qualified counsel in your jurisdiction, your own staff council and your data protection officer are the three people who can actually settle any of it.
A pilot your governance can approve
Approval is easier to obtain for something bounded than for something promising. The five lines below are what a written scope has to contain before a committee can assess it. They work because each one limits the thing rather than selling it, and a pilot that can be stopped cleanly is the one you are allowed to start.
| Element | What you write down |
|---|---|
| Participation | Voluntary. Each person receives an invitation and decides for themselves, and anyone who accepted can withdraw without giving a reason. |
| Group | Named and small. Five is the size the licence is built around, and a group you can list by name is a group a committee can assess. |
| Period | Fixed, with an end date rather than a review date. One quarter is short enough to approve and long enough to produce anything readable. |
| Evaluation | Agreed before the start: what is looked at, by whom, and on what date. Activity first, reach later, because reach takes longer to mean anything. |
| Performance assessment | Excluded in writing. No figure from the pilot is used in an appraisal, a target agreement or any assessment of an individual. |
On choosing the five people: the useful question is who is already visible somewhere, or has been meaning to be, which is rarely the same list as the org chart. In a university it is often not the people your mandate actually covers, because the ones who publish freely already do and the ones you need have no reason to start. That is a real limit on what this changes, and it is better faced when you write the scope than at the evaluation.
How the pilot is introduced, who has to be spoken to in what order, and what holds participation once the launch enthusiasm has gone are the same problems every organisation has. They are worked through in detail in launching a program that survives its first quarter, and there is no public sector version of them.
Buying it without running a tender
The amount is rarely the obstacle in this sector. The route is. What helps most is that the price is published rather than quoted on request, so it can go into a paper before anybody has spoken to a supplier.
A five-person licence is € 299 a month. Seats beyond the first 5 are € 49 each per month, so a 10-person group is € 544 a month. Carry both figures, because the second is a different procurement question from the first. The full table sits on the pricing page.
In Germany, contracts at that order of magnitude often sit below the thresholds at which a formal award procedure becomes mandatory, and in many cases they can be handled as a direct award. Thresholds, internal value limits and documentation duties vary by federal state and by the type of body. Your own procurement office is the only reliable source on which route applies to you. This is orientation written with German public procurement in mind, and it is not procurement or legal advice.
One honest limit on the commercial side. Billing today runs on card payment, monthly, and each payment produces a downloadable invoice. There is no purchase-order workflow and no self-serve route to payment on account. If your file needs a written offer, an invoice address or payment on account before anything can be ordered, raise it on the call. It is the practical reason we ask you to book one here rather than putting a sign-up button in front of you.
Five questions to settle before you book the call
A yes to any of the first four means this is not the right product, and finding that out here costs you a minute rather than a quarter. We would rather lose the call than take one that was never going to work.
- Does anything a colleague publishes from their own profile have to be cleared first? If yes, this is the wrong tool. There is no review step and no way to add one.
- Has employee representation already ruled out per-person activity tracking? If yes, this is ruled out with it. The health check is made of exactly that.
- Does an award procedure have to be run whatever the value? If yes, the path is longer than a monthly card subscription supports, and it is worth confirming with your procurement office before anything else.
- Does data about your staff have to remain inside a hosting boundary your institution specifies? If your organisation works to a defined boundary, raise it on the call as the first item, because it is decided before anything else is worth discussing.
- Is LinkedIn where the people you need actually are? For specialist and administrative recruiting it usually is. For reaching residents it usually is not, and this product does nothing else.
What Authira does not do
None of the following is on a roadmap. Each one is a decision we have taken and intend to keep, and several of them are perfectly good grounds for choosing a different supplier.
- No approval workflow, and no administrator view of drafts. Repeated here deliberately, because it is the most common hard requirement in this sector and the most expensive one to discover late.
- No single sign-on and no directory or personnel system link. Invitations go to an email address, and each person manages their own account.
- Individual highlights are shown to the whole group. The month's five strongest posts are listed by name, and milestones are announced. Per-person totals are not, but if naming anybody to their colleagues is difficult in your house, that conversation belongs before the invitations go out.
- No connection to LinkedIn. Each participant downloads their own analytics export and uploads it, and keeps doing so month after month. Anyone who writes but stops uploading disappears from the figures while still being active, so the numbers understate the program rather than the other way round.
- Participants hear from the product only when they open it. There are no reminder emails and no scheduler. Finished text is copied into LinkedIn by the person who wrote it, from their own account.
- Card billing, monthly. There is no purchase-order flow and no self-serve payment on account.
- LinkedIn only. Other networks are unsupported, including whichever channel your organisation runs for residents, and there is nothing here for paid social.
- It is not an agency. Nobody here runs the program, writes the posts or attends your internal meetings. If a managed service is what the situation needs, that is a different supplier entirely.
- Sized for a group of roughly 3 to 30, run without a dedicated administrator. An institution-wide rollout needs administration, roles and reporting layers that this product deliberately lacks. Where to look instead is set out in our comparison of the market.
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See full pricingEmployee advocacy in a public institution: FAQ
Does a post from an employee's own LinkedIn profile need press office clearance?
That is set by your own house rules rather than by anything universal, and it is worth settling before any other question. A post written by a member of staff and published from their personal profile under their own name is not self-evidently a publication in the institution's name. It is also not self-evidently outside it. Your press office, and in many cases your legal department, are the people who can draw that line. The product side we can answer: Authira has no approval workflow and no administrator view of drafts, so if clearance is required, the tool cannot supply it.
Does the staff council have to agree before we start?
Often, and better raised early than late. In Germany, a technical system capable of monitoring the performance or behaviour of staff is typically subject to codetermination. The instrument follows the legal form of the body. Where there is a works council that means the Works Constitution Act, and where there is a staff council it means the staff representation act of the federal state or the federation. Authira does record activity per person, so the question is real. Whether a given voluntary pilot falls under it is for your own staff council, and a lawyer in your jurisdiction can confirm it. Orientation for Germany only, not legal advice.
Can we ask public sector staff to post, or does it have to be voluntary?
As an offer, generally yes. As an instruction it becomes a question about employment law rather than about software, and that is outside what we can answer for you. Your legal department and, where one exists, your staff council are the right people to put it to, and this is orientation written with Germany in mind rather than legal advice. There is a practical case for keeping it voluntary in any event. A post somebody was told to write usually reads like one, whatever name sits on it, which defeats the purpose of asking. Authira has no mechanism for adding a person without an invitation that person accepts themselves.
Everything we publish has to sound official. Will this just produce more official notices?
The opposite risk is the more realistic one. Each participant sets up a short voice profile, four questions about their work plus one tone setting, and drafts are generated against that profile rather than against a house style. What comes out sounds like the individual, which is the entire point and also the thing to check with a real colleague before you commit to anything. The only house register the tool enforces is a list of terms you supply yourself, which get flagged while somebody is writing.
How do we buy this without running a tender?
The price is published rather than quoted. A five-person licence is € 299 a month, and a 10-person group is € 544 a month. In Germany, contracts of that order often sit below the thresholds at which a formal award procedure is mandatory, and can in many cases be handled as a direct award. Thresholds and internal rules vary by federal state and by type of body, so your own procurement office is the reliable source rather than this page. Billing runs on card today. If your institution cannot pay that way, that is a conversation rather than a checkout, and we would rather have it early.
Our staff council has already ruled out activity tracking. Is there a version without it?
No. The team view and the health check are both built on per-person activity, so removing it removes them, and no configuration does that. If the refusal is settled, Authira is ruled out, and that is better established before an evaluation than during one. It can still be worth checking what exactly was refused, because two different things get conflated under one phrase. Background collection from a connected account and a volunteer uploading statistics about their own published posts are separate mechanisms, and Authira only ever does the second. If the refusal covers both, then it covers this.
LinkedIn is not our main channel. Is this the right platform for a public institution?
For this particular job it usually is, even where it is not the channel you post to most. LinkedIn is where working professionals are. That covers more of a public institution's audience than people expect, including the specialists and technical staff you are recruiting and the clinical and administrative roles that stay open for months. On recruiting in particular, the candidates you compete for with private employers are already there. What LinkedIn will not do is reach residents, and we built Authira for LinkedIn only, so a visibility problem with the general public needs a different tool.
Keep reading
- Launching a program that survives its first quarter: the same job without the governance layer, including the internal conversations and what holds participation after the kickoff.
- Employee advocacy in regulated industries: orientation for sectors carrying a supervisory layer of their own on top of the ones described here.
- The LinkedIn posting policy template: the written document your legal department will ask for, and which of its clauses earn their place.
- The employee advocacy software comparison: where to look if mandatory clearance rules this out, and which products are built around a review queue.
Find out in one call whether this clears your house
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