8 Considerations For Managing A Corporate Alumni Community 

Managing a corporate alumni community means organizations keep in touch with their alumni, engaging them on a single platform through relevant content, company initiatives, and events. 

This lucrative pool of former employees automatically becomes a source of quality rehires, hire referrals, business leads, competitive and industry intelligence, and brand ambassadors. 

Research suggests that the average Fortune 500 company could save up to $12 million a year by actively recruiting alumni. 

To cash in on this enormous benefit, in this article, we will take a look at the most important considerations for managing a corporate alumni community. 

8 Considerations For Managing A Corporate Alumni Community

1. Centralize Alumni Management Tools 

When you use a robust and flexible alumni engagement platform, it becomes easy to centralize your alumni management tools in one place. For instance, you should be able to:

• Keep alumni data up to date
• Segment audiences for targeted messaging
• Create personalized user experiences
• Extend and amplify your diversity and inclusion agenda
• Drive referrals and empower alumni to start a conversation about returning to your organization
• Boost alumni placement statistics 
• Manage both online and offline events
• Simplify communication with alumni
• Use actionable analytics to make data-driven decisions
• Simplify managing your corporate alumni community
• Refine engagement strategies

2. Manage Your Alumni Data 

Any campaign, communication or event you host on your corporate alumni platform will only be successful if the data it is built on is solid. 

Regular housekeeping and updating of your database can be challenging for large organizations, but with automation tools, most of the legwork will already be done for you. 

Advanced search filters built into the corporate alumni platform software make it easy to find members based on criteria such as employment status, location, industry, and job title. 

Managers should do annual alumni surveys and integrate internal data sources (HRIS, ATS, CRM) to update key alumni profile data. They can then leverage metrics to track and measure key goals. 

3. Create Opportunities For Your Alumni

A corporate alumni community should not simply act like another social media platform. Instead, it should offer structured opportunities for alumni to learn, contribute and expand their networks. 

• Opportunities to consider include getting involved in the organization’s social responsibility agenda through volunteering or making a financial contribution. 
• Alumni with years of experience in a specific industry can be engaged to guide younger members on the same career path. 
• The massive rise in demand for e-learning means corporate alumni community managers should offer opportunities for members to upskill via the platform.

4. Ensure A Positive Brand Experience

A positive brand experience is essential to boost a sense of pride and belonging among your corporate alumni community. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can be a critical source of knowledge for your organization’s members: these provide support, share information and amplify initiatives that are at the heart of your company. At the same time, they enable alumni to maintain a sense of belonging aligned with their interests and passions.

To gauge how alumni perceive your network, execute a sentiment analysis. This can be done by monitoring event attendance and harnessing the power of surveys. Track engagement and leverage the reach of AI technology to gain insights into how your alumni experience your organization. 

5. Help Alumni Develop Their Careers

Give alumni access to continued education, virtual training programs, and placement assistance. This demonstrates that your organization is invested in them as well as their career development. It also promotes and supports your brand as an employer, while increasing boomerang hires.

Organizations that actively invest in all their workers’ ongoing education – even after they leave – are better prepared for workforce shifts. 

Research also shows that the skills you learn today may be obsolete tomorrow, necessitating continuous learning to keep up and remain relevant. The rapid development of learning technologies ensures this is completely doable.  

6. Involve Alumni In Your CSR Programs

Corporate Social Responsibility programs are a drawcard for top talent. Employees getting involved in CSR projects via your platform has positive implications on both a personal and professional level. Managed successfully, it leads to higher levels of employee satisfaction, engagement and retention. 

For organizations, it boosts positive brand perception and is an effective way of marketing your business when alumni leverage your resources via the platform to do good. 

When managing CSR programs, celebrate successes regularly to keep engagement high, and amplify programs that your employees are involved in, even if they are not on your organization’s CSR agenda. 

7. Personalize and Contextualize Experiences 

Each sub-group or segment of your corporate alumni community has different expectations and reasons to be on the platform, one size does not necessarily fit all. 

Using the alumni management solution, organizations harness information about alumni and the business unit or industry they’re in, enabling them to produce great micro experiences. 

These interactions and information streams have to be highly relevant to each individual while, at the same time, providing them with access to all global functions, activities, and communications. 

8. Supercharge Recruitment 

A corporate alumni community’s biggest built-in strength is the value it brings to recruitment, referrals and new business. 

Hiring a candidate unknown to you, and thereby who knows very little about your organization’s inner workings, has been shown to be not without risk. 

Compare this to a situation where you draw from former employees who performed incredibly well, and whom you flagged as regrettable losses. It is possible that since leaving, they have gone to work for your competitors, customers, or partners, and have gathered new skills, contacts, and perspectives, that they can bring back to your business.  

If they have been actively engaged on your corporate alumni community platform, they will likely jump at the opportunity to rejoin your company. This saves time, and money, and benefits the organization on multiple levels. 

Conclusion 

Effectively managing a corporate alumni community gives organizations the opportunity to maintain relationships with their alumni and engage with them on a single platform. This can be done by sending them engaging content and involving them in company initiatives and events. 

This community becomes a reliable source of quality rehires, hire referrals, business leads, competitive and industry intelligence, and brand ambassadors. This can be hugely beneficial for the organization and the alumni. 

EnterpriseAlumni is the first Alumni SaaS Platform to deliver an authentic post-employment experience focused on value, contextual content, learning, and opportunities. These are key functions of any corporate alumni community management program. 

If you would like to learn more about how EnterpriseAlumni can help you achieve these goals, contact us right away.