Employee Advocacy Data Report: Industries & Countries

Last updated: 17th February 2026.

This employee advocacy data report compiles findings from DSMN8’s industry leaderboards, which cover 19,727 companies across 90+ sectors and multiple countries, providing the most comprehensive picture of global employee social media activity available.

The headline finding? On average, only 6.54% of employees share content on LinkedIn. But that number varies wildly depending on your industry, country, and company size.

In this summary of the findings, you’ll learn:

• Which industries have the most (and least) active employee advocates.
• Which countries lead the world for employee content sharing.
• How company size affects employee participation rates.

This report draws on data compiled by DSMN8’s research team who work on our Global Employee Advocacy Rankings — an ongoing series of industry reports analyzing employee social media activity across LinkedIn.

The dataset includes:

• 19,727 companies across 90+ industries.
• Organizations of all sizes, from under 1,000 employees to 10,000+.
• Companies headquartered across multiple countries and regions.

Employee activity is measured by the percentage of employees at each organization who have shared content on LinkedIn within a given period. This methodology provides a consistent, comparable benchmark across industries, geographies, and company sizes.

When looking at which industries have the most active employees on social media, one sector stands above the rest:

Unicorn startups (Privately owned startups valued at over $1 billion).

We actually wrote a report about unicorns a few years ago, contemplating the possibility of a link between stock price and social media presence.

While we can’t say for sure that the two are connected, what we can say is that employees at unicorns are particularly invested in building brand awareness on social media. Organizations in other industries can learn from this positive approach.

The remaining industries in the top 10 are all sectors that would benefit from running employee advocacy programs 👇

• B2B industries that lean heavily on interpersonal relationships, such as Training & Coaching and Management Consulting.
• Technology sectors such as Internet, Computer Networks & Cyber Security, and Computer Software.
• Industries that benefit directly from or rely on LinkedIn, including Staffing & Recruiting and PR & Communications.

I was interested to see if the top 10 industries would change depending on company size, and they did, but not drastically.

When looking at organizations with over 5,000 employees, these sectors remained in the top 10:

• Computer Networks & Cyber Security
• Management Consulting
• PR & Communications
• Biotechnology
• Unicorn Startups

Interestingly, Food and Beverages was the least active industry on LinkedIn in terms of employee activity.

Only 2.46% of employees in Food and Beverages organizations (on average) share content.

It’s quite a big difference compared to the highest sector, Unicorns, at 18.07% 🦄

Even when excluding unicorns for being, well… unicorns, the next highest sector, Training & Coaching, had an average of 16.81%.

You might have suspected (as I did) that the least active industry would be a heavily regulated sector, such as Pharmaceuticals.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

The Food and Beverages industry has a very high proportion of employees in blue-collar roles. These employees are busy working away from desks and, therefore, have less time and opportunity to share content on LinkedIn.

The key takeaway here:

If you’re looking to increase employee advocacy in industries like Food and Beverages, Retail or Construction, consider the fact that a large number of your employees will not be desk-based and probably won’t have a work computer.

To get these workers on board, you’ll need technology that works for them, such as DSMN8‘s mobile app with features like Auto-Scheduling to help them stay active.

The most active country on LinkedIn, based on the percentage of employees sharing content, is Denmark.

In fact, all of the top 10 are European countries, with the United States at position 11 with an average of 6.29%.

The data here supports a hunch I had:

Employees in smaller organizations are more likely to become employee advocates than those in large ones.

The average percentage of employees sharing content in companies with less than 1,000 employees was 7.52%, ranking highest overall.

The average across all company sizes was 6.54%.

In contrast, organizations with over 10,000 employees had an average content-sharing rate of just 3.86%.

Why is this?

Those at smaller organizations may be more likely to feel that building brand awareness is everyone’s responsibility, particularly when the marketing team is small.

It’s reasonable to assume that SMB employees interact more with leadership and consequently may feel a greater personal connection to the company and its mission 🤝

Smaller companies are also likely to prioritize cost efficiency, and an employee advocacy program requires much less investment than other marketing strategies, such as social media advertising and influencer campaigns.

On the other hand, those who work at household-name brands may be concerned about ‘stepping on toes’, leaving content creation to the marketing team and/or agencies. Or perhaps they simply feel that their efforts won’t have much of an impact compared with large-scale, high-budget media campaigns 😫

However, as you can see from the chart, this isn’t completely linear. There’s a spike in the 9,000-9,999 mark, with a higher percentage of content sharing in these organizations than the 4,000-8,999 employee categories.

One possible reason for this could be that companies with 9,000-9,999 employees may be in a growth stage. This would make them more focused on social media for sharing new role openings, employer branding content to attract talent, or investment/financial news. Once reaching the 10,000-employee mark, priorities may shift away from recruitment.

Looking at our overall sample size of 19,727 companies, it’s evident that the vast majority of organizations (81.82%) only see up to 10% of employees sharing content on LinkedIn.

Comparing this to the industry percentages I shared at the beginning of this article, it’s clear that the following industries are going above and beyond:

• Unicorn Startups: 18.01%
• Training & Coaching: 16.81%
• Computer Networks & Cyber Security: 15.97%
• PR & Communications: 11.83%

As expected, the number of companies declines as the percentage of employees sharing content increases. But the difference between 0-10% and 10-20% is pretty stark!

Only 6 of the nearly 20,000 organizations had 50-60% of employees sharing content on LinkedIn.

The overarching story this employee advocacy data tells is one of untapped potential.Across 19,727 companies and 90+ industries, just 6.54% of employees are actively sharing content on LinkedIn.

And in industries like food & beverages, that figure drops to under 3%.

Smaller organizations are punching above their weight. European markets are leading the way, but the US and other regions aren’t far behind.

While the data shows that industry, geography, and company size all influence employee advocacy rates, none of these factors is deterministic. Companies in traditionally low-engagement sectors are often outperforming their peers.

The common thread among organizations that beat their industry average? They’ve made employee advocacy a deliberate, supported part of how they show up on social media. Not an afterthought.

So the real question isn’t whether your industry or company size makes employee advocacy viable for you. It’s where your organization currently sits relative to your peers, and what it would take to close the gap.

Want to know how your company stacks up?

Get your free Employee Advocacy Health Check.

We will analyze your team’s current LinkedIn presence, show you your social share of voice across seniority levels and departments, and benchmark you against up to 4 competitors in your sector.

For more data on employee LinkedIn activity in your sector, check out the Global Employee Advocacy Rankings.

Our data team puts these together on a regular basis, revealing which organizations are leading the way with employee social media presence.