Importance of Promoting your Employee Referral Program
The success of an employee referral program as that of any other marketing or promotion campaign depends upon the ability to get people to perform certain desired actions- in this case get employees to refer talent for hiring. A study of employee referral programs that failed to make an impact will invariably reveal a lack of sustained efforts towards maintaining top of the mind awareness with employees. This lack of employee awareness in your employee referral program, ultimately leads to employees losing interest and becoming increasingly occupied with their immediate work and forgetting aboutthe referral program till something comes up to bring it top of mind once again.
It is true that the effort and time involved in building and running a successful employee referral program is justified only ifa sizeable portion of your candidate pool is hired through internal referrals. However, it is equally true that thisnumber can only be reached if there is a concerted plan for consistent promotion of the employee referral program. Sustained participation in the employee referral program needs to be driven by its active promotion using an eclectic mix of communication channels based on available resources. Some things that HR and recruiters should keep in mind while designing an employee referral program include:
An Employee referral program should be made central to the entire recruiting and sourcing strategy and process.
Tie in promotion and branding with recognition and incentive for employees who perform to build an aspirational pull for other employees to emulate the successful ones.
The first and foremost step towards branding your employee referral program is to give it a name and a logo. Branding your referral program is of prime importance to ensure it succeeds. Ensure the logo is prominently displayed in all communication and giveaways related to employee referral program to enhance brand recognition and recall.
There are various communication channels by which organizations can brand and market their employee referral program, effectively:
Making a periodic announcement of hires through employee referral programs on the company intranet and at company townhalls to share the success of the program and give it recognition.
Integrating social media features into your employee referral tool to enable employees to share job openings with their network. There are several tools such as ZALPthat effortlessly help you do so.
Launchingan Employee referral newsletter covering latest features added to the employee referral program, successes of the program, interviews of star performers and how they have utilized their incentive bonus.
Ensuring a positive experience for referred candidates during the interview process, irrespective of whether they are hired or not.
These have two pronged benefits:
A) They remain open and positively inclined to be considered for a future opening
B) They act as brand ambassadors for your company to spread positive word of mouth in their network.
Last but not the least; a successful employee referral program can also be used as a great marketing tool to promote your employer brand while hiring external candidates. It makes sense to share the successes of your employee referral program during campus recruitment drives and employment fairs to show potential candidates how employees have benefited from the employee referral program for supporting the hiring initiative of the company.
You can read more on latest trends and technologies in recruitment on zalp.com/theemployeereferralblog/
