4 Important Factors That Drive An Employee Referral Program
Finding quality talent is imperative for the success of any business. To get this quality talent in place, however, is the greatest challenge facing most recruiters today. While Employee Referral Programs have emerged as a great resource in generating quality employees, merely launching an ERP is not equivalent to its successful running. Here’s an overview of the factors that drive a successful employee referral Program.
#1Prioritization
An ERP that does not tend to focus on critical areas, very often tends to lose steam. It is fairly important to prioritize & focus on targeted jobs & positions to ensure that employee efforts aren’t dissipated across a whole lot of jobs that can easily be filled through other recruiting sources. Most successfully running ERPs tend to focus on:
• Mission Critical Jobs
• Jobs that are hard to fill
• Positions that have a high success rate of being filled with referrals
Not focusing on these jobs means not only spending Employee time on a whole lot of positions but also over burdening the HR teams with a lot of administrative work that can significantly slow down the process and in turn lead to employee disillusionment.
#2 Relevant Rewards
While rewards drive an Employee Referral Program is now a given, successful companies ensure that these rewards are relevant. Monetary rewards are of course needed, however the fear in overdoing them is that the participation levels are bound to fall if at any stage there is a need to cap them. Along with monetary rewards, the following work best:
• Positioning the Employee Referral Program as a great way for Employees to choose quality co-workers
• High quality hires will mean improvement in productivity, profits & hence employee stock values and bonuses
#3 Broadening the scope of the Program
It will help the cause of referrals if more people are included into the ambit of the program. Here are some thoughts on increasing the scope of the program:
• Allow Managers & HR teams to participate
• Expand scope of the program to non employees, namely business constituents such as vendors, customers or even previous employees
• Companies like Booz Allen, even have a referral program that encourages internal movements.
• Asking new hires on on-boarding for referrals is also a great way to pass on the culture of the company that places great emphasis on employee referrals, to new recruits.
#4 Integrating social media
An employee referral program that is integrated with social media features, renders it easy for employees to share open positions with their social networks. Not only are you turning your employees but also their social media contacts, into virtual recruiters. With the ability to automate the referral process and have multi level referral tracking, it is easy to identify star performers & reward them accordingly.
A well-designed & highly visible Employee Referral Program can go a long way in revving up a company’s recruitment strategy and also strengthening its employee base.
