6 Things You Wish Your Employee Referral Program Did
In light of the recent focus on employee referral programs and their positive impact on business hiring, expectations from referral programs have suddenly gone up manifold. Employees expect the referral programs to be much more responsive and technology driven than ever before, candidates expect that being referred by an employee should get them through the doors of the organization while organizations have their own set of expectations. Much of the focus till now has been on what employees expect from the program and what organizations can do to meet or manage those expectations. The emphasis is now shifting to how organizations can realize more from the program; a sort of wish list of sorts what more could be achieved out of the referral program and the best way to go about realizing the same.
We have compiled 6 of the more prominent of these so called wishes below to give you an idea of the future direction of employee referral programs.
The most oft repeated wish of anyone associated with the hiring team is to receive more referrals from high performing employees.This is because statistics show that referrals from top performing employees can produce up to 135% more output than hires from other sources, a significant enough business impact for organizations to wish for more referrals from their top performing employees. Also referrals coming from the top performing referrals are generally of significantly higher quality with a much higher probability of being hired, saving the organization valuable time and energy spent on interviewing others.
Secondly, a most ardent wish of businesses is that employees did a much better job of matching candidates skills set against the skill sets listed in the open positions, instead of simply referring anyone who is interested in applying. A little bit of initial screening on the part of the employee can save a lot of time and effort for the organization.
Businesses often wish that employees use the referral program to share more news and information of the organization to build a more attractive employer brand. If employees start sharing photos, videos on their organizational culture, the chances of spreading a positive note about the organization goes up tremendously.
There have been many attempts to try and calculate the ROI on referral programs, there is a much repeated wish for an even more scientific way to be able to calculate the exact ROI of a referral program in terms of current business impact and potential future impacts on the business from a sustained referral program.
Organizations wish that employee referral programs can be used to do a better job of connecting with employee connections on social media platforms to generate a positive buzz around the organization. What they are basically aiming for is to achieve a good way of integrating social media marketing with employee connections accessed through the referral platform.
Lately businesses have continued to wish that gamification integrated with a reward points program can achieve desired employee expectations to generate the kind of referrals that can transform hiring for the business.
The wish list is endless but the above give a fair idea of what areas businesses are looking to focus on to increase the effectiveness of their employee referral program.
