Creating brand value for your Employee Referral Program

  • Added:
    Feb 21, 2014
  • Article Views:
    1726
  • Word Count:
    481
Creating brand value for your Employee Referral Program Photo by Savio Vadakkan

A study of the most effective employee referral programs have shown that organizations that have invested in building a positive brand value for their employee referral program have reaped the benefits of a successful long running employee referral program. Creating a referral brand helps to build a referral culture in the organization wherein employees feel positively motivated towards participating in the program and referring quality candidates.

Building a brand value for your employee referral program has a two-fold benefit. Firstly, it helps to build and create a positive reinforcement in the minds of employees with the referral program and secondly, a strong branded employee referral program helps to build a strong employer brand externally as well.

A compelling employee referral brand adds a powerful boost to your employer brand as well as it motivates employees to turn into brand advocates for the purpose of recruiting. By advertising job openings and the organization to their network of friends and associates, employees are essentially giving out the message that this is great place to work and build a career.  Not every employee referral may convert into a hire, but each referral adds to the image of your organization as an employer of choice.

Employees very often get so occupied with the task at hand that referral programs and job openings go so way down in their mindshare to become virtually non-existent. Employees no longer remain aware of recent openings and lose any interest in scanning their networks for suitable candidates to refer for advertised positions.  Building a brand value around an employee referral program helps to mitigate some of these issues as it leads to sustained messaging across different communication platforms to build positive corroboration and ensure top of mind recall for employee referral program.

In order to build a successful referral brand, it is essential that the referral program should be made central, to the recruiting strategy of the company. This will mean giving priority and preference to employee references, fast tracking interview and hiring of candidates referred through the referral program and aggressively incentivizing the program. It is equally important to devise an effective strategy for recognizing and incentivizing employees for successful referral as well as communicating the successes to the wider employee base to create an aspirational pull among other employees to be associated with the employee referral program.

Creating a colorful logo and a brand name for the employee referral program that employees are able to relate to is the very first step in this process. Once the brand identity is established, constant communication through videos, newsletters, posters during employee meets and in other forums will constantly add to the value of the referral brand, which in turn will ensure sustained participation of employees in the employee referral program.

Get free access to employee referral whitepapers and webinars to stay updated on recent trends on employee referrals. To find more on employee referrals, visit zalp.com/employeereferralresources.

Author's Profile

Savio Vadakkan is the Marketing Professional at ZALP, a unique employee referrals solution. ZALP helps organizations for recognizing and incentivizing employees & employee referral program also using advanced employee referral brand techniques.


Please Rate this Article
Poor Excellent