Employee Referral Programs are the leading tools for talent sourcing based on resulting candidate quality and retention rates, which is why a well-executed referral program can do wonders for your talent pipeline. Nurturing a system to obtain employee referrals should be your top priority for many reasons: Referred hires dramatically reduce cost-of and time-to hire, referred hires generally exhibit a higher culture-fit and truly reflect your employer brand, among other benefits.
Once you’ve set up a killer program, it’s time to start promoting it within your team to give it momentum. Here are a few ways you can ensure that your Employee Referral Program stays on top for your employees’ minds whenever a new vacancy pops up:
1. Educate Your Hiring Managers
Be it new hires or existing employees, it is crucial to educate everyone in your company on the benefits that an employee referral program provides and the various tools that they can use to achieve these benefits.
Data works best because it gives an objective view of the program’s returns. Share stats and figures with executive team members, hiring managers, and directors and present cases of companies that have truly thrived because of a good employee referral program. Show how the program is projected to influence your time-to-hire, cost-of-hire, retention rates, and employee turnover if you opt for a model that has worked for similar competitor companies. Some figures to get you started:
After educating your senior employees, get them to share this information with their team members so that they are encouraged to refer their personal connections for company vacancies. Also, make it a practice to highlight the program and its benefits during employee onboarding as this gets people to sign up for it from day one.
2. Partner with Your Marketing Department and Advertise
When there’s a company opening, you don’t want to settle after announcing it once. To keep your employees actively thinking about it, provide regular updates to them without spamming. Involve your marketing team to encourage employees to opt into automated social sharing to expand the reach of your job postings. Since your employees’ personal connections live across their social media accounts, use software like GaggleAmp to automate this process and share job ads across their Facebook or Twitter accounts with a few simple clicks. This keeps the referral process top-of-mind and convenient, which makes it that much easier for your employees to take part in it.
3. Keep It Simple and Rewarding
If you want your Employee Referral Program to get a following, you must focus on its user experience. The easier it is to use, the more often it will be used. When designing the interface, ask yourself these questions:
If you get a ‘yes’ to all of these questions, then you are well on your track to deploying an engaging Employee Referral Program. However, if the program makes your employees jump through hoops to place a referral, you can be sure that it won’t attract many participants. Therefore, give a lot of attention to making the process smooth in order to give your program organic reach.
Much like any voluntary behavior, it’s essential to incentivize the referral process. To promote your program, publicize your incentives and keep showing your employees what’s in it for them. Doing something as simple as highlighting employees who participate in the program, regardless of the outcome of their referrals, can bring favorable results for the program’s popularity.
Because one size doesn’t fit all, incorporate a mix of monetary and non-monetary rewards to keep your employees interested. Naturally, the best way to attract participants is to make it look like they need the program, and not the other way around.
4. Keep It Fresh
Once you launch an Employee Referral Program, you’ll notice its engagement fall exponentially over the course of time. It’s natural for people to be more interested when the program is new. To keep employees interest long after its launch, keep shuffling your incentives each quarter and periodically send out internal newsletters to keep employees up to speed with the latest rewards mix and job openings. You can also introduce a social hour for new hires and the employees who referred them as a gratuitous gesture. This will not only bolster your employer brand, it will also contribute to keeping your program on top of everyone’s mind.
5. Bring Process Transparency
How does it feel when you submit your best presentation only to never hear back from your manager about it? Pretty disheartening, right? Don’t leave your employees in that limbo when they refer their best connection for a job opening. Nothing will repel participants from the program faster than the notion that their involvement didn’t matter. Keep them involved in the hiring process by actively letting them know which stage of the hiring funnel their referral has reached. Provide a follow-up before they ask for it as doing this will make them feel valued. Even if their referral doesn’t get through, deliver this news honestly without criticizing them for their referral choice. This transparency will breed an environment of trust and that will keep the referrals coming.
6. Marry the Program to Your Technology
If you use an Applicant Tracking System, managing your program will become very simple. Through your Applicant Tracking System, you can centralize all the referrals which keeps them organized. It will also help you in identifying duplicate referrals in case two employees refer the same candidate or if the candidate already exists in your talent pipeline. The system will also save you from switching back and forth from different applications to view, store and share all the referred profiles. With a competent ATS, you can easily evaluate the performance of the program and spot areas that need improvement. Where you work so hard on making your referral program a success with the employees, don’t forget the ones sitting in the HR department. Once the referrals start flowing in, they’ll appreciate the technological relief brought about by an ATS too.
Sophisticated recruiting technology, like Talentera, requires minimal effort from the employee and recruiter end to keep the program afloat. It makes it easy to track which employee applied to the program and, in turn, makes it easy to extend a reward when their referral is hired. With its robust features, you can quickly find the most relevant referrals and prioritize your star referring employees who have a history of recommending the best candidates.
The Bottom Line
If you provide convincing reasons for your employees to make referrals, they will definitely do it and if you manage to keep your employees happy, you will increase their chances of engaging with the program and in making repeat referrals with their best recommendations. Discuss the importance of referrals with your employees frequently. Use recognition and creative incentives to keep them engaged in the program. Remember: Large monetary incentives and persistent nagging don’t have to be your only resort. By simply focusing on your employees, their satisfaction and your Employee Value Proposition, you can ensure that your Employee Referral Program thrives.
