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Improving Your Employee Referral Program

The State of Employee Referral Programs Today

Your Employee Referral Program should be your number one source of hires for your company. In today’s competitive job market, with unprecedented numbers of open roles and low unemployment rates, building out or improving upon your Employee Referral Program is an absolute must to fill your pipeline with quality candidates.

For organizations that are doing this right, they continue to reap the benefits through lower cost applications, higher quality candidates and improvements in employee retention rates while simultaneously strengthening their employer brand.  

Why the struggle?

The challenges that often prevent organizations from achieving success with employee referrals are consistent across different organizations.

  • Adoption – From employees to managers and even senior leaders, often the Employee Referral Program is overlooked or forgotten.
  • Promotion – Lack of ongoing communication about the program, its successes and participation levels will hinder the program’s long-term success and adoption.
  • Complications – Confusing rules and administrative issues prevent the program from taking hold and delivering results.

The good news is these common pitfalls can be overcome with the right strategies in place.

Strategies for success:

  • Audience Identification – Identify key stakeholder groups throughout your organization, the role they need to play in making the program successful, challenges that each will need to overcome and develop key messages and promotional materials to engage these audiences. Key audiences will likely include program owners, management teams, employees, internal communications, payroll and IT.
  • Optimize Reward Options – While cash payouts are typically the norm at the point of hire, consider a multi-tiered rewards strategy to encourage ongoing employee engagement. These can come in the form of non-monetary or even emotional rewards. If you decide on a cash reward, consider a staggered distribution pre and post hire.
  • Socialize Results – Utilize technology to allow employees to share with their social networks and create healthy competition amongst the employee population.
  • Track and Optimize – Ensure you are tracking the activity from your program, identifying and celebrating those employees who are participating in your program as well as those who are not. Utilize ongoing communication strategies to drive program improvements.

In addition to these strategies, Radancy offers a full-scale, Employee Referrals solution. Powered by the connected intelligence of our unified platform, Radancy’s Employee Referrals help you engage and incentivize your employees to reach more talent, attract high-quality candidates and recruit hard-to-fill roles. By seamlessly integrating into your workflow, we can help you create connections that count – helping you hire better talent, faster. To learn more about the power of our Employee Referrals, connect with us today!

About Kevin Regan

Kevin Regan, Vice President of Digital Strategy, is responsible for driving digital innovation across the Radancy client base. A veteran of the company for over 15 years, Kevin brings a wealth of experience and knowledge on driving effective strategies for Radancy clients.

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