According to ERE.net, the top best-practice employers get 50% of their hires through employee referrals. There have been additional studies that have shown that employee referral programs provide many benefits including increasing the quality of hires, morale and a company's bottom line. Not fully utilizing referrals means that you may miss out on the opportunity to hire a significant number of top-quality candidates. So, let's discuss some best practices to ensure that your company can reap the benefits from an effective referral program.

Motivate, motivate, motivate: 

Offering compelling cash incentives will certainly encourage employee participation. Cash bonuses are by far the biggest motivator in getting employees to participate in employee referral programs, however, you can also recognize employees for referring candidates by giving out vacation days, holding a raffle with fabulous prizes or through thank-you notes or gift cards.

Communication:

To ensure that employees know the full details of the program and its process,  ensure that employees are well of aware of the program through communication, outreach and training.

Get social: 

Utilize your company's social media networks to post new job listings and encourage employees to share the posting links with their network of contacts. Through educating employees and managers on how to effectively use social networks for professional purposes (through communication or training), your employees can easily seek quality referrals through the click of a button.

Offer incentives for early-bird referrals:

Promote friendly internal competition by awarding 'early-bird' (ie: first to submit a successful referral) with additional compensation.

Place emphasis on quality referrals:

Create a plan to discourage your employees from referring strangers, acquaintances and relatives. In order to ensure that your employees are bringing in people that they feel are a great fit for the role, ask employees to thoroughly know and assess their referral's work, skills and interest in the job.

Provide continuous employee notifications after a referral is submitted:

Once an employee submits a referral, most are usually nervous about whether or not their referrals were a good fit. A recommended best practices it to e-mail employees immediately when their referrals is accepted/rejected, if their referral has been approved for the interview process and if/when the candidate is hired.

Measurement and assessment:

Constantly strive to ways to improve the program. Ensure that the ROI is measured and evaluated on a regular basis and that the program is revised based on the results.

Ask for employee feedback:

Survey employees post campaign to regularly gain insight into important factors such as thoughts on the current incentives and the effectiveness of the current employee referral program.

High-level best practices for a successful employee referral program. Get started through social sharing job postings on social media with Jobcast. Install our app for free here.