Employee referral is an internal recruitment method employed by organisations to identify potential candidates from their existing employees social networks. An employee referral scheme encourages a company's existing employees to select and recruit the suitable candidates from their social networks. As a reward, the employer typically pays the referring employee a referral bonus. Recruiting candidates using employee referral is widely acknowledged as being the most cost effective and efficient recruitment method to recruit candidates and as such, employers of all sizes, across all industries are trying to increases the volumes they recruit through this channel.
Before we talk about how we could run a successful ERP program, let's have a look at how well others did. According to a research report, the employee referral rate in their companies are:
AmTrust (78%)
Intel (71%)
SG Construction (70%)
Quicken Loans (68%)
Rackspace Hosting 66%
Covenant Health (64%)
Cisco Systems (62%)
FirstMerit Bank (56%)
Edward Jones (55%) (with no bonus)
The Turner Construction Corporation (56%)
Booz Allen (52%)
Northrop Grumman Space Technologies (52%)
Symantec (51%)
"Employee referral programs are #1 (at leading practice firms) in delivering the greatest volume of hires, an improved quality of hire, and improved retention at all levels." - DJS research finding. However, we are facing a lot of challenges when we aim to drive the ER ratio up.There are 2 main barriers:
Barrier #1: Lack of Communication:
Problem Statement: employees regularly cite: “it's lack of follow up with my referral about my friend’s status."
Negative Impact: In turn, this makes them much less likely to refer another friend. It can also hurt your company's relationship with your current employees, who ends up feeling like their opinion is less valued as a result of their experience.
Improvement Opportunity: Communication problems are not limited to program awareness, however. Many point to an ERPs positive effect on employee morale, as the program shows whether or not we value our current employees' opinions and referrals.
Solutions: Enable the concept of “XXX company Value Your Referrals”, “Bring In Successful People Who are Like You” into ERBP promotion activities and enhance the process/tool/control points for valuing their opinions and efforts.
Barrier #2: Administrative Burden
Problem Statement: The more effective ERP is, the more time it takes to administer it. There is no a dedicated team/process to monitor the progress/results and measure the response.
Negative Impact: In turn, this makes employees suffered with nobody caring their efforts and a sense of out of loop.
Improvement Opportunity: The capability of administration team, process enhancement, Feedback mechanism
Solutions: Enable more automatic functions to process administrative jobs into ATS system, build priority rules to recruitment process, set manual control points with HR operation team for feedback mechanism
Then, according to the above findings, we could focus on 2 main areas to improve the effectiveness of ERP program:
Program Awareness:
- Improve overall program awareness
- Improve program awareness in target BUs according to the ERP ratio and feedback research;
- Improve awareness for additional bonus for specific candidate groups
- Strengthen effective promotion channels and think “out of box” channels to enhance promotion effectiveness
Process Enhancement:
- Streamline ERBP referral process with ATS system and integrate “CRM” into process for better managing referral cycle, feedbacks to referrers and payment notification, etc.
- Enhance the concept of “One Single Stop” for “Easy Referral”
- Set measurements for key control points in ERBP process cycle
Here I would like to share some ideas about how to increase the program awareness. The following ideas might enlighten your ideas. ;-)
Improve Overall Program Awareness with Creative Channels:
Give ERBP a slogan and logo to increase recognition and share-of-mind
- Use the slogan and logo on all communication pieces, giveaways, etc.
- Slogan like “Easy Referral” to emphasis the concept of getting easy money with simple actions through simplified process
1st day Engagement Model to sell ERBP program, notify process/tools and bonus
- Cook ERBP promotion deck into the onboard briefing materials to enhance program awareness from Day One New Employee Orientation session
- Set “Early Bird” game rule and gifts for motivating new joiners to try ERBP within certain days, e.g. first one month
Build ERBP promotion deck into new manager orientation or other related training
Send a home mailer
- Collect employee home address from our database to send trial ERBP promotion mail to employee's home address and assess their feedbacks
Set Quarterly prize drawing for extra excitement
- Set quarterly drawing for employees whose referral is successfully hired for additional prize, e.g. gifts; Take video to the final winner and interview their successful stories to promotion ERBP on Plasma
- The series of successful ERBP stories could be under the theme “ Stop Thinking the Bonus, Start Referring the Candidates”
- Set a year-end “Overseas Travel ticket” and pronounce it in New Year Party
Giveaways and Interactive Quiz Promotion
- For general awareness, hand out giveaways with the program‘s logo emblazoned on it, e.g. mouse pad, U-disk with all ERBP promotion decks or water bottle, etc
- Set gifts for interactive quiz competition, e.g. for 100 first respondents with right answers; the questions could be focused on ERBP bonus amount, additional bonus for what type of candidates, where to refer the candidates, what tool you should use, when I will get payment after successful referral, etc
- Slogan like “Easy Referral” to emphasis the concept of getting easy money with simple actions through simplified process
- Organize Public Promotion Events (Optional)
大厦一层布置大型喷绘海报；
每层电梯门，电梯间地面，张贴平面；
每层液晶屏宣传片；
座机电话液晶屏幕提示ERBP口号；
茶水间冰箱门张贴平面；
每层广告栏张贴平面；
邮件个人签名设计ERBP主题；
在HOT POSITION邮件中插入系统推荐流程动画演示；
Improve Program Awareness in Target Business Units:
Organize round Table
- Leverage BU Executive influence power to hold round tables with line managers to address ERBP importance.
- Gain the buy-in and involvement of fist line managers via roundtables and lunch meetings.
Send Direct Mails to Team by BUE
- Design BU-Specific ERBP promotion letter with BU hot positions through BUE to distribute it to all team members
Set Additional Bonus for 2-3 Hot Positions as “Monthly Position”
- Identified 2-3 positions that are listed as jobs of the month. If an employee refers a candidate for one of these position they can earn an additional 1,000 bonus on top of the standard award.
Send Out Thanks Letter by BUE
- Draft thanks letter for BUE with list of employee name who made successful referrals and send the thanks letter through BUE
- Communication from department heads to their staff and the recruiting team presented it to various client groups within the company.
Utilize Employee Referral Business Card for External Networking
- With Key BU hot potion information on one side of Business Card for presenting to friends, potential candidates etc.
