Learn the ABC’s employee referrals! Check out 3 quick tips for building a great employee referral program.

How to build a great employee referral program?

First of all, you need to be aware that building an effective employee referral program is no picnic.

Sending out an occasional email to your employees and asking them to share your job descriptions will not get you far.

If you want to harness the full potential of employee referral programs, you need to set up a structured employee referral program.

I’ll be completely honest with you here - it will take some time and effort.

However, it is well worth it!

Employee referral program will soon become your best source of hire with the highest return on investment (ROI), thus improving your cost, time and quality of hire!

3 quick tips for building a great employee referral program

Here are the 3 most important  tips that will help you build an effective employee referral program:

Tip #1: Communicate, communicate, communicate!

The key to a successful employee referral program is an effective communication.

You need to establish an open, respectful and timely communication with both of your main target groups: your employees and your candidates.

If you leave any of them in the dark, it is a sure way to sabotage your own employee referral program, hiring success and your employer brand!

Make sure both of your employees and candidates receive timely, personalized updates about any changes in the referred candidates status.

Tip #2: Automate

Make the use of your employee referral program quick and easy both for your employees and your HR team!

Automate your employee referral process with specialized HR software. Modern recruitment software offer many features that can help you automate, fasten and improve the management of your employee referral program.

For example, these software contain employee referral programs email templates that can be automatically personalized and sent in bulks.

These modern recruiting tools also have one centralized dashboard where you can easily track many different openings and referrals. They also offer detailed analytics and create beautiful reports to support your decision making process.

Tip #3: Motivate

How to motivate your employees to take part in your employee referral program?

First, you need to set clear and transparent rules.  The best way to do it is to create an official employee referral program policy.

Then you need to launch and promote your employee referral program. There are numerous marketing tactics you can use, such as creating a specialized monthly newsletter, printing out employee referral motivational posters, handing out employee referral stickers and hoodies, etc.

Of course, you also need to provide compelling incentives. But don’t worry - you don’t need a huge budget. There are many other clever ways to offer employee referral awards.

Finally, never underestimate the power of saying “thank you”. Having your CEO publicly recognize your referring employees in front of everyone in an all hands meeting can have the same effect as a financial reward!

Conclusion

This is it! :)

Following these 3 tips is guaranteed to help you build a great employee referral program that will help you find qualified candidates and continuously improve your hiring results.