Simple Steps to Transform your Employee Referral Program

Simple steps to

transform your referral program

zalp.com

• It takes an average of just 10.4 referrals to make a hire.

• At a typical company, referrals account for anywhere from 24% to

one-third of all hires.

• Some companies make as many as 75% of their placements

through referrals.

• Referral hires perform 3% to 15% better than hires from other

sources.

• Referral candidates accept offers 15% more often than regular

candidates.

A Workforce Management and Ohio State University study found that

candidates hired through an employee referral had a 25% higher

retention rate than those hired through other means.

If you work in corporate recruiting, this piece of information is hardly

news. For one thing, it's a matter of common sense that the people

closest to your best employees would probably make good employees

too. For another thing, several commonly cited statistics illustrate the

value of referrals.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Employee Referrals most certainly make the

best hires As Research States:

Recognizing benefits like these, more and more forward-thinking HR

departments are trying to optimize their employee referral programs

(ERPs) to yield more high-quality referrals. In fact, it's not uncommon

for HR staffs to set a goal of increasing employee referrals by 50%.

What if you could substantially increase your percentage of hires made

from employee-initiated referrals? What impact would this

improvement have on your recruiting budget?

And this is possible by leveraging the power of social media with the

employee referral program of an organization. Using socially

intelligent tools that engage employees and use them as recruitment

ambassadors is the need of the hour.

The recruiting industry is full of ideas on how to optimize your ERP to

improve the quality of your referrals while reducing time-to-hire and

cost-per-hire. Let's take a look at some simple steps when combined

with the right tools can transform you referral program.

Today there is a growing importance of engagement and

relationship building with potential candidates. With the

modified communication patterns, candidates expect two-way

interactions with recruiters.


best hires


best hires


• A catchy program name, punchy tagline, and custom logo. Make

sure your program messaging stresses the benefits to the

employee, as well as to the company and the employee's friends.

• Branded giveaway materials, such as mouse pads, water bottles,

coffeemugs, laptop bags, and apparel.

• Periodic awards ceremonies at which employees who earned

referral bonuses receive oversized novelty checks, much like

sweepstakes winners.

• Quarterly prize drawings for employees who make successful

referrals. These prizes can be awarded in addition to any

predetermined bonus checks.

An ERP can't just be something that lives on an intranet page, likely

to be seen only by employees who are looking for it. Driving

participation in your ERP will require consistent marketing to your

entire employee base.

Marketing your

ERP


To keep your ERP top-of-mind with employees, consider implementing any or all of the following marketing components:

• A program newsletter that interviews employees about how they

have used their bonuses, inspiring others to achieve the same

success.

• Targeted messages to employees who work in specific

geographies, or who are most likely to have connections that can

help fill your hottest job openings.

Marketing your

ERP


A second key priority in optimizing your ERP should be to deliver a

positive referral experience for your employees. Your goal? Increase

employee participation by making it easy for every employee to source

talent.

• Increase the volume and quality of your referrals.

• Prioritize and follow up with recruiters, employees, and candidates.

• Incentivize employees to keep referring talented contacts.

• Ask employees regularly for referrals. Send automated, targeted

emails that encourage employees to submit the names of their most

qualified contacts.

• Help employees dig into their social networks. Don't assume your

employees will remember all the relevant contacts in their Facebook

or LinkedIn account. Chances are, they have hundreds or even

thousands of connections and won't be able to recall offhand which

Keeping

employees the

priority Your ERP should be helping you:

You can achieve these goals by focusing on three central tasks:


Keeping

employees the

priority

of them fits well for any specific open position. Instead, using social

matching technology to reach these connections automatically can

be a great solution. Socially intelligent employee referral tools such

as ZALP can help you do so with ease.

• Help employees share jobs quickly and easily. Employees don't

want to add more footwork to their schedules, even if there's a

chance they'll earn a $1,000 bonus check. If you want to maximize

participation in your program, you'll need to help employees refer

their friends within a matter of a few clicks. ZALP gives your

employees not one but five easy and convenient ways to make

referrals.

And as you optimize your ERP, you should frequently reassess whether

your rewards serve two purposes: driving employee participation, and

ensuring a high quality of referrals.

• Do my employees value monetary rewards, gifts, or charitable

donations most highly? If you don't know the answer, consider

running a survey.

Ask yourself:


• Should we offer employees a choice of rewards? Sometimes

options drive participationbut too many choices can be

overwhelming and can actually diminish interest among would-be

participants.

• Is our program attracting top performers? One way to drive higher-

quality referrals is to offer bonuses only after a new hire has

remained with the company for a set period of time perhaps 90

days.

• Does our program build teamwork and pride among the

workforce? Cash awards will convince most employees to sit up

and take notice as ZALP can help you do so with ease.

But according to recruiting thought leader Dr. John Sullivan, you

should “instill in your employees that the primary reason that

they should refer people is because the team wins 'when it has

the best players.' It is a superior motivator over monetary

rewards, because it turns referrals into an opportunity to provide

their teammates and themselves with the very best co-workers.”

Keeping

employees the

priority


In their hurry to make the ERP as easy and as appealing as possible for

employees, companies often neglect to optimize the candidate

experience. But they do so at their own peril.

As you work to provide the best possible candidate experience, keep in

mind that you're not just striving to avoid committing breaches of

etiquette and other relatively minor mistakes. Providing a positive

candidate experience enables your company to build a superior

employment brand. This, in turn, will help ensure a pipeline of talent for

future open positions.


Enhancing the Candidate

Experience

ZALP enables organizations to automate and streamline every aspect

of their employee referral program while at the time same integrating

it with the potent potential of social recruitment using its advanced

social media capabilities.

The unique aspect about ZALP is that it gives employees not one but

five easy and convenient ways to refer jobs to their connections.

Interesting features like the ZALP Match ensures that even if

employees do not have a top of mind connection to make a referral, the

built-in intelligent match feature suggests the most relevant matches

for a job out of his/her own social network connections.

Each of ZALP's features have been specifically developed to

give organizations a new and innovative referral platform that

drastically accelerates employee participation which in turn

results in a considerable reduction in the cost per hire and time

to fill.

Advanced features like the ZALP Track ensures that employees are

kept well updated on the status of their referrals by giving them real

time updates on the entire referral progress.

The interesting thing about ZALP is that it is a highly scalable tool and

can be seamlessly used by organizations having 100 to even 10000+

employees.

Considering ZALP operates in the SAAS model (software -as-a-

service) organizations do not have to go through the cumbersome

hassles of integration and implementation. Organizations with even a

global presence can effortlessly adopt ZALP without having to go

through any elaborate integration process.

Unleash the potential of your Employee Referral Programwith ZALP–The Socially Intelligent Employee Referral Tool


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Simple Steps to Transform your Employee Referral Program