How Employee Referral Programs Get Benefited By Employee Engagement

When you eat at a great restaurant or get yourself a fantastic outfit from a store, what's the next thing you do?
Like most of us, you love to suggest it to your friends. Employee Referral Programs deal with this human desire to share things we like with others we care about.

Modern recruiting needs a multi-faceted approach. Simply putting up a job ad on the company website and waiting for the perfect candidate doesn't work anymore.
So, hiring managers are getting creative and using their best resources ( their employees! ) when it's time to hire new ones.
Defining Employee Referral Programs
It is a program through which your current employees can refer to people in their networks, such as family or friends, for open positions in their organization. It gives your employees a voice in the hiring process. Such programs have proved to be the best source of hiring consistently.
According to a survey in 2014, companies fill 20% of their openings through employee referrals. 46% of candidates coming in by an employee referral program end up staying at least a year. In comparison to that, 33% applied on the company website, and 22% from the outsourcing agencies who successfully referred.
Before launching employee referral programs, you need to perform some in-house clean-up to grab the current employees' attention! What isn't easy here is, building and maintaining your culture of employee engagement. It empowers the referral program at a deeper level. Thus, employee engagement is the key to the success of your Employee Referral Program.

Here's How You Can Improve Employee Referral Programs With Engagement Approaches

Build Positive Energy Within The Current Employees

According to Glassdoor studies, more than 50% of current employees would not like to recommend their employer to their friends even if their morale is high.
These employees, consciously or subconsciously, expand their negative energy and quickly influence the behavior of the co-workers. o, rather than ignoring these people, employers should know how to deal with them.

As a leader, you must create a positive environment. To know where the loopholes are, sit down with your team, discuss and identify the issues to fix them.

You can also do this through anonymous surveys which leads to more honesty in the responses.

With this simple task, you can observe a new level of energy that helps build momentum in your employee referral program.

2. Improve Your Company Culture

With employees who understand your values and missions, you usually end up with applicants who share the same. Employees who refer friends to open positions in their company are already happy with the company culture.

While referring candidates, he doesn't just endorse their candidate's experiences and skills. He should also make sure that the qualified candidate and the company wouldn't mind working together daily. Thus, with a more rich culture, the probability of bringing matching and quality candidate referrals is higher.

3. Educate Your Employees

An informed workforce builds the backbone of a successful referral program. According to a survey in 2013, only 42 percent of employees surveyed knew their organization's vision, mission, and cultural values. It is one of the top reasons why referral programs fail.

Employees without a firm grasp of the company values nd missions cannot be expected to advocate.

Education is a primary factor in employee engagement needs to cover this area as well. To sell the brand to their contacts, your employees need to know the heart and soul of your business.
Explain to them the core values and missions that set you apart from competitors. It will empower your employees to participate in the referral program.
Here, employee referral program training can help them in determining if a referral is a good fit. It makes people excited to learn about the program from the beginning, rather than depending on the grapevine.

4. Build The Foundation Of Trust

Listen to your employees and respond to them well. Once you build confidence, your employees would start working as brand ambassadors. Employees who feel trusted and respected are more likely to recommend their employer.

It also ensures lower retention among your present and future employees.

5. Recognize The Best With Referral Rewards

The success of your employee referral program highly depends on how attractive it is. It means to engage your employees, let them know the incentives attached.

Backing your program with a referral bonus can motivate employees tto a great extent. Monetary rewards are excellent boosters for many, but modern employees expect creative rewards and recognition. The only challenge here is understanding the employees' needs and wants.

Vantage Circle offers you a wide range of comprehensive and cost-effective rewards and recognition products for employee engagement.

6. Make Sure The Leaders Are Super-Active

Employees always look up to their managers for their leadership, passion, and commitment. Those employees who have engaged leaders are 59% more likely to be happier at the workplace.

When the manager is engaged, the subordinates get engaged, which is followed by employee referral.

It goes on as ‘snowball referral’ as every time the referred employees get engaged looking up to the enthusiasm of their co-workers, leading the way to more and more referrals.

Conclusively, a highly engaged workforce means a lot to successful referrals. If you know any other benefits other than the ones discussed here, share them with us!

This article is written by Susmita Sarma, a digital marketer at Vantage Circle. She was involved with media relations before shifting her interest in research and creative writing. Apart from being a classical music buff, she keeps a keen interest in anchoring and cooking. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com