Why do we care about how to increase employee referrals? It turns out, employee referrals ramp up faster and have better retention. It’s not surprising that these hires fit into your company culture faster and want to stay longer, considering they are already connected to your current employees! In addition, employee referrals often come at a cheaper cost-per-hire.
Wait, we could save money and hire a better-fit employee? Tell me more!
Plus, Harvard Business Review notes that referrals generate 70% more good hires than non-referrals.
So how can you get more of these valuable referrals from your existing workforce?
How to increase employee referrals
Here are some tips on how to increase valuable employee referrals:
- Always Reward. Reward employees for simply participating in your referral program (not just resulting in final hires). For example, if employees have referred 3 or more candidates, perhaps you enter them into a lottery for a prize or free vacation day.
- Cash is not always king. Charitable donations or gifts can sometimes work better in motivating participation. You could even appeal to everyone’s competitive side and try a company-wide contest for higher participation.
- Empower Employees. Make sure your team understands that by referring candidates from their network, they are more empowered to have a say in who becomes their future colleagues. Plus, by referring others, these employees can help shape how the company culture grows and improves (rather than having those decisions imposed upon them).
- Leverage the references of your candidates. Harver’s automated reference checking solution generates employee referrals by turning references into passive candidates without added work for recruiters. In fact, we commonly see 50% of references convert into passive referrals. One of our customers, a global packaged food brand, now gets 50% more references per check and sees 52% of references become passive referrals.
Get more referrals with less effort
To increase employee referrals, consider gaining passive candidates through automated reference checking solutions. Download our free whitepaper The Magic Number for Reference Checking to learn how.
