How to improve employee trust in your referral program

When I open the topic of referrals with talent leaders, body language and tone often shifts to discomfort.? Words such as tedious, time-consuming, friction, and “it’s a good source, but…” are often heard.

A close second question I ask (after “do you have a referral program?”) is “what percentage of your hires come from referrals?”.? Given the underwhelming enthusiasm for the current process, one might expect the numbers to be low.? In fact, referrals as a source can be 20-40%+ of hiring for companies.? When you consider the administrative angst AND the numbers of tools and external help companies pay for today, that is remarkable.

So…a major source of hiring comes from, shall I politely say, a less-than-optimal process.??What could happen it it was optimized? Would headcount planning and forecasting become easier with efficient talent flow from a great source?

Let’s deconstruct just one of the issues in this post today.

Problem: Employees do not trust the process

Cause: Human communication error

Effect:? Low employee participation rates

Yep, I said it.? Human error is the culprit.? You see, most referral programs are managed by a single person on a spreadsheet or a notebook.? Some organizations say “we have THAT in our ATS”.? The THAT is a referral link that employees choose not to remember to find or know how to use.? Catch my drift?

Let’s think about some of the tasks that the referral program owner on a talent team needs to remember to do:

• Choose which jobs to include in the program
• Get approval for a referral fee and amount
• Decide who is eligible for the referral fee
• Decide how someone qualifies for the referral fee
• Decide when to pay someone
• Communicate to the company that the program exists
• Communicate and train employees on how “the system” works
• Communicate to employees that a job opening fits their network profile
• Offer “white glove” attention to referred candidates
• Figure out how to communicate the status of a referral to the employee
• Figure out what to communicate to the employee if a referral is not a good fit
• Spend hours sifting through resumes and scheduling phone screens
• Make sure payment to the employee is on time

WHOA, that’s a lot to do!? The reality is that, without automation, things slip through the cracks.

Oftentimes, an employee will refer someone and follow “the process” only to fall into what I call the BLACK HOLE of RECRUITING.? The minute an employee starts asking, “what is happening with the person I referred into the company?” or “what is the status of my referral?”, you have effectively lost their trust.

To build employee trust, It is imperative for you to have an effective communication and automation plan for every step of the process.? You do not need to take this on yourselves!? There are now solutions in the market (including www.bountiful.us) that can help you automate the referral management process and turn your employees into recruiting champions for HR and the company.?

By doing so, you will turn anxiety-ridden manual effort into a competitive advantage and unleash the true potential of network recruiting from your employees. Everyone wins!? You get well-vetted talent, the candidate gets a great experience and employee engagement will improve.??

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Scott Sinatra is the Co-Founder and CEO of? Bountiful, a referral management system for recruiting. He has extensive experience in HR tech as the early SVP, Worldwide Sales at Glassdoor (acquired by Recruit.com) and Founding Executive at Glint (acquired by LinkedIn).