Employee Engagement For Dummies
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Increasingly, employers understand the importance of employee referrals as a source of engaged employees. Who better to understand a firm’s culture than the employees of the firm? And engaged employees are more likely to find and promote yet more engaged employees.

In fact, a 2012 study by the Temkin Group revealed that engaged employees are 370 percent more likely to refer their company to friends than disengaged employees are. And new employees who are referred by a friend are more likely to be high performing and engaged.

Social media provides every employee with a large referral network to broadcast just how wonderful their employer is. Odds are, that referral network contains at least a few excellent candidates for the position you need to fill.

If, for example, one of your engaged employees tweets about your organization’s charitable contributions, or shares a photo of your company’s recent volunteer efforts, it increases the likelihood that potential job seekers in her network will have a positive impression of your organization. Be sure your employees are taking advantage of this wonderful tool!

Here are a few other ways to bolster your employee referral program:

  • Connect to your EVP. Your employee referral program should resonate with your company’s employee value proposition (EVP) — that is, who you are and why people should work for you. For instance, if your culture values corporate social responsibility, why not reward the employee who refers the most new hires in a calendar year with a week off, with pay, to work with a charity such as Habitat for Humanity?

  • Make it visible. Use posters, social media, paycheck postcard inserts, and other reminders to promote your program.

  • Make it fresh. Update your employee referral program every year with a new look and feel, and new prizes for employees who generate the most referrals.

  • Link your employee referral program to your onboarding program. New hires are a great source of referrals. In fact, they often can be like Pied Pipers for other equally engaged recruits. Create an automatic system to ping new hires multiple times during their first year (for example, on day 30, day 60, day 90, and so on) with information about your employee referral program and a list of current job openings.

  • Promote, promote, promote. Promote your employee referral program on LinkedIn and Facebook, in company newsletters, in CEO communications, at company socials, and so on.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Bob Kelleher is the founder of The Employee Engagement Group, a global consulting firm that works with leadership teams to implement best-in-class leadership and employee engagement programs. He is the author of Louder Than Words and Creativeship, as well as a thought leader, keynote speaker, and consultant.

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