By Neal Glatt

I hope you had a lovely Christmas with your family and some time away from work.  Now that you’re back, how would you like a late Christmas gift?  Something that will be super valuable to you and your business and give a boost to 2024 performance goals?  Here’s what I’m thinking…

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Everyone needs more great people on their team, but too few companies receive the gift of great workers because they’re not asking the right questions.  Starting off 2024 with quality workers may be the best Christmas gift your business can get, so let’s take the right steps to make sure you do.  Implementing an employee referral program is the easiest way to get the people you need with these simple steps:
Remind employees often.
Whether you’re filling one specific position with a specialized skill set, or hiring general labor on an ongoing basis, asking for employee referrals once is rarely (if ever) enough. Filling open positions is not the primary job duty of your workforce, so your hiring needs will quickly be forgotten by most employees. A quick, simple reminder will go a long way at keeping the referral program top of mind for them.

The interval of time between reminders will vary from company to company depending on the industry and positions, but you should be asking employees for referrals on a monthly basis (at a minimum) if you hire year-round.  Most importantly, start right now and explain that making 2024 awesome will require quality referrals.
Keep the program details simple.
Don’t over-complicate the process. Every time you add rules, paperwork, or extra steps to your referral program, you lessen the chance of it working for you. If you can’t explain how referrals work in a couple of sentences, it’s too convoluted to be memorable, and thus stay top of mind.
Make referring effortless.
Human beings are always looking for the most efficient path. So, if you’re designing a process for a specific behavior (like sending in employee referrals), one of the best things you can do is remove all hurdles to completing the desired behavior. Don’t just make it easy; make it effortless. 

The opportunity to refer usually presents itself away from work, so employees need to be able to recall the details and make the introduction in a variety of different contexts. That often means no paperwork, no emails or phone calls, and certainly no trips to the HR office. How is that even possible? One idea is to have employees keep a card in their wallet they can hand out to their referrals with the web address for your company careers page. 

The same concept above applies for the referred employee, too. If it’s not incredibly simple to apply—if there’s any friction in the process—they’ll abandon it altogether. So, if the referral has to fill out a long form, give you a call to figure out next steps, or come into the office to start the hiring process, you’re creating unnecessary barriers that they don’t want (or need) to overcome. They’ll simply look elsewhere, where those barriers don’t exist. 

A good employee referral program doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it shouldn’t be complicated at all. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you do it; it just matters that you make it as easy as possible to refer and apply, and to ask for those referrals far more often than you think is necessary. The rest is up to your team.

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