Boosting Your BPO's Referral Program: How Can We Increase Awareness and Participation?

Hi,

I need suggestions and ideas towards driving the referral program in the company - basically, referring a friend is a common practice in the BPO sector. How can we drive awareness and mobility around the same?

Take employee suggestions in designing the incentives for referrals. Make the incentives interesting and aspirational. Try to interview referred candidates as soon as possible. Introduce an interlinked scheme. And don't let the scheme die. Reward the referrer as soon as it's due.

Dear Pranati,

Let us understand why a referral program will help the organization.

1. It would help you get your numbers.

2. Probably the tenure of people coming through referral programs will be longer (I have no data to support this, though).

3. The cost probably will be a little less, since you don't have to invest time in screening the resume, call up to line up the interview, etc. Also, the chances are that the person referring shall refer someone who has similar experience (I call these as friend followers), which may save you some time and hence cost as compared to a fresh recruit.

Normally, the compensation or referral bonus, as is popularly known, is the same for all the referrals for a particular position.

My view is that it can be different based on point 3 above. For example, if two persons are referred by an employee, one is a fresher and the other one is experienced, the referral bonus may be a little less in the case of the fresher than in the case of the experienced person.

Further, generally, the referral bonus is paid in one go after a few days, weeks, or a month of the joining of the person referred. I suggest that it should be deferred in parts and paid till the confirmation of the person referred.

You may pay 50% of the referral bonus at the time of joining of the person referred and the rest when the referred person is confirmed. You may incentivize in kind (give gifts or movie tickets, etc.) if the person referred completes one year in the organization.

Movie tickets or dinner coupons for two, i.e., the person who referred and the person who was referred, would be an excellent idea as this way both will relish the relationship within the organization.

Hope this makes sense.

Best wishes,

Sunil Joshi

PGCHRM - XLRI

Hi Kushi,

The referral program would revolve around:

1. Criticality of the position (i.e., rarity of skills, mission-criticality of process/project, etc.)
2. Demand-supply situation (i.e., how easily available)
3. Attractiveness index (Company branding)
4. Time-to-deploy (TTD) (i.e., deployment of trained resources)
5. Position/level-based program strategy (i.e., junior, middle, senior positions)
6. Hiring timelines (TAT)

You could design the program accordingly. For a BPO setup, the common hierarchical levels could be:

1. Call Center Executive (calling/transactional agent)
2. Team Lead (junior/senior)
3. AM/Dy. Mgr - Operations
4. Manager - Ops
5. SDL/AVP
6. Director
7. VP/COO/CTO/CHR/CFO...
8. CEO

The intent is that all targeted employees participate freely in referring right-fit candidates.

The Referral Program needs to be attractive in terms of:

1. Monetary payout
2. Timely payout
3. Individual recognition and reward in kind
4. Objective selection procedure
5. Responsible response (i.e., refer only right-fit candidates)
6. Referral performance and retention
7. Branding proposition
8. Referrer's appraisal (on the quality of referrals)

Some suggestions could be:

1. Prepare the referral program and circulate (email/bulletin board/event, etc.) with transparency of the selection process
2. Attach monetary value (the most attractive motivator) to make it fairly attractive for employees to start referring (compare this with what would have been your recruitment costs from external hiring and evaluate a 'fairly' attractive amount to set the monetary value)
3. Ensure participation and timely payment. Immediate payment (say, after a month) will ensure a better response. Part (say 50% payment) could be after 3-6 months of the tenure of the referee
4. Widely circulate clearly laid recruitment specs with no ambiguities
5. Announce/publish/communicate/circulate the list of referees and referrers' names against advertised positions and payout dates.
6. Communicate some incentives in kind
7. Remember, as positions go higher, monetary incentives and those in kind will have to increase and be carefully laid out so that seniors/top management also refer good candidates for top positions.

Rahul

09968270580

Delhi