Referral program in a BPO - How to drive awareness & mobility around the same?

Hi, Need suggestions & ideas towards driving the referral program in the company - basically refer a friend a common practice in the BPO sector.
How to drive awareness & mobility around the same!

Take employee suggestion in desing the incentives for referral...make incentives interesting & aspirational...
Try to interview referred candidates asap...
intoroduce interlinked scheme...
And dont let the scheme die...reward the referre as soon as its 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 be longer (I have no data to support this though)

3. The cost probably 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 some one 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 case of fresher than in case of the experienced person.

Further, generally referral bonus is paid in one go after a few days, weeks or 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 rest when the referred person if confirmed. You may incentivise in kind (give gifts or movie tickets etc) if the person referred completes one year in the organization.

Movie tickets of dinner coupons for two i.e. the person who referred and the person who was referred would be an excellent idea by this they both will relish the relationship within the organistion.

Hope this makes sense.

Best wishes,

Sunil Joshi

PGCHRM - XLRI

Hi Kushi,

Referral program would devolve 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 (Co. 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 thus 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)

4. AM/Dy.Mgr - Operations

5. Manager - Ops

6. SDL/AVP

7. Director

8. VP/COO/CTO/CHR/CFO...

9. CEO

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

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 quality of referrals)

Some suggestion could be:

1. Prepare referral program and circulate (e.mail/bullettin board/event,

etc) with transparency of 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 'fairly' attractive amount to set monetary value)

3. Ensure participation and timely payment. Immediate payment (say,

after a month) will ensure better response. Part (say 50% payment

could be after 3-6 months of tenure of the referree)

5. Widely circulate clearly laid recruitment specs with no ambiguities

4. Announce/publish/communicate/circulate list of referrees and referrers'

names against advertised positions and payout dates.

5. Communicate some incentives in kind

6. Remember, as positions go higher, monetary incentives and those in

kind will have to increase and be carefully laid so that seniors/top

management also refer good candidates for top positions.

Rahul

09968270580

Delhi