While working with clients to significantly improve their employee referral programmes (ERP), we’re often asked about the most effective way to reward employees for referring candidates into the business. 

Typically most companies have a monetary bonus in place, which is either a flat rate per role or tiered based on the seniority or difficulty of filling a role. Therefore, we’ve had to take clients on a journey of looking at experiential rewards as an alternative way of rewarding employees. 

Here are 6 reasons to consider introducing more experiential rewards: 

• Employee engagement Not all your employees will respond to a monetary reward so to ensure your tapping into the network of as many employees as possible, you need to offer a different type of reward. 

• ERP longevity A variation of rewards keeps the employees interested to see what’s next and, as we can demonstrate, inspires longer levels of engagement in your employee referral programme. 

• Memorable Experiential rewards live much longer in the memory of the successful referer than monetary rewards. 

• Spread the word Employees receiving an experiential reward, are up to 5 times more likely to discuss the experience with colleagues, compared to receiving a monetary bonus.

• Recruitment marketing It’s seen as a bit more crude to publicise a monetary referral reward, but if your employee enjoys e.g a weekend away, you can encourage them to share some images from the weekend and use those to publicise internally what employee referral success can bring. 

• Cost effective Whilst you wouldn’t want this to be your main driver, the reality is experiential rewards will often be cheaper than the monetary bonus the company was willing to give e.g a hot air balloon ride for 2 with champagne during the flight is far less than the €1000 bonus the company was going to give but, going back to the third point, will stay longer in the memory? 

There are loads of ways we work with clients to get them to think about their referral rewards. The reality is, to develop the highest employee engagement levels you need to combine the whole range of rewards available with some gamification, to ensure there’s a fun element of competition too. 

There’s no time like the present to mix up your referral programme to get the best results possible, so what are you waiting for? HireUp is an award winning employee referral solution. To find out how we can significantly enhance your referral programme simply email Gary on gary.berney@hireuponline.com or call him on +353 (0)833455272 

July 15, 2019 / By Gary Berney