8 Tips to Get Most Out of Your Diversity Referral Program

A Guest Blog by Consuelo Fajota Jose

Employee referral programs have turned out to be one of the best and most effective ways of finding talent and hiring an army of the best talent. Even companies, both big and small are encouraging employee referral. There are various social networks like LinkedIn which are gaining popularity as employee referral networks.
John Sumser mentions in one of his article, that though employee referral programs are good, but they aren’t powerful enough to change the tide of corporate culture; or assemble a workforce that has new or diverse skill set; or promote and build diversity environment. He further points out that companies should understand that employees might not be able to make the best choice while making a referral. Employees who are new to the ERPs could also refer candidates with quite similar skill sets, which can lead to a phenomenon known as ‘inbreeding’.

Today we lay down 8 points that help you to make the best out of your Employment Referral Program and increase diversity in workforce:

1. Prefer hiring diverse individuals.
If you need to build a diverse culture at your work place, then, it is very necessary to get reference from diverse sources, and make your intentions clear. Some tips that you can follow are:
Encourage the current diverse group of employees to refer people for jobs and career opportunities.
Advice the CEO to endorse the diversity hiring policy and make it known to everyone.
Consider and make, diversity recruiting equally important company policy as any other operational policy.

2. Be direct in rewarding the referrers.
To encourage employees for diversity referring, increase the benefit by 25% to 100%.
Give benefit to employees for providing details about diversity candidates.

3. Events.
Organize and encourage employees to attend events with high diversity attendance.
Entrust employees attending trade fairs, seminars and professional associations with the responsibility of diversity recruiter at the event.

4. Interview.
Be transparent to diversity candidates, assisting them in doing better in interviews. Inform diversity referrals about specific skill sets that will be reviewed and areas which would require additional information.

5. Track Diversity Referrals
Track diversity referrals by every manager in the organization. Monitor the demographic distribution of the current workforce. Also, monitor whether the current employee referral programs are effective in providing diversity candidates.

6. Showcase Success
Be open in announcing the success stories of these referral programs. This will encourage other employees to take part in the program.

7. External Referrers.
If you abide by the relevant tax laws, there is nothing wrong in considering adding external referrers. External referrers could be ex-employees of the company or members of a group or any other person who is interested in joining your program.

8. Performance Base Hiring System.
Performance based job profile can provide a better outlook of the job requirements, making it easier to provide reasonable accommodation of disabilities. It will also help in complying with laws like Disability Act.

This will increase the diversity candidate pool. It will allow to hire from the diverse pool of younger, older, military veterans and disabled or physically challenged candidates.

Author Bio:
Consuelo Fajota Jose is an ESL/EFL practitioner and a part-time webwriter. A Psychology major, she started in the field of diversity recruitment, and then later moved into the field of English Language Teaching. Her hobbies include poetry, journaling and reading. She maintains a blog, English All You Can.

The post 8 Tips to Get Most Out of Your Diversity Referral Program appeared first on GooodJob Blog.

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