Removing escalations in the employee referral process

Removing escalations in the employee referral process

Employee challenges or escalations tend to be around two major things - payroll and employee referral statuses. An employee holds the referral process fairly close to their heart. They have taken the efforts to find good talent and believe that the candidate would be a good fit for the organisation. Employees tend to get emotionally vested with their friends whom they have referred for a particular role and as a result expect to be kept in the loop around their candidature.

 

So, if you do not provide any status update or do not have the right mechanism to keep them informed,there is a very high chance that you are going to be dealing with escalations in the referral process. Typically, escalations occur on two major areas.

 

1) What's the status of my buddy? Employees want to know that their friend’s resume or candidature has been considered. Ideally, they prefer to know if the candidate has received a call and his/her profile is being evaluated. Any failure in this, might put the employees in the dark allowing them to raise concerns on the referral process. This leads them to question future participation which is detrimental to the efforts of your referral program.

 

In terms of escalation, the best practice is obviously to make a call to the employee's candidate and have a quick chat with them. If there are no open roles it makes sense to reject the candidate at that point and let them know they will be considered for future openings. And, if you have a way for the employee to see this status on their referral dashboard and say ‘hey your friend had been considered and there’s no current opening for them’. This makes them feel comfortable that their contributions are valued. There is a cultural nuance to this too. In the far east, there is an expectation that if there is a referral it would be treated with a great deal of sensitivity and care. And, no such referrals should be missed out. Status update should be made available mandatorily.

 

2) The second piece of the employee referral that drives escalations is around rewards. It's extremely important that the process of rewards are dealt with great care and sensitivity. And, done in a very timely manner. Firstly, you should have a clear policy that describes when the person is due to receive a reward, what is the reward is likely to be and on which payroll cycle can they expect to receive that. The best practice here is to actually give the employees some digital coins for them to redeem against items of their choice. However, if you are following the payroll process, it's critical that you notify the employee when their friend joins with a likely reward as well as the fact that it would be paid out post tax reductions.

 

If you have a good referral system in place, all of these escalations will be eliminated at source because the employee would have the information handy at their fingertips. Because, setting up the right communication and the right process makes it easier. If not, atleast having the support mailbox for them to reach out to and get their queries addressed means that these escalations do not go on a public forum.

 

Would love to hear what are you facing in terms of HR escalations and the steps you have taken to solve them.

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