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Does Your Company Need An Employee Referral Program? [Examples + Best Practices]

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Does Your Company Need An Employee Referral Program? [Examples + Best Practices]

Finding qualified candidates to fill your open positions can be challenging. Job posting sites claim to make the process easy by connecting you with hundreds if not thousands of potential employees. But having such a large pool of candidates can be overwhelming.

Just thinking about the sheer volume of work involved in reviewing applications, narrowing them down to good fits, and then vetting those potential candidates is enough to make anyone’s head explode.

You work with or run a solid organization with wonderful employees. How do you make sure that you don’t get a bevy of potential candidates, but rather the right candidate?

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Look at this like finding the perfect place to take your significant other on a special occasion. Sure, you could do a Google search for random restaurants in your neighborhood. You could even check a review site for recommendations.

However, you don’t know any of those people, so how much weight does their opinion really carry? Instead of taking a risk on a very special evening, why not reach out to the people you trust? Asking friends and family for a recommendation is a much safer avenue to finding the perfect date night experience.

What if we applied this type of thinking to your search for the perfect employee? Rather than leave it up to a random internet search, ask the people you already know, like, and trust… your employees.

What is an employee referral program?

An employee referral program is a structured system by which you ask existing employees to recommend people they know for open positions within your organization. Employees often receive some sort of incentive for their assistance.

An employee referral program leverages the power of your employees’ networks and can save you time, money, and a huge headache when it comes to hiring the best talent for your business.

Benefits of an Employee Referral Program

There are many benefits to utilizing an employee referral program as part of your hiring strategy. These include:

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1. High Quality Hires

Good employees know what skills are necessary to excel in a position and understand the workplace culture. When they recommend someone for the job, there’s a good chance they have the qualifications necessary to successfully perform in the role.

2. Decreased Turnover Rates

With employee turnover rates on the rise, you’ll want to keep it front of mind when you’re making hiring decisions. According to ERIN, 45% of referred employees stay with a company longer compared to 22% from job boards and 33% from career sites.

3. Less Time and Lower Cost Per Hire

According to LinkedIn, employees hired through referrals take an average of 29 days to hire and onboard, whereas job boards can take 39 days and a career site can take upwards of 55 days. The less time it takes to hire and onboard means less revenue lost, fewer employees stressed because they are handling multiple jobs, and more productivity from your new hire.

Using a headhunter? According to Jobvite, you can expect to pay between 15% and 25% of the gross annual salary of the candidate. If you’re hiring an employee at $100k per year, that’s $15k to $25k in headhunting fees. The cost to reward an employee for an amazing referral? Around $2,000.

4. Increase Employee Satisfaction and Loyalty

Doesn’t it feel nice when you have a hand in the decision-making process? Employees that refer candidates feel like they’ve contributed to the company, making them more engaged and more likely to stay.

Employee Referral Program Ideas

Now that you see the benefit to you as the employer or hiring manager, how do you create an employee referral program that encourages your existing employees to introduce you to their quality contacts? There are a number of ways to do this and best practices that you can adopt to get the most out of your program.

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Make it Clear What You’re Looking For

In a mid-sized to a large company, one department may have no idea what another one is working on. In order for employees to make connections, they need to know what your expectations are for the new position. When you reach out to employees looking for suggestions, provide them with all the details you can. This should include:

Make it Easy for Employees to Refer

Consider the referral experience from your employees’ point of view. Is there a simple form for them to submit when they recommend someone, or do they have to jump through a variety of complicated hoops to pass along their referrals? Some companies even host recruitment happy hours where existing employees can invite friends who might be a good fit.

The easier you make it for your employees to refer their contacts, the more quality candidates will be presented to you.

Keep Your Employees Updated on Referral Status

It’s frustrating to make a suggestion or an introduction and not know if it’s been acted upon. When your employee recommends a colleague, keep them updated as to the steps of the hiring process. Some times to check-in include:

  • When you receive an application
  • When you make contact
  • When an interview is scheduled
  • When a position has been offered to their contact
  • When the position has been given to someone else (after the candidate has been contacted)

Provide a Juicy Incentive

Surprisingly, this may not always be a monetary reward. While money is always appreciated, you can offer a combination of “cash” and experiences, time off, gifts, etc. For some, these may be even more desired than a financial incentive. One great option is to give your employees the choice. That way, you know they’ll be motivated to help. A few employee referral incentive ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

  • Cash bonuses
  • Gift certificates to their favorite restaurants and local establishments
  • Weekend getaways or week-long excursions for frequent referrers
  • VIP parking
  • Show tickets
  • Physical gifts (it’s important to let them choose so they don’t end up with something they can’t use)
  • Perks like a gym membership or massage

The sky’s the limit when it comes to thanking your employees for their referrals. You can also consider using a platform like XoxoDay to make distributing employee referral perks as easy and streamlined as possible.

Show Appreciation for “Frequent Referrers”

If you’ve got employees that consistently send you quality employee candidates, acknowledge them publicly. This shows your amazing team members that they are appreciated and motivates other employees to step up their referral game.

Employee Referral Program Examples

Looking for real-world examples of these programs in action? We’ve compiled a few employee referral program samples to introduce you to some of the possibilities.

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  1. Inmobi, a mobile advertising company offers referring employees the choice of a bike or a trip to Bali. They park the vehicles in front of the company headquarters to motivate employees to participate.
  2. Accenture, a consulting and IT company encourages philanthropy and community involvement by letting their employees donate a part of their referral bonus to a charity of their choice.
  3. Distillery, an American software development company gifts their employees new tech gadgets for every referral they make.
  4. Atlassian software company encourages employees to “Refer-a-Mate” and offers them $2,000 in cash bonuses.
  5. Intel tech company takes financial incentives one step further by doubling their employee referral reward for women, minorities, and veterans that are referred to the company.

If you’d like to tap into a pool of qualified, trustworthy, easy-to-hire (and onboard) candidates, an employee referral program can help. Instituting this type of hiring process in your organization can save you money, time, headaches, and the pain of having to repeatedly hire for the same position when your first employee doesn’t work out well. In addition, you’ll improve your workplace culture and enhance your brand.

An employee referral program is the best thing you can do to improve the quality of your incoming employees. Choose your incentives wisely and then watch the quality candidates roll on in.

company culture template


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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