In today’s workforce, the people you hire have a big impact on what your company can achieve both creatively and financially. We have a feeling you probably already know this—that’s why you’re looking for ways to get even better people through your doors through enhanced collaboration with your co-workers.

One of the key challenges with launching and maintaining a successful employee referral program is getting executive buy-in. So we have a little bit of a problem. Recruiters can see the value in getting referrals, but it’s not always easy to get everyone on board with setting up (and participating in) a referral program.

If executives don’t understand the value of the program, they won’t give it their support, so we should start with showing the data and then relating the data to the contribution expected to the company.

Even with the best will in the world, a referral strategy can’t be rubber-stamped without getting key executives on board. The solution? You need to dust off some data and use it to sell the benefits of referrals to senior staff. 

Here are some tips on the sorts of themes you can cover in order to get your senior team excited: 

Return on investment - Hiring, training and retaining people costs money, so naturally every executive team wants their staff to be firing on all cylinders for as long as possible. You could refer to Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) in your nifty PowerPoint presentation; this basically refers to an employee’s output levels relative to how long they spend with the company. A smart referral policy means a new hire will take less time to get up to speed; they’ll have a higher performance ceiling; and they’ll stay for longer at the peak of their powers. ‍ 

More time to get on with work - Recruiting staff is often labour-intensive and expensive. We all know about the high cost-per-hire of getting new staff on board, but what about the ‘opportunity loss’ of pulling existing staff away from their jobs? It takes time to conduct an interview and test candidates, but a smart and focused referral process can reduce the likelihood of a long, drawn-out search. 

Cross-functional collaboration - The referral process is an opportunity for different personnel to collaborate where ordinarily this might not happen. For example, a product manager might refer a backend engineer, or a sales manager might refer a superhero. By spelling out the benefits of bonding as a team, your leadership team may be persuaded that the road to glory is paved with Intrro.

You may share these referrals stats to persuade them more.

• Referral hires are better performers: hires from referrals produce a nearly 25% higher profit than hires from other sources. They can produce between 24%–135% more profit on average. If an employee produces $150k in revenue, that translates to $37.5–$202k in additional annual profit!
  

• Referred candidates are 16- 20x more likely to get hired: on average, it only takes 5 referrals to make a hire. Compare that to 100's of applicants from job boards! And as we’ve already pointed out, the referral hire will likely be a more valuable asset to your organization.
  

• Referred employees stick around for longer: after one year, retention of referred employees is 46% compared to 33% from career sites and 22% from job boards. After two years, retention of referred employees is 45% compared to 20% from job boards.