Refereeing those referrals

Employee referral programmes for future hires are known to work.

All too frequently though I run in to an employee referral programme with exclusions built-in that you only find out about after the referral – this has been one of the biggest complaints that I’ve heard repeatedly from people who refer other potential new hires to the company they work for.

“Oh, we don’t pay out referral bonuses if you are a contractor.”

“We don’t pay referral bonuses when we hire a contractor on a temporary basis.”

“We don’t pay referral bonuses if the new hire is related to you.”

“We don’t pay referral bonuses unless the person gets hired in to your department.”

“We’ don’t pay referral bonuses if the person gets hired in to your department.”

“We don’t pay referral bonuses if someone else in the company also knows the person (but didn’t refer them) because it wouldn’t be fair.”

If your referral bonus programme has exclusions, I suggest you get rid of the exclusions immediately, and instruct HR to never, ever prevent an employee (or contractor) from receiving a well-earned referral bonus.

Why?

Because the moment you prevent someone from getting their referral bonus due to an exclusion you have shut down all future referrals from that person and their network.

And do you really want to cut off a a potential source of great new hires just to save a few thousand dollars?