All,

I was wondering if you could help.

I am collating some information on recommend a friend schemes and would like to know what inecentives are offered at other contact centres.

This is for Agent / Advisor Level only.


i.e.

What is given to the employee if they refer a freind who gains employment within that company.

If you can reply and let me know, also if possible giving the name of the company and location..

Thanks

Tim

My old job gave $150 bonus. This was only if the referred person ended up working 6 months.

btw

I regret confidentiality clauses prevent me from sharing company names however I have seen these schemes for all levels of workers. Typically call centre schemes for advisors pay £50 £200 £500 dependent on the length of stay of the employee recruited. I've seen cars offered and all sorts of in house offers, mobiles etc. - cash seems to work best even if it is taxable. Some staff really latch onto this cheap way of earning extra cash provide many valuable introductions and often have a wide social network which is far cheaper to tap into than paying external suppliers.

There are several variables to consider here - an influx of unsuitable CV's and candidates which can be a drain on HR resouces. The need to have a robust monitoring system to ensure the bonuses are paid on time otherwise the system loses integrity and staff support.
The key metric though is understanding the average cost of recruiting and training up to a desired level from advert to competence/profitablity. Length of tenure has a high impact on this and impacts staff turnover so large bonuses are well worth considering as skilled staff who will stay are certainly worth their weight in gold.

Happy hunting.

OK,
two different clients, one in LA one in Vegas, both ran MGM (member get a member) programs for agent positions. Both were $100 bonus paid once the new employee celebrated their six month anniversary.

Hope this helps.

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Colin Taylor
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin,

You didn't tell us if the two programs were successful or not?

Cheers,
D

Daryl,

Yes the programs worked in both markets. One agent recruited seven friends who all stayed so he made $700! With the internal cost of recruiting pegged at $1,000 per hire, programs like this can make a lot of sense. We also saw a lower turnover in the referred staff than the general public, due in part the the existing agent painting a accurate (from their point of view) picture of the job and company.

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Colin Taylor
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Tim

I have often used reccomend a friend schemes to aid recruitment. One that worked best for the business and the employer recommending was to split the payment. Half paid on the start of employment. The other part paid on complerion of the probationary period.

Another key factor to watch out for in the coming months is to ensure that any recruitment policy doesnt discriminate on the grounds of age. If you are only attracting 'young' candidates via a predominently 'young' workforce and this refer a friend mechanism they an employer should perhaps revisit their recruitment policy.

If you have a relativly young workforce say 22-26 avg age Can you be held responible of ageism (indirectly or otherwise) as the workforce only know/consider people the same age for a find a friend scheme?

rgds
Scott

BTW a previous employer of mine offered £250 for FAF scheme, as long as they stayed for 6mths, with a further £250 if they stayed for a year. It was quite successful in that the avg length of service increased from 3mths to app 9mths

Scott,

No doubt after Oct '06 when this legislation comes into force there will be many test cases, HR websites are awash with predictions. Already jobs adverts are being reworded to exclude "mature" "fresh" and qualifications that exclude sections of society as they are now outdated.

Consider if this 'youth focussed' workforce solely referred females. Does that make the point better??
Certainly recruitment policies will come under scrutiny, what attempts are being made to ensure you actively recruit a diverse workforce or (by using a passive 'youth focussed' refer a friend) are you merely paying lip service to the law?


With regard to other discrimnatioin legislation both direct and indirect discrimination is unlawful. Undoubtedly, this legisilation will cause many employers to rethink and will have far reaching effects for us all.
To answer your question, I'm not an employment lawyer, but if I was I'd consider taking on such a case.

Taking that on board, i imagine you might take the case, but if that was passed it would set a precident that if you advertise for plumbers and in the market 90% were male, you could be accused of being sexist for taking on male or female staff, but you would have no control of the aviailability, I know that this is a bit extreme, but passing an example like that said could make a company responsible for the personal decisions of its employees choice of friends, it would also have to assume that all things are equal in terms of age/sex/race of the available workforce otherwise you could be penalised for not recruiting an unavailable type of employee.

I had an interesting thought the other day (that makes one thought in a row)...does the net promoter methodology (Those who would recommend your company minus those who would not, equalling positive growth or negative erosion of your customer satisfaction (correlation at.79)) also apply to your staff satisfaction?

I suspect it would, if we asked our staff if they would recommend our center to their friends as a place to work we should gauge a similar correlation to that seen for customer sat.

Let me know your thoughts on this and if anyone has tried to measure this?

Colin Taylor
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Scott,

I think you are mixing up the marketplace with the a recruitment policy. ie. if your policy is to only advertise for plumbers in FHM or Gay Time or private mens clubs etc ie. male orientated publications and domains then your policy is discriminating. If you advertise for plumbers in the local rag (targetted at everyone), print that you 'actively welcome candidates irrespective of gender, race, disability etc' and you still get 100% male applicants then the policy isnt generally faulty.
Apropos the the example here, if you are only relying on a refer a friend process to deliver candidates or if that process is delivering 90% of your recruits and 90% of them are under 30 years of age then there is a case that you are excluding older sections of the workforce. If however it is simply one method within a more robust recruitment and selection process eg. wide spectrum of publications/agencies/community networks etc then you shouldnt have a problem. That is so long as you can prove your overall processes arent actively promoting a younger workforce and you'll do that by monitoring the age diversity of the workforce.

Should I be charging for this?????

Good observations.

Makes me wonder if there was a recruitment policy where your HRtype department advertised in two newspapers. One being the general newspaper called "general" and the other called "homosexual plumbers". Now...say over the course of a year you hire 50 plumbers...and say everyone states they found your company through "homosexual plumbers".

Should you still be required to advertise in any other papers if you have found the skillset you want and been able to hire more than enough people? Shouldn't you be allowed to better target your recruitment policy to allow for the highest amount of interest with the lowest cost?

I see all kinds of sides and HR dilemna's like this have always interested me.

Justin,

To answer your 'one step further questions'. No, this is clearly discriminatory, to take your policy further you would be only one step away from saying we have actually found men chepaer to recruit and more responsive therefore we'll only ever recruit men. Thats clearly wrong (and illegal)
To reiterate no in the UK whilst you can recruit on the basis of expediency, you must also comply with the relevant laws on Discrimination and Equality.

To add further background debate please check this link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4948782.stm

Inappropriate incentives provide grounds for religious discrimination

http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2005/11/29/32764/Drink+incentive+is+direct+line+to+tribunal+for+firm.htm

Direct Line has argued that it was not singling out Khan because of his religion, as the wine would be equally unsuitable for any teetotal workers.

What a fantastic response.

Justify and marginalise another group rather than deal with the problem.

Superb 10/10 for empathy :-)

And they say I'm not a people person :-)

DaveA

Yeah, I noticed that Dave. Trouble is its the only viable defence, (if you are going to defend against discrimination) - prove that you were not indiscriminate.