Why employee referrals for recruitment are essential.

Employee referrals are a cheaper way to recruit talent and something that many businesses do, and they reward their team for bringing people to the business

But employee referrals are useful in other ways.

A strong culture is characterised by what is said and done by the team. These are a result of how they want to be perceived by others.

For example a team that desires to be seen as collaborative, will ask for advice of others, will share ideas and will operate in ways that provide opportunities to talk.

A culture of collaboration is built on what people do and their actions.

A strong culture spreads and will spread outside the walls of the organisation through the way that staff talk to others.

They will share their examples of collaboration – they will talk about what they do and these stories could inspire others to want to be part of the culture too.

A strong employee referral programme suggests that teams are talking positively about the organisation and others want to become part of it.

Indeed a test of the culture that exists in your business is to listen to what your team tells people about the company. These messages are your culture.

Of course the major risk is creating a team of clones, all thinking and acting the same, and being attracted to others who are the same.

But if part of your values is diversity of thinking and experience and the behaviour of colleagues is to use this diversity in positive ways then this will not be a risk.

So do not just talk diversity – act diversity and then check if your employee referral programme is attracting diversity or if everyone is the same.