4 Companies With the Best Employee Referral Awards

For each referral candidate who is hired, the referring employee received a $3,500 referral bonus in addition to a $1,500 charitable donation paid by Digitalocean on the employee’s behalf. 40% of Digitalocean’s new hires have been acquired through referrals.

Lessons:

Structure your employee referral bonuses to serve a good cause.
Instead of offering a cash prize, offer to make a donation to your employee’s favourite support a charitable organization.

Hewlett Packard enterprise regularly organizes company events to honour and publicly recognize employees who refer qualified candidates. By recognizing their referring employees as "champions," this company achieves greater employee engagement.

Lessons:

Don’t focus only on your employee referral awards and forget to thank your employees for referring great candidates! Even if their candidate doesn’t end up selected in the end, you should still think of a way to thank them for their time and effort.

Distillery is a software development company that has struggled to find and attract highly-qualified software developers. They turned to their current software developers and asked them to recommend great candidates. Along the way, they discovered that their employees are most motivated when offered new gadgets such as an iPhone or Apple watch.

Lessons:

There is no universal best type of employee referral bonus that works for every company and every employee. You need to do your research and find out what works best for your own employees