Any program if left unchanged for a long time loses relevance and employee referral programs are no exception to this rule. Employee referrals need to be constantly reviewed and upgraded to ensure they remain relevant to the evolving technologies as well as changing employee expectations. What works today might not retain its usefulness tomorrow, for instance who would have thought that social media would have made emails with candidate resumes irrelevant. An employee referral program that seeks to sustain itself for a long time needs to build on the existing referral program to define a strategy and roadmap for the future. This will help the organization to focus on incorporating new practices and techniques in the referral program that align to the basic objectives of the program.

Social media and mobile technologies have already changed the hiring landscape, newer innovations like gamification and reporting tools are now changing the way employees engage with referral programs as well as the way employee referral success is measured and assessed.

Gamification, which basically implies the use of game dynamics in a non-game scenario to foster a healthy spirit of competition and challenge among employees has proved to be one of the most successful ways of engaging with employees. The idea is to pit employees against one another through introduction of challenges that get progressively harder as you move higher up the series or game. For instance if the referral challenge started with being among the 1st 10 whose referral candidate is selected for screening, the next step could be refer 2 or more candidates that are selected for interview and so on and so forth. Individual referral cards and leaderboard help employees keep track of their progress in the referral game and intensify the competitive spirit with bonus challenges and with reminders of employees who have crossed ahead of them in the game. Employees receive reward points upon crossing up a certain level, points can be accumulated or redeemed for prizes after crossing a certain point. The success of game dynamics can be attributed to the fact that any repetitive activity becomes boring and game mechanics tap into the fundamental human nature of challenging and competing against one another.

The other big trend for the future is the use of reporting tools made possible by the use of sophisticated technology to run employee referral programs. As businesses become increasingly conscious of each dollar spend, there will be major thrust on tracking rate of return on referral programs investments as well as its overall effectiveness in the hiring strategy of the company. Metrics like applicant to hire ratio, cost per hire, offer to joining ratio and joining to productivity ratios, all will become major influencers in deciding the future direction and shape of the referral program.