Converting Candidates: The Vital Role of Internal Communicators in Driving Action for HR Recruitment

In today’s competitive landscape, hiring and retaining great employees is crucial – especially for manufacturing and construction industries. Recruitment teams can harness the power of internal communication specialists – who are equally impactful in maximising recruitment success!

In this article, we’ll explore the strategies and best practices that internal communication teams can employ to enhance recruitment, foster strong employee advocacy, and ultimately build a talented and engaged workforce.

Communicate internal vacancies

In large organisations, recruiters and internal communicators can team up to leverage internal communication channels such as digital signage screens and email newsletters to advertise vacancies. Communication channels such as digital signage screens or corporate screensavers shows vacancies to employees without interrupting them from their jobs.

Messages about job openings should include a short summary, direct viewers to the right person to speak to or the appropriate web page. Internal communicators should post this at regular intervals to keep the job vacancies front of mind for the workforce.

Remind employees about existing vacancies by showing messages about your job openings repeatedly

Promote employee referral programs

Employee referral programs are a great way to recruit new employees who will stay. Referral hires are 40% more likely to be retained after one year than non-referral hires – and they’re more likely to be happier at their jobs too. But referral programs are only effective if the workforce knows about the program, right?

Assuming your organisation already has an employee referral program set up, internal communication teams can schedule regular reminders of the employee referral program in their communications calendar. Here are some ideas on the kind of content you can share:

• Share incentives. Most companies give a referral cash bonus if the referral stays for at least three months
• Benefits of the employee referral program. Aside from a possible monetary reward, it’s a chance to receive recognition and shape the organisational culture
• Highlight the program’s key features. This can include any eligibility criteria, the referral process, and rewards
• Success stories. If you have real life examples of employees who have benefited from the referral program, you can highlight how their referrals made a positive impact on the company
• Spotlight frequently asked questions. Help proactively answer any questions and reduce the barriers to referrals
• Promote referral events. You may have workshop or interactive Q&A sessions to support your program  

The best practice would be to share these messages on communication channels that can space the repetition of your messaging out over the course of the campaign. This is because repetition is key in keeping your messages front of mind – increasing your chance of a successful campaign.

Fast track people to the right landing page with a QR code.

Our Vibe customers have seen success in creating a page on their intranet or on a platform like SharePoint to host all information about an employee referral program. If you’re using communication channels like email, you can easily link to the right page. But if you’re using digital signage screens and corporate screensavers, there are a few steps involved. Once you’ve created your slide, generate a QR code that leads to the page in SharePoint or your intranet. That way when your employee referral program slide shows on screen, your workforce can easily scan and find out more immediately.

Involve staff in the process

The positive effects of employee advocacy are not just for sales and marketing departments. It also contributes greatly towards internal communications, recruitment, and employer branding.

Since 79% of job searchers use social media in their job search, a strong social media presence and great employee advocacy attracts top talent and improve retention rates.

Encourage employees to share company posts featuring employee testimonials, success stories, behind-the-scenes content that give people an insight into the work environment and culture, company events and more. 

Vibe users can easily link social media platforms like Workplace, LinkedIn and Facebook to digital signage screens. Vibe will create a real-time social media feed for your screens so that everyone within the organisation can see what's happening on social media!

Prospective employees are more likely to trust content when it comes from people they know instead of brands.

With the right combination of internal communications and recruitment, organisations can really maximise hiring and employee retention efforts amid global labour shortages.