Employees, the best assets in your recruitment strategy! – The BPAURA story
Convinced that its employees are its best ambassadors, Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes has decided to involve its employees in its HR strategy.
Thanks to the implementation of an employee ambassador program and a digital referral program, the company is now able to recruit a large number of people through its teams. Here’s a look at their strategy.
This article is the result of a webinar, in which we welcomed Nathalie Martinet and Dounia Hamed from BPAURA’s Talent and Employer Brand team, and Charlène Hemery, HR Marketing specialist, Founder of Talent Catcher (and former HR Development Director at BPAURA). You can watch the replay here.
Since 2020, Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes has been supported by Keycoopt System in managing its referral program. The program was launched by Charlène Hemery . Here’s a look at the strategy.
The employee ambassador program to involve employees in HR strategy
Based on the observation that Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes employees had a strong sense of belonging and a real commitment to the company, the HR teams decided to involve them and use their words to promote their employer brand.
So the company decided to launch its employee ambassador program by implementing anemployee advocacy strategy.
For a company, employee advocacy means mobilizing its employees to relay the company’s messages in their professional and personal lives, particularly on social networks.
This strategy is a powerful lever for deploying the company’s visibility:
- Employees’ words have 3 times more credibility.
- Messages are shared 24 times more often when posted by employees.
Employee advocacy gives credibility to the company’s messages, and thus confidence to potential candidates.
Employee advocacy, the 4 steps to get started :
Step 1: Launch a volunteer campaign campaign
For employee advocacy to really bear fruit, it must be voluntary.
To achieve this, there’s no better way than to launch an unsolicited application campaign within the company, to communicate with as many people as possible and to explain the ambassador’s mission, which can be rather vague.
This will enable employees who are interested in participating to contact you.
Step 2: Select your ambassadors
Once you’ve launched your candidacy campaign, you’ll need to select the candidates. The aim is for your community of ambassadors to reflect your company. You need to ensure that your community of ambassadors is representative of your company’s different professions, geographical areas and business lines. That’s what this 2nd step is all about.
Step 3: Get managers’ agreement
This is an important step, as the ambassador’s mission will be carried out on employees’ working time. It is therefore essential to ensure that managers are in agreement with this mission , and to have them as allies!
Step 4: Launch the ambassador program
Once the above steps have been completed, it’s time to launch the program and engage employees. To do this, it’s essential to tell them in a very transparent way what you’re going to expect from an ambassador, so that they’re sure to want to commit to this new mission.
Then comes the launch phase, when we need to provide the means to ensure that ambassadors feel committed to the program and have content to share, by reserving special moments for them, training, animation, etc. This is how the ambassador community is formed!
The success of the employee ambassador program then lies in its management.
Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes results:
In 2 years :
- more than 800 LinkedIn posts written by ambassadors
- more than 100 interventions on physical events
- A total of over 33,000 subscribers!
To find out more about the employee ambassador program, visit the Talent Catcher website or contact Charlène Hemery directly.
Involve employees in recruitment through referral
Beyond employer branding, it’s possible to go even further by involving employees in HR strategy.
In fact, they can also be very powerful allies when it comes to sourcing candidates! That’s what the co-optation program is all about .
Co-option is a sourcing method that involves employees in recruitment. As part of a co-optation program, the company invites its employees to submit job offers, so that they can recommend people in their network who might be suitable for the position.
This method has many advantages:
- It’s an innovative sourcing channel that enables us to capture profiles that would not have been reached by other channels.
- This method optimizes recruitment times and costs, because there’s no sourcing, no outsourcing and the employee is already qualified.
For these reasons, co-option was an obvious choice for BPAURA, which launched its program in 2 stages:
Test phase: launch of an artisanal co-optation program
When Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes launched its co-optation program, it initiated a test phase with a hand-crafted co-optation program lasting a few months.
The objectives: take the temperature and measure the impact of this strategy on recruitment.
This first stage demonstrated the power of cooptation. Indeed, the team soon found itself overwhelmed by the number of CVs received. Co-optation quickly established itself as the most qualitative method in terms of transformation: 10 CVs are enough to carry out 1 recruitment.
This test highlighted the need for a digital cooptation solution.
This makes it possible to :
- Simplify recommendation follow-up
- Improve information dissemination and communication with employees
- Encouraging referrals
- Modernize image and employer brand
Launch of a digital cooptation solution: Keycoopt System
Following the test phase, BPAURA decided to equip itself with a digital cooptation solution: Keycoopt System.
BPAURA chose Keycoopt System for several reasons:
- The automation offered by the Keycoopt System tool makes it very easy to manage your co-optation program: job postings, automatic animation…
- Connection with ATS : with the introduction of its co-optation platform, BPAURA can manage its program from its ATS. This means recruiters don’t need to use any additional tools.
- Easy communication with the co-optor : the platform also enables recruiters to keep their co-optors informed of the progress of their recommendation. This transparent communication is one of the levers of successful co-optation.
- Support beyond the tool : Keycoopt System is not just a digital cooptation tool, it’s a complete service. A dedicated project manager works alongside BPAURA to provide advice and monitoring of the co-optation program.
In the first year of launching its digital co-optation platform, BPAURA achieved 30% of its recruitment through this channel.
The 2 levers of success for BPAURA’s co-optation program (and in general)
Lever 1: Manage the co-optation program
Leading the co-optation program is THE key to success! It is essential to communicate throughout the year in order to :
- Maintain employees’ commitment over time and remind them of the program’s existence, so that they have the reflex to recommend it at every opportunity.
- Bring new employees on board to explain the approach and get them involved as soon as they join the company.
- Regularly remind employees of the rules of the co-optation program: who can recommend, how to recommend, etc.
Lever #2: Enhance the co-optation experience
The2nd key to the success of a co-optation program lies in theexperience offered to co-opters and co-optees.
In fact, it’s important to take care of the experience of co-opting employees by making it quick and easy for them to recommend, and above all by thanking them for their commitment to the program, with a co-optation bonus for example.
Finally, recommended candidates must also be treated with the same care as “regular” candidates. The follow-up of applications is therefore of paramount importance. This is simplified thanks to the digital cooptation tool, which enables recruiters to track their applications very easily.
The results of BPAURA’s co-option, 3 years later:
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20% of recruitments made through cooptation
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Over 1,100 recommendations received
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170 recruitments completed!
Read the BPAURA case study here.
Thanks to Banque Populaire Auvergne Rhône Alpes for its testimonial.
