By utilising Credentially's reference feature in your onboarding, you can eliminate the manual tasks of collecting referee information, sending out email requests, frequent chasing and uploading any references that have been received.
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Credentially will chase references for you automatically (on day 1, 3, 5 and 7 after the original reference was requested) and will allow you to manage references in one centralised location.

Each reference request, whether pending or received, can be managed in the staff member's profile. To view all references:

Credentially tip: Credentially will tell you what period is covered by references, and any gaps of longer than one month

There are five types of reference statuses:

1) Opened: a referee has received the reference request email, and followed the link allowing them to submit a reference for an employee, but they have neither filled in your company reference request form, nor uploaded their own reference template
2) Awaiting approval: a referee has submitted a reference for your staff member and this needs to be reviewed and approved/declined by an administrator
3) Sent: a reference request was sent to a referee via email
4) Approved: an administrator has confirmed the reference as compliant
5) Declined: the reference doesn't meet the requirements of your organisation, and an administrator has rejected it

References need to be approved or declined, in order to fulfill the compliance requirement. This can be done by clicking on the right 3 dots on the relevant reference, clicking "view" and selecting "approve" or "decline". You can also approve or decline from this menu.

Credentially tip: If you choose 'Decline' in the drop-down menu, you can provide the reason before proceeding and the staff member will be notified.

Credentially tip: An administrator can also upload references submitted as a file and/or complete referee details to submit a reference request.

References with 'Opened' and 'Sent' statuses have the following options:

Staff members can also delete references and reference requests they have uploaded or requested themselves, providing these have not yet been approved by the administrator.
​The exception is if you have strict mode enabled a staff member can’t delete a reference until they complete onboarding.

You can use the filter icon to view specific periods within the candidates reference history.

For example, you may wish to only view details of references received in the last three years.

The filter would allow you to remove redundant information from the references page.

If your company has a policy prohibiting reference emails from personal email addresses, Credentially can prevent staff members adding referee details using email domains such as Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook etc.

To do this, follow the below steps:

Ability to set up expiry date for the references is available if the associated reference for has the "Reference Form Expires" setting ticked OR a reference reponse form is not associated with any reference form (this can happen if you upload a reference as a document and convert to reference).
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Expiry date column is now shown in the table if you have this feature toggled on for your organisation.

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You can add/remove/update expiry date if: Reference is in Expired, Expiring Soon, Declined or Awaiting Approval statuses.
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​Compliance and System tags
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Expiry dates will effect reference status and system tags as follows.​​

Credentially tip: The system does not consider not compliant references in summary on References page:

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​​Notifications
You can select to receive notifications if a staff member's reference is expired or expires soon. Please see our article how to bespoke receipt of these notifications to your needs.