That seems like a weird policy. I’m not sure how a company can really justify ‘we made it more expensive for us to hire minority candidates who are referred by our existing staff’ as being a sound diversity practice.

In general referral bonuses are intended to provide a higher quality candidate pipeline at a lower price than a recruitment consultant, so I can see why throwing this incentive in there might seem like a good idea, but you need strong firewalls between the referral policy and the hiring decisionmaking to avoid perverse incentives. In particular it’s important the bonus doesn’t come out of the hiring team’s salary budget.