I was recently working with a client on their recruitment process, and one of the areas that they were keen to explore was around employee referral rewards / incentives. They knew what they were currently offering was minimal, and wanted to be able to offer a range of incentives to reward their staff for referring new employees to the company.
So using my network on LinkedIn and other contacts, I reached out to all the HR and recruiter contacts (corporate and agency) to see what other companies were doing around employee referrals and what they were giving as incentives. The question that I posed was, "Does anyone know of any employee referral rewards / schemes, that are a little different?" Thanks to the fantastic response I received, I was able to make some excellent suggestions to my client.

Nearly every email I received asked me to inform them of what all the other answers were, so knowing retaining talent is a favourite subject at the moment, I have compiled a list of the Top 20 employee referral rewards offered by companies below (It had to be 20 because there were many good ideas!):

1. Time off. This was the surprising winner, with companies giving time off for successful referrals, ranging from an afternoon, to a day, to a week (very generous!).

2. Cold hard cash! As always money talks, and this ranged from £200 up to £3000 per referral.

3. Travel Allowance. With petrol prices and travel in general getting more expensive, no surprise this came in at no.3. Answers included petrol paid for and train fares covered.

4. Special Event. An example being a fully paid trip to Monaco Grand Prix

5. Holiday. A week away at a choice of destination, fully paid.

6. Restaurant. A long lunch at a good restaurant to include the person referred to the company

7. Vouchers. Retail shopping vouchers

8. Health Spa. Weekend away at a health spa to be pampered.

9. Red Letter Days. Choice of certain value from the Red Letter Day website

10. Training Courses. This is different - rewarding referrals with a range of training courses they wouldn’t normally go on.

11. Wine. Ranged from case of wine to malt whiskeys.

12. Day trips. This covered theme parks, visits to France via Eurostar (UK obviously!) and golf trips.

13. Prepaid Visa Cards. Prepaid credit cards loaded with a pre-set amount. Similar ro vouchers and cash, but different enough to be included.

14. Piggy Bank. Referrals are converted on a points basis and used at the end of the year to "buy" froma selection including holidays and bonuses. 

15. Luxury Gifts. Wide range here from watches to Tom Tom’s to Cameras to iPods to sports equipment.

16. Treats. This is a nice one. Gifts that people wouldn’t normally buy themselves such as luxury food from deli’s and fine food shops like Carluccios.

17. Charity. Making donations to charity for each referral brought into the company.

18. Flights. Vouchers for air travel.

19. Gym Membership. Depending on level of referral, membership to a gym for a set period of time.

20. Tickets. Tickets to top sporting events, concerts, shows etc.

There were some good websites that were sent to me on this subject which are worth having a look at, and they are: Getactive ; You at Work : Recognition Rewards ; NFIB

As a PS to this post, there was a reply from George Mancuso, that was very original and worth a mention, but as a sales incentive as opposed to an employee referral award. In his own words:
" As an example, one year on August 1st, I visited each employee at their home. I made out a check for $2,500 to the spouse and dated it December 15th but it was unsigned. I gave both of them the "rules" to earn it which happen to be to reach a certain total sales level for Aug, Sep, Oct, and Nov. Our company Christmas party was on the 15th and the spouses brought in their checks and I signed them. Only one sales person did not achieve the goal. It was a huge success.
The other side of that included ALL of the support staff and as long as we as a team made a certain goal level, there was a monetary reward for the support employee and their spouse as well."