Make gifting a meaningful part of your employee engagement strategy

Workplace gifting has traditionally been impersonal and underwhelming–a mug for your birthday, a gift card for the holidays, maybe a company-branded shirt that doesn’t fit quite right.

In a time where teams were gathered in-person, that was often good enough. After all, you could supplement those less-than-stellar gifts with an after hours trip to a local bar or by grabbing someone’s favorite latte on your way to the office. Doling out recognition and appreciation was a more intuitive, in-the-moment task.

Now, the dynamic around gifting has changed, particularly for distributed teams. In our newly virtual environment, spontaneity and small opportunities to show gratitude can feel harder to come by. That means the quality or timing of gifts can no longer just be “good enough.”

If you want to maximize its impact, gifting needs to align with your company’s values, reflect your investment in employee appreciation, and ideally be much more regular than in the pre-pandemic workplace. To get you started, let’s tackle two basic ideas: why gifting matters, and what employees actually want out of it.

Why is gifting important for employee engagement?

A recent survey from McKinsey shows that one of the biggest reasons people are leaving jobs is because they don’t feel valued, either by their organization in general or their manager specifically.

Gifting can be used as an appreciation and recognition tool to provide employees a tangible reminder that you value them. This is especially true when gifting is personalized, attached to key milestones, and shows a high degree of thoughtfulness.

To be clear, gifting will never be the most important part of making employees feel valued; fair pay, great benefits, and an inclusive environment will always land at the top of everyone’s priorities. But gifting might be the most frequent, easy way to go above and beyond in the name of recognizing their contributions.

What kind of gifts do employees want?

Collecting some simple info from your team, like birthdays and anniversaries, can get you on track for sending gifts at the right time–but choosing the actual gift is often a more complex task.

That said, picking an awesome gift for your employees isn’t much different than picking one for anybody else. People like gifts that they genuinely enjoy, will actually use, or that have sentimental value. If you can touch on all three of those, you’ll be in the gifting hall of fame, but just one is a success.

Our best advice is to steer clear of the impersonal. A gift card might be something “everyone can use,” but it’s also something anyone could have given. The best gifts should reflect at least a little personal thought, like a gift box of unique snacks for the team foodie or some treats for the dog-lover. Just a little extra intention goes a long way.

In terms of price tags, you don’t have to break the bank–but gifting budgets have been growing significantly across companies, and employees are becoming more and more used to a higher standard of quality. “Most spent between $25 and $125 on a corporate gift,” according to a study cited by Forbes, “with the largest percentage reporting the sweet spot between $75 and $100.”

More questions? Connect with our team

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with options or are unsure how to make gifting work for your team, we can help you find the right solution.