Hopefully everyone survived the annual madness of Black Friday and if you haven’t already gotten all your shopping done, you might be wondering what the perfect employee gift would be this year. As a hard worker who loves getting gifts, I’d like to give you some suggestions on employee gifts you’d do best to avoid in the long run.
Meat
While I am always an enthusiastic fan of a delicious ham or turkey to go with my mashed potatoes, the idea of giving meat as a holiday gift has always been disturbing to me. Even ignoring the fact that some of your employees may be vegetarians and vegans or prohibited by health reasons and religious beliefs (or just not huge fans of meat), giving meat as an employee gift probably doesn’t have the heart warming, memorable gift-giving effect that would benefit you as an employer. Personally, I feel that if my employer is gifting me with food s/he is assuming that I don’t make enough money to provide my family with a good holiday meal and that raises some serious doubt as to whether I’m being paid what I’m worth. Definitely not the reaction you’d like your employees to have when you’re generously handing out the holiday bounty each year.
Plastic
Over the last several years, gift cards have been popping up everywhere and seem to be easiest gift option available. I’m not a big fan of gift cards though. The only time I tend to give them is when I need a last minute gift and don’t have a whole lot of time to put thought into it. That or I don’t know the person well enough to give them something that would actually be meaningful to them. During my bi-annual wallet cleaning, I generally discard 3-5 unused gift cards; usually to places I don’t frequent or for things I don’t like (before I drank coffee I probably received more Starbucks gift cards than anything else). Chances are, gift cards are either going to be forgotten or lost and on top of that, you have no real way to make sure there’s one place that will be useful to all of your employees.
Cold, Hard Cash
Alright, now I’ll admit that I love money…getting it, spending it, heck, I even like saving it in the rare instances that I actually get the opportunity to do so. Neither I nor any of your employees is likely to turn down a holiday bonus and chances are, if you poll them, everyone would opt for money rather than any other type of gift. The problem with cash is that it's too often just used for paying bills, buying groceries and being “borrowed” from your wallet by unruly children. Rarely is the gift of cash actually put towards the purchase of a memorable item (although don’t tell that to my grandma - I always make a specific point to tell her I spent my Christmas cash on something nice…even though it’s usually just being sent along to the credit card company).
Now obviously, everyone will probably be thankful for whatever employee gift you decide upon, even if you go with one of the three options above, but the real question is what type of lasting impression does the gift give them? These three employee gift options may please some people, but none of them create any sort of lasting, tangible memory of your appreciation and that is the real aim of employee gifts (or any other type of gift, for that matter). Not only does giving your employee the gift of choice from a wide variety ofbrand name merchandise ensure that they select something they want and like and that they will think of you every time they use it, it is also a quick solution that’s easy for budgeting while allowing for a memorable and personalized presentation.
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