Employee appreciation gifts: improving your employee experience

Do you find it tricky to come up with concrete ways of recognising and appreciating employees’ contributions on a limited budget? 

Research has shown that gift giving can be an easy win for companies, helping to make employees feel valued, building their connection to the company, and ultimately creating a happier workplace. It’s not a fix-all for improving company culture, but employee gift giving is a great addition (and a relatively new addition to Doozy!). 

Why should you give gifts to your employees?

A recent report from gift-giving platform Huggg and market research company YouGov found that giving gifts as a means of employee recognition and appreciation has some clear and undeniable benefits. There are plenty of stats to back these up, too:

• Improving employee motivation. This was shown to double after employees recently received a gift.
  
• Improving workplace culture. Companies that sent out gifts within the last three months saw the number of employees reporting their workplace culture as excellent rose by 83%.
  
• Showing employees that you care. 43% of those who received a gift from their manager in the last month agreed or strongly agreed their manager cares about them.

So if you’ve got even a tiny bit of room in your budget, it seems pretty clear cut. But once you’ve made the decision that this is a route your company would like to go down for employee appreciation, you’ll have the ‘when?’, ‘how?’, and ‘what to gift?’ questions to tackle.

When should you give gifts to your employees?

There are some obvious choices for when to celebrate your employees, as well as some you may not have thought of. 

• Celebrating employees’ personal milestones. Birthdays, work anniversaries, weddings, new homes, leaving gifts… the list is almost endless. Showing an interest and celebrating your employees’ personal milestones helps your team feel valued as people outside of work, too. 
  
• Recognising big work accomplishments. Yes, we’d all appreciate a big bonus in recognition of great work performance. But the more personal touch is great, too. 
  
• Don’t forget the little things. Huggg’s research shows that employees appreciate being rewarded in the moment, not just for the bigger things. So receiving a surprise coffee for enduring a cold commute can feel as rewarding as a bigger, more expensive gift. 
  

So you know when you want to give gifts to show you appreciate your employees. But how? And what to give?

How to choose which gifts to give your employees

Personalized gifts

Personalizing gifts to cater for individual preferences and interests can make employees feel more valued and understood. 

Of course, this isn’t always easy, and figuring out what to buy as a gift for a team member might just be the stumbling block that stops you making the leap. A platform like Huggg can make choosing gifts for your employees a whole lot easier for you. 

You can choose a specific gift, send your employee a choice of gifts from a curated selection, or choose to send a gift card.

Avoiding faux pas

Something every manager should be aware of: how do you avoid social or cultural faux pas when choosing gifts? Huggg’s gift range is socially conscious: sustainable, culturally relevant, dietary observant and curated by real people. 

A broader choice

Want a less personal approach where your employees get a broader choice? A service like Guusto or Giftogram might be right for you, letting you easily send gift cards that work with hundreds of different retailers, but without the option of choosing a gift directly. This could be great for celebrating the smaller moments, for example sending a gift card for a coffee shop. 

Something like Bonusly might be right for you too, where peer-to-peer recognition lets employees build up gift card credits to spend.

Looking to automate how you celebrate your employees?

Yes, we might be biased here, but using Doozy to celebrate your employees will make your life way easier, and help you ensure important milestones are never missed.

Automate celebrations using your HRIS

Doozy automatically notifies you of your team’s birthdays and work anniversaries. Simply sign up to Doozy and enable birthday and anniversary celebrations in a public Slack channel. 

Add cards and gifts

When you’re notified that a celebration is coming up, you can create a personalized card, ask your other team members to sign it, and then choose to add a gift directly with Huggg or Goody. The employee you’re celebrating will be notified at a time you choose!

It’s that simple – in a few minutes your whole team will be able to celebrate each other.

Make the leap

You’ve got the stats, you know the benefits. By choosing the gift giving option that works for you and your team, you can easily add gift giving into your team culture and consistently appreciate your employees. Doozy’s Celebrations feature makes this simple, so why not give it a try?