The Secret to Great Employee Holiday Gifts: Gratitude!

If you’re in charge of employee holiday gifts, you’re probably under a lot of pressure right now. No boss wants to be remembered as the misguided (or worse — thoughtless!) workplace gift-giver, doling out frozen turkeys with no way to keep them frozen, a bag of bean soup mix, wrong sized logo-wear, or other too personal or disappointing gifts.
Fortunately it’s easy to avoid those terrible-gift scenarios altogether and share employee gifts that are meaningful to recipients and affordable for you!

doing employee holiday gifts right: The Gratitude Attitude

The secret of successful employee holiday gifts is in the overall company attitude. Are you sharing gifts because you feel obligated or because it makes the company look good? Uh-oh!
Gift-giving is a great business strategy for employee recognition and retention — even better than cash bonuses, according to recent research — but your efforts are at risk of falling flat if you lose sight of why we share gifts: to show appreciation.
Attorney Harley Storrings, contributing writer at Biz Journals, advises against any ungracious gift-giving. His recent column, “5 Guidelines for Holiday Gifts in the Workplace”, is a helpful, practical how-to on workplace gift-budgeting and communication. He concludes with one piece of advice that really gets to the heart of gift-giving:

“… always remember that the point of office gift exchanges is to express our appreciation for colleagues and managers in a meaningful and tangible way. Most problems arise when gifts are exchanged for other reasons.”

The most luxurious gift in the world will fall flat if the recipient doesn’t sense your personalized gratitude. If gratitude guides your gift-giving, even a small stocking-stuffer will be treasured.
In fact, as long as you’re thoughtful about it, it’s hard to go wrong with your employee holiday gifts. Chances are, if you’re enjoying the gift-giving process, your recipients will feel the gratitude.

game plan for gratitude

Take these three easy steps to make sure your employee holiday gifts are shared with abundant gratitude and received with delight and appreciation.
1. Reflect on your gratitude. Before you make any gift decisions, take a few minutes to reflect with company leaders. Discuss business successes of the past year and brainstorm ways to communicate your company pride and gratitude with the workforce at large, focusing on how individual employees or teams contributed to company successes.
2. Personalize, personalize, personalize! If you’re unsure what type of gift a particular employee or team would enjoy, ask a direct supervisor or other local manager for insight. Research shows employees prefer practical gifts that they can share with their family.  Remember it’s your thought that counts, not how much you spend.
3. Accompany your gift with a message of gratitude. No matter the gift, it should come with a short thank-you note. That’s why here at gThankYou! we provide customizable ‘Thank You’ Enclosure Cards for every season, free with your order of gThankYou Gift Certificates (check out our new designs for the 2014 Winter Holiday season)!
To learn more about the art of workplace gift-giving, click the image below to download our FREE Ultimate Guide to Employee Gift-Giving today!

About gThankYou, LLC

Turkey Gift Certificates and Turkey Or Ham Gift Certificates by gThankYou! are two of America’s favorite employee gifts and can be redeemed for any Brand (Turkey or Turkey Or Ham), at virtually any Grocery Store in the U.S.
gThankYou, LLC provides company leaders with a variety of easy, meaningful and affordable ways to recognize and reward employees, holiday time or anytime. gThankYou! Certificates of Gratitude and our free Enclosure Cards are personalizable including incorporating your company logo. And, nearly all orders ship same day.
gThankYou, LLC (www.gthankyou.com) is based in Madison, Wisconsin. Contact: Rick Kiley, Chief ThankYou! Officer, gThankYou, LLC at info@gthankyou.com or 888-484-1658.
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