With pandemic rampaging, climate changes, and the ongoing war, the world is now facing its biggest inflationary spike in decades and persistent price hikes. This entirely new kind of economic challenge has made the unemployment rate reach high, and people are striving to make a living out of it.
Everyone is certainly having a difficult time throughout the year.
However, one of the most festive holidays are approaching and we want to make sure all of us end with a good one and there is no better time than do it on Christmas. During this holiday season, corporates send gifts for employees to appreciate their hard work, encouraging them to strike a higher engagement in the following year.
Things to Consider Before Choosing Gifts
Many of you might be struggling with selecting gifts or coming up with special gifting ideas. But before you spend tons of money in search of employee’s satisfaction, it’s important to know different ways to save money as much as possible, especially for the upcoming years when most of the businesses are looking at a drop in revenue.
We recommend you to check out the top 17 corporate gifting platforms to see which service best fits your needs. It will help you save not only money, but time spent on finding personalized gifts.
Some interesting inflation statistics:
- The inflation rate in the United States reached 4.9% in April 2023.
- 41% of small business owners identify inflation as their primary concern.
- 90% of the chief economists expect high or very high inflation in 2023 in Europe.
Pro Tips on Employee Gifting
Here are 10 ways you can spend your money smartly on employee gifting:
1. Know the budget.
Just like any other “Ways to Spend Money Smartly”, the first task for the giver is to know how much money you’re going to invest in this. A lot of businesses spend $20 - $50 USD for every employee on gifting. Of course, it depends on how many employees you have, too. Remember to include all the fees: cost of gift itself, delivery fee, tax on the gifts, and time costs for you to pick all the gifts.
You might want to check out more about some of the corporate gifting services that can actually handle all your budgets and needs!
2. Talk to your employees.
You might be wondering how talking to your employees relates to spending money smartly.
A lot of details actually goes into knowing one’s interests and personality while picking personalized gifts. You don’t want to send housewares to people who always eat outside and thus aren’t in need of that. It doesn’t have to be a formal meet-up with an employee. A random casual chat will let you know a person much better if you haven’t done so before. Plus, there are no downsides to knowing your employees better! Always keep in mind that sending the exact gifts he/she wants is how you appreciate employees’ work and maximize the outcomes.
3. Stop sending cliché gifts.
If you’re thinking to spend every penny wisely and therefore are planning to send thousands of marks, socks, bath sets (even with your company’s logo on it), you are totally wrong in this. Cliché gifts are those SWAG. Nobody wants to receive this kind of stuff as a gift. We can simply buy it on our way home.
Sending clichés will only be a way to tell your employees that you don’t really care about them, rather than a way to show your appreciation. In the end, if you weren’t planning to invest the time and money to send “good enough” gifts, why not save the money and invest elsewhere?
4. See what gifts are on-trend.
Trends are constantly changing.
There are new trends in the fashion industry every season, in business every quarter; reasonably, there are trends in gifting. Unless there are huge events or incidents, the gifting trend usually changes annually, which means it’s not as stressful as it is in the fashion and business industries to catch up on the trend.
While catching up the trends doesn’t mean you just see what gifts are popular and follow it blindly. In the context of gifting, there are always many details that need to be customized. Getting onto the trend is only the first step to making sure the receivers have higher chances to love the gifts. You can also take a look to see the 2020 gifting trends here.
5. Avoid expensive delivery fees.
The budget of gifting is tremendous when you don’t have a fine plan into every detail. In most cases, delivery issues are the most difficult to deal with, especially you’re sending the gifts cross-border. Sometimes picking a delivery service it’s like another new process of selecting gifts. You want to make sure your gifts will be delivered on time with fine quality. As you add more requests, the prices always go up even more. Be very careful with the delivery fees. After all, you don’t want the delivery fee to be higher than the gift itself.
Giftpack handles your global shipping, making your corporate gift delivery easier than you would’ve imagined. Book a call with us and know more about the details!
6. Compare different gifting platforms.
Since it takes much time and effort to pick gifts one-by-one with just a single person, many would go ask gifting platforms to help instead. There are tons of gifting platforms on the Internet. Every one of them has its own unique feature. Make sure you compare all of the platforms when selecting them. Some common things to keep in mind when comparing: total fee (activation, platform subscription, etc.), integration features, CRM, just to name a few.
7. Time is money. Save time, Save money.
In the business world, every company is competing with time. Imagine you have 50 employees, and you’re responsible for picking Christmas gifts this year. You spend 5 mins chatting with each of them to know them better, 1hr to plan your budget, another hour to brainstorm the gifts, 10 mins to pick each gift, finally 1hr to actually purchase and confirm all the details. That’s like the best-case scenario, and that is totally 15.5 hrs to finish the whole gifting process!
Find ways to save your time and invest your time in other aspects of work! Picking each gift by yourself is certainly not the most productive and effective way to practice employee gifting.
8. Track your gifts.
Gifting is not done after you click on that purchase button.
Keep track of the stage of your gifts to know what the status and when receivers claim the gifts. If there is an emergency (i.e. gift loss or custom problem), you want to make sure you respond right away so you don’t lose too much on both the time and money you’ve invested in.
9. Review your spending on gifting.
To know if your money is well-spent or not, it’s necessary to track how the gifts perform. After all the gifts are finally shipped and received, take some time to have feedback from your employees. It can be anonymous so nobody would have concerns with their feedback. Of course, it can also be named when all of them are satisfied with their gifts.
10. Pay attention to discounts and offers.
The most direct and easiest way to spend money on gifting in a smart way is to wait for the best timing and get discounts or special offers from gifting companies. Whether it’s off-season or peak season, there are discounts and special offers provided by different gifting agencies based on strategies.
Employee Gifting on Christmas
Coming into the holiday season, people in charge of gifting don’t have to worry too much this time. We want to make your life easier and let you celebrate the holidays as happily as other people. Next time having the need of employee gifting, you don’t need to spend much time and worry about the budget. Just find Giftpack.
Make your gifting efficient and improve your ROI with Giftpack AI.
Visit our product page to learn more about what we can do for you!
