Five Corporate Gifting Mistakes You Can Avoid

Incentive: Strategy

Five Corporate Gifting Mistakes You Can Avoid
November 24, 2009

These days, with cash still tight at most companies, bosses aren't known for their generosity. An early dismissal before a holiday is a enough of a luxury to bestow on your spoiled, ungrateful workforce. But there still are myriad ways for bosses to embarrass themselves when giving gifts to employees. A new guide seeks to help your managers avoid getting egg nog on their faces.

A free e-book by employee motivation, rewards, and incentives specialist Mark S. Repkin is available as a free download from The Certif-A-Gift Company. "5 Employee Holiday Gift Mistakes: The New Rules of Giving" details the worst mistakes employers make when giving gifts to their employees, examines why so many well-intentioned gifts fall flat, and offers solutions for making the holidays memorable at the workplace this year.

Repkin, Vice-President of The Certif-A-Gift Company and an Incentive Research Foundation trustee, describes the five holiday gift mistakes are, showing how easy it is to slip up. Managers could do nothing, which is the holiday "gifting" style of many employers, but that approach, he says, wastes the perfect opportunity to boost employee morale.

Of course your company's bosses also could waste time trying to decide what to give, but that often leads to missing the gift-giving occasion altogether. Not to be outdone by negligence and indecisiveness, some managers achieve little memory value by giving generic gifts that do not take the recipient's tastes into consideration. Other no-nos some managers at your company may embarrass themselves by doing are including the price tag and giving one-size-fits-all gifts.

That last one, in particular, can be a pitfall for well-meaning companies, says Repkin. One size, he contends, never really fits all. "In their efforts to motivate employees, companies often fall short—and misspend resources—by offering one-size-fits-all incentive programs," Repkin explains. "When it comes to holiday gift giving, companies would do better to align rewards with each employee's unique set of preferences and tastes. By giving employees the power of choice, managers can maximize individual and company-wide performance."

Source: Nielsen Business Media

Incentive Magazine

SUBSCRIBE | ADVERTISE
Contact Incentive Magazine about this article at
feedback@incentivemag.com

SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |

RSS |

Back to Incentive Index