Workplace Gifting Tips for the Holiday Season

As the year draws to a close and the festive season gets ever closer, it’s time to start thinking about how you might celebrate Christmas with your colleagues and staff members. As a business owner, you might be looking forward to the increase in sales that December can bring, or simply love having the chance to reward your team with gifts or perks. If you’re an employee, you might be counting down the days to the annual office party, some days off work, or even your yearly bonus check.

However, no matter your position in the office, if you’re like most people you may be already starting to stress about the gifting side of things.  If so, to make things easier, read on for some tips you can follow this holiday season.

Gifting Etiquette
For starters, keep in mind that, with so many people tending to feel the strain financially around the holidays because of family gift buying and other Christmas and end-of-year costs, it should never be expected that all employees buy gifts for each other. This should be a choice instead, with no one feeling pressured to “conform.”

In addition, don’t forget that there are many people who don’t celebrate the holidays at all, or who do so in a manner that has nothing to do with gift buying. As such, this is another reason why exchanging presents should be optional. All business owners and managers should make this clear to their teams.

In addition, it helps to put guidelines in place whereby, if people do want to buy gifts for coworkers, they opt-in to the gift exchange, rather than having to opt-out if they’re not interested or cannot participate. Because most people feel bad if they decide to decline taking part in gift giving, it’s much more considerate to take away this awkward moment in advance.

Choose Appropriate Gifts
If you’re a company owner or manager, or a human resources executive, you may want to buy gifts for employees at the end of the year to say thank you for their efforts and for a job well done. This can be a great way to acknowledge and recognize workers, and to help increase engagement and boost corporate culture at the same time.

You do need to be careful when it comes to purchasing presents. While it’s lovely to opt for personalized gifts which show you understand the interests, passions, and home life of your team and haven’t just bought the same thing for every person, you don’t want to go too personal (or off-color) and offend someone. This guideline is the same when it comes to buying presents for your colleagues too.

Always avoid buying items which are based very much on personal taste, such as clothing, perfume, jewelry and the like; as well as any items which are sexualized or romanticized in any way. Furthermore, it’s typically best to save gag gifts for your own family or very close friends, since there is a high risk that a misunderstood joke can offend the gift recipient.

Also make sure you don’t end up buying inappropriate gifts for people, based on their religion, health, lifestyle and the like. For example, people who abstain from drinking alcohol won’t think much of being given wine; vegans will be put out if they receive hampers filled with animal-products; and diabetics won’t want to end up with a big bag of cookies or sweets.

Decide Whether or Not to Give Gifts to Bosses
Many employees often struggle with the decision about whether or not to purchase gifts for their bosses. Most people will feel it’s not fair to have to buy something for someone who presumably makes a lot more money than them, but will worry that if they don’t, they’ll be seen as ungrateful or not a positive part of the team.

As a result, managers should stress to their team that gifts flow down the chain, not upwards. Plus, employees should steer clear of soliciting others in the office for financial donations for a group gift for their boss. If people really do want to pool resources for a present, the names of all members of the team should go on the card, regardless of who contributes and who doesn’t. This ensures that pressure isn’t put on people to contribute for image’s sake, and no one has to end up feeling bad.

Create a Spending Limit
Lastly, if it’s determined that gift giving, such as a Secret Santa system, will be set up in the office, always place a price limit on the value of presents. Keep this low, and adhere to it. If you overspend, you can run the risk of not only making other people feel uncomfortable, but also looking like a show-off. On the other hand, try never to spend considerably less than the set budget either, as this can make you seem stingy. No one wants to be the office Grinch!

Photo by Ben White