Gifts For Coworkers

Your coworkers and staff are your company’s greatest assets, so it is imperative to gift accordingly. Giving gifts to your coworkers can build relationships, or can cause unanticipated problems. We all have seen inappropriate gifting from the most embarrassing to the most exaggerated ones like a ‘weekend at a golf club resort’ costing thousands of dollars. Bad examples are probably countless. That’s why it is always good to remember that you are not buying gifts to your coworkers to impress them, but simply to recognize their accomplishments, to build stronger relationships or even friendships, to create a friendly atmosphere and to motivate them for future projects.

Follow these tips when buying gifts for coworkers:

• DON’T discriminate:
  It may be considered inappropriate if the gifts for men and women are different types. Accordingly, some gifts may be offensive depending on their background, race or religion.
• DON’T play favorites:
  There should be no distinction. Consider your coworkers all equals. Make sure to keep the price difference between the gifts within a few dollars.
• Be careful about gifts for people of opposite sex:
  ‘Intimate? Oh no…. I didn’t mean it that way!’ If you don’t want to repeat that line, then make sure you pay extra attention when buying gifts for the people of opposite sex. Some gifts might be misinterpreted as being intimate.
• Include everyone:
  If you are buying gifts for all your employees, then make sure to remember contractors, part-timers and cleaning staff.
• Double-check for personalization mistakes:
  ‘That’s not your name??’ It is really embarrassing, isn’t it? You are recognizing an employee or your colleague but you got the name wrong, or it wasn’t personalized correctly. If you are buying a personalized gift, then make sure the spellings of the names are correct.
• Buy gifts not work-related:
  Who says we need to buy gifts that has to be used at work only? Giving gifts that can be used at home can be plus. A business gift does not necessarily need to be something sitting on the desk at the office.
• Be careful when giving food gifts:
  ‘It’s very sweet but I can’t eat it. I have diabetes.’ Some of us follow a strict diet not only restricted by health but also religion and personal ethics.

A simple guide to giving gifts for a group of coworkers:

If you are planning to give each individual a different gift, then you need to learn about their interests, hobbies or likes/dislikes. Talk to them about what they like to do most. Then make a list for each one of them. This shows that you took the time to consider who they are and what they like.

A more convenient and easier way would be Choosing a Theme. Some of the themes would be office accessories, gift cards, picture frames, cookbooks, games, personalized gifts, calendars, hats, organizers, bookends, calculators and so on. This approach will make sure that you follow our tips above and complete the ‘gift project’ within time and budget.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 2:59 am and is filed under Gift Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.