The Ultimate Guide to Employee Appreciation Gifts

Why Employee Appreciation Gifts Matter

Employee appreciation gifts aren’t just a great way to remind your team members of how much you value them at specific times of the year. Studies show that around 78% of employees feel happier in their role after receiving a gift from their employer.

Showing recognition to your team members is a great way to build a positive company culture. Even a small gift can work wonders boosting:

• Employee morale and motivation: Around 84% of employees say they feel more motivated when they’re regularly recognized for their work. Rewarding your employees helps to reinforce positive behaviors, and gives employees something to strive towards.
• Engagement levels: The more engaged employees are at work, the more productive and creative they’ll be. Regularly rewarding team members is a great way to boost engagement, as it helps incentivize employees, encouraging them to contribute their best work.
• Retention rates: Studies by the Aberdeen Group found companies with recognition programs saw 31% lower voluntary turnover rates. This is crucial at a time when skill shortages are increasing, and the cost to hire is growing.

Ultimately, employee appreciation gifts aren’t just “nice to have” perks. They’re strategic tools that drive employees to invest more of their time, effort, and creativity into helping your business grow.

Ideas for Employee Appreciation Gifts

These days, coming up with ideas for employee appreciation gifts is much easier than you’d think. Innovative organizations like SplashBrands allow any company to choose from a huge range of highly customizable, thoughtful and practical gifts.

Here are some of the top employee appreciation gifts you can consider:

• Customized apparel: Probably one of the most popular and practical gifts for employee appreciation, branded apparel comes with a range of benefits. Personalized T-shirts featuring company logos and colors are great for formal and informal occasions. Hoodies and sweatshirts are ideal for cold weather seasons. You can even use your branded apparel as a way of advertising your business when your employees are out in the world.
• Branded office supplies: The best employee appreciation gifts are functional and practical. Branded office supplies, from screwdriver pens, to notepads, measuring tapes, levels, and even webcam covers will appeal to a huge variety of staff members. Plus, you don’t have to worry about getting sizes right either.
• Tech gadgets: Everyone loves convenient, intuitive technology. You could experiment with power banks and USB drives branded with your logo. These tools are both useful, and great for boosting your team’s productivity. You could also look into other unique forms of technology, like branded portable speakers, or rechargeable fans for the summer months.
• Eco friendly products: Showcase your commitment to your employees and the environment at the same time with sustainable gifts. Options can range all the way from reusable tote bags, to reusable water bottles. You could even consider looking for products made with eco-friendly materials, like bamboo lunch boxes.

If you’re not sure which gifts will appeal most to your employees, you could even create your own “Pick a Gift” store with SplashBrands. Here you can give your team members hundreds of different products to choose from, including home and lifestyle accessories, technology and apparel.

This option is ideal for celebrating specific occasions, like the launch of a new brand logo, a company anniversary, or even a seasonal event.

The Benefits of Custom Made Gifts

Whenever you’re coming up with great ideas for employee appreciation gifts, we always recommend prioritizing custom-made gifts. After all, personalized employee appreciation gifts aren’t just more impressive and unique, they actually deliver a host of benefits to both employees and organizations.

Offering team members custom made gifts, either through an online company store for employees, or as part of a rewards program can:

1. Improve Relationships with Team Members

The effort that goes into creating personalized, branded merchandise for your team members shows them just how invested you are in their happiness. Customizing a gift shows a deeper level of care and consideration, making employees feel genuinely valued. This personal touch can help to foster deeper connections between your employees, and the customer.

2. Cultivate Customer Loyalty and Pride

Custom gifts, particularly those that feature your specific brand logo and colors, are also a great way to encourage team members to show loyalty and pride towards your business. Branded merchandise can help employees feel like a crucial member of a larger team or family. They’ll be more likely to advocate for your business, and help you boost brand awareness.

3. Enhance Company Culture

Custom gifts for employee appreciation can play a valuable role in enhancing company culture. Personalized gifts can help to showcase your company’s mission and values. For instance, sustainable gifts show a commitment to protecting the environment. When these values align with the priorities of your employees, they often turn into ambassadors for your brand.

How to Choose the Right Appreciation Gifts

There’s no single strategy for choosing the ideal gifts for your employees. Whether you’re showing appreciation for their work, or celebrating an anniversary, it’s important to take the time to assess your options carefully. To boost your chances of making the right choices:

• Consider employee preferences and interests: Learn as much as you can about your team members through polls, surveys, and one-on-one or group discussions. Find out what they enjoy doing in their spare time, which products they use regularly at work, and what their values are. This will guide you towards gifts that resonate with their hobbies, needs, and personal styles or priorities.
• Align with company culture and values: The gifts you give your employees should always reflect and reinforce your company’s culture and values. If your company prioritizes sustainability, for instance, eco-friendly products like reusable water bottles may be a good choice. If you focus on innovation and tech savviness, then USB drives and wireless chargers might be a better pick.
• Ensure quality and practicality: Above all else, employee appreciation gifts should always be practical (useful), and made to the highest quality. Choosing high-quality, functional gifts shows your employees you’re committed to giving them something valuable. This shows you genuinely care about your team members and their needs.

If You’re Struggling to Choose the Right Gifts

Even if you know everything there is to know about your employees, you might still struggle to choose the best gifts to appeal to everyone. If you don’t want to rely on a one-size-fits-all gift, or you prefer to give your employees more freedom to choose their own rewards, there’s an alternative option. Open an online company store for employees.

A “pick a gift store” created with SplashBrands gives you an excellent choice to provide your team members with a curated selection of amazing items, customized with your logo and colors. This means they can choose the products that appeal to them most.

You could even allow employees to access gift certificates for your company store. This will ensure that if they don’t feel like they “need” anything from your catalog straight away, they can come back and choose the right reward at a later date.

How SplashBrands Can Help

At SplashBrands, we specialize in helping companies show appreciation and recognition to their employees, with a range of customizable gifts, and flexible online company stores. We can help you design everything from new hire kits, to branded anniversary gifts, and produce your products for you with absolutely no minimum order requirements.

Plus, with our easy-to-use company store service, you’ll be able to give your team members complete control over which rewards they want to access. You’ll even be able to access analytics and reports that give you a behind-the-scenes insight into your most popular gifts.

Already, we’ve helped countless companies build the perfect branded merchandise stores and employee recognition programs, with our unique approach. With hundreds of unique, sustainable, and practical products to choose from, you’re sure to find something that works for your business.

Get Started with SplashBrands

Building the perfect strategy for selecting and distributing employee appreciation gifts couldn’t be easier with SplashBrands. We’re committed to ensuring every company can design and run a custom merchandise store with minimal effort. All you need to do to get started is:

• Request a demo store: Contact our team and share your company’s logo and color palettes with us. Our expert team will create a branded “demo” store for you, complete with hundreds of amazing custom products to choose from.
• Personalize the experience: Choose the ideal name for your store, set up advertisement campaigns to attract employees, and create secure groups. You can even customize billing and shipping requirements, and place quantity restrictions on orders.
• Launch your store: Launch your online merchandise store and give your employees the freedom to choose the employee appreciation gifts they love most. We’ll produce all of your customized products in-house, and ship them direct to your team members.

Contact our team if you want to learn more about how we make it simple and convenient to set up and manage an incredible employee recognition program.

Boosting Morale and Engagement with Employee Gifting

Ultimately, employee appreciation gifts are a lot more valuable than you might think. Used correctly, they can turbocharge engagement and productivity, improve employee morale, and reduce turnover rates, helping your business to thrive.

All you need to do is find an effective way to source high-quality, unique and branded merchandise for your team. With SplashBrands, employee gifting is a simple and cost-effective process. Whether you’re designing your own pick-a-gift store, or creating merchandise for specific celebrations like holidays or anniversaries, we can help.

Contact the SplashBrands team today to find out more about our services or request a demo store today to start exploring our incredible range of customizable products.