Keely Lords
Brand Manager
When employees feel valued and engaged, it greatly enhances your company's productivity and boosts the bottom line. On the other hand, those who believe that they are unappreciated are more likely to quit, with 79% of workers blaming a lack of appreciation as the cause behind their resignation. Losing employees hits your company with a double whammy—it diminishes institutional knowledge, and recruiting and training new talent demands significant time and financial resources.
One easy and impactful way to strengthen employee loyalty is by implementing a strategy of personalized gifting. With the right approach, thoughtful gifting can effectively demonstrate a personal appreciation of each staff member’s unique contributions and nurture significant goodwill.
Keep reading to discover the top 10 personalized gift ideas that will delight and endear your employees.
Do Personalized Gifts for Employees Have an Impact On Retention & Engagement?
While many variables can influence employee retention and engagement, showing your gratitude with personalized office gifts is a great way to add positive feelings to the overall employee experience. Research shows that thoughtful recognition boosts employee engagement by 55%. Let’s take a detailed look at the key ways personalized gifts contribute to employee satisfaction and long-term commitment:
- Feelings of Appreciation: When employees receive personalized gifts tailored to their interests, they can clearly see that you are paying attention to them when they express themselves, that you have taken the time to get to know them as an individual, beyond just being a team member.
- Boosted Morale: Keeping employee morale and engagement up is a top priority for 81% of firms, yet 50% of employees feel underappreciated. The act of giving a gift fosters community and a sense of belonging to a group. When team members feel that a team is supporting them and recognizes their contributions, they are more likely to want to turn around and contribute to the success of that team.
- Cost Savings: Pleasing and retaining talent saves on the substantial amounts of time and money required for rehiring and retraining personnel. Replacing a team member can cost up to 90% to 200% of an employee's annual salary.
- Recognition Boost: Employees who feel recognized are more likely to be highly engaged and deliver better work. Research by Deloitte shows that recognition programs enhance job performance, leading to a 14% increase in engagement, productivity, and performance, which, in turn, result in an increase in margins. Personalized employee gifts offer a memorable way to recognize milestones and celebrate achievements.
Best Occasions to Give Personalized Gifts
Figuring out the right gift for the right person goes a long way towards creating a happy workforce. But certain moments offer unique opportunities to make personalized gifts for coworkers even more resonant. Celebrating such occasions can deepen the meaning behind the gesture and leave a lasting impression. Here are some important times when customized gifts can make the strongest impact on morale:
- Work Anniversaries: Celebrating employees' years of service with gifts personalized around their time with the company demonstrates a sense of pride in those dedicated to your business. At Postal, we offer specifically designed gifts to employees for anniversaries that are not available to the rest of the company.
- Milestones and Promotions: Congratulate staff on earning new responsibilities or successful achievements with tailored presents that honor their contributions to your company’s success.
- Holidays: Making holidays special with gifts for employees during Thanksgiving, winter holidays, or year-end recesses shows you value their personal lives and experiences beyond work.
- Birthdays: Giving your employees a small, personalized present on their special day lets them know you're thinking of them and wishing them the best.
- Recognition Programs: Incorporate gifts into award ceremonies to elevate appreciation for top performers and make public acknowledgments more personal. For example, at Postal we allow employees to nominate one of their peers who have gone above and beyond to make an impact during the quarter.
- New Hires: Welcome new additions to your team with thoughtful gifts that show how your company culture values each individual, helping recruits feel instantly invested in your shared success. A subtly branded item that each individual receives when they start is a great way to welcome them to the brand and something everyone has on hand to wear to events, if needed.
- Project Completion: After big wins, gifts recognizing collaborative team effort boost morale and reaffirm a desire to take on future challenges together. Your employees will appreciate you acknowledging the successes that they help make possible for your business.
Top 10 Personalized Gift Ideas for Employees
Making a lasting impact requires choosing gifts that appeal to your employees' professional and personal preferences. Acknowledging that each team member has passions and interests beyond work can strengthen bonds and create more genuine connections. Carefully chosen gifts that capture this dual perspective show that you appreciate employees as whole individuals, not just workers. The following ideas are perfect for celebrating the human being behind the role:
1. Personalized Wooden Wireless Charger
A tasteful wireless charger engraved with initials or a logo combines practicality with personalization. This attractive and practical desk accessory recognizes the modern professional's device-centered workflow while adding a stylish touch.
2. Custom Leather Backpack for Travel
For employees who travel regularly, a high-quality vegan leather backpack stamped with your company logo and their name adds a touch of quality to every trip, and puts your brand out there for everyone to see. Its stylish functionality allows use for both work trips and personal adventures.
3. Spa Day Gift Box for R&R
Offer employees a luxurious relaxation experience with bath and body products, including a hydrating bath bomb, biodegradable sheet mask, soothing bath soak, and a hand-painted artisan chocolate bar. It never hurts to include a personalized hand written note.
4. Polaroid Camera to Capture Memories
The Polaroid Go Generation 2 is the world's smallest instant camera, designed for portability and creativity. This retro-style camera allows for documenting great experiences outside the office, encouraging employees to get out and have fun! Its functionality and versatility is also a great thing to keep in mind.
5. Wine Tasting Flight
For employees who love to raise a glass, a choice of curated wine flights offers high-quality selections from around the world. From crisp whites to full-flavored reds, there’s something for every amateur sommelier, and new collections are added every quarter.
6. Plant a Tree and Donate to Charity
Gift employees a tree to plant at home and ForestNation will plant 200 trees in Tanzania, contributing to CO2 capture, oxygen generation, and job creation. These biodegradable tree kits include seeds and instructions, with trees sprouting in 2-6 weeks. This is a wonderful way to highlight your brand value of sustainability.
7. Jigsaw Puzzle for Mindfulness
A jigsaw puzzle provides a relaxing challenge, encouraging flow and mindfulness to reduce stress. For logical thinkers, it aligns with their interests and celebrates diverse skills and talents across the team. Beautifully designed puzzles that include glue and tools to preserve the completed piece for display make perfect gifts for art lovers.
8. Outdoorsy Pack
For employees who love nature, give them a backpack complete with a cooler, 2 silicone pint glasses, and a hammock to support their active lifestyle. This thoughtful gift conveys your appreciation for a healthy work-life balance.
Benefits of Giving Personalized Gifts to Employees
For organizations aiming to establish a strong company culture, it’s well worth exploring how personalized gifts can strengthen the positive feelings of your workforce and benefit your company. Below are several key ways this tailored approach adds value:
- Stronger Bonds: Personalized gifts help establish closer, more enduring relationships between you, your employees and their colleagues.
- Improved Morale and Productivity: Happier employees are more innovative and productive. When your people feel genuinely appreciated by you and the business, their engagement and performance at work increase.
- Positive Workplace Culture: A culture of recognition and appreciation amongst team members drives higher levels of collaboration. It also leads to overall improved company performance by promoting cohesion and a sense of shared success.
- Retention and Loyalty: Loyal, stable teams provide consistency for optimal operations and growth. Personalized gifts for your employees contribute to higher retention rates as staff feel more invested in the long term, reducing the substantial costs associated with frequent turnover within your organization.
How to Choose the Right Personalized Gift
Selecting the most special workplace gifts requires both deliberate consideration and emotional intelligence. Choosing presents that will strike a chord with your employees begins with gaining insights into their preferences. By understanding what motivates and inspires your team, you can select gifts that combine usefulness, personalization, and inclusivity. The following strategies will guide you in making the right choices:
- Get to Know Your Employees' Interests: Use fun surveys or casual conversations to learn about each person’s hobbies, values, and tastes. Look for ways to connect gifts to what individually motivates and inspires them.
- Consider Practicality and Personal Touches: Balance practicality with customization to show you genuinely understand each member of your team. Combining usefulness with thoughtfulness ensures a gift that has maximum impact.
- Focus on Inclusivity: Consider factors such as age, gender, culture, lifestyle, and personality to ensure the gifts suit everyone and that no one feels excluded from recognition and appreciation. Using Postal, you can create a collection of gift options and allow the employee to choose what they’d like best.
Elevate Employee Recognition with Postal's Personalized Gifting Platform
When team members are recognized with thoughtful, personalized gifts, it instills a sense of appreciation and belonging across your organization and encourages a culture of gratitude and mutual respect. Over time, this positive atmosphere can lead to increased performance and creative thinking, as individuals feel valued and motivated to contribute their best efforts. Additionally, personalized gifts can serve as a tangible reminder of the team's shared successes and milestones, reinforcing a sense of unity and purpose.
Postal's gifting platform streamlines the process of sending personalized gifts to employees, regardless of team size or location. With a diverse selection of high-quality items and customization tools, Postal ensures you can find the most captivating and inspirational gifts for each individual. The Postal platform offers the following benefits and features:
- Personalization at Scale: Postal’s solution empowers you to send distinctive, individualized gifts to your employees, even across large teams.
- Diverse Marketplace: Postal's curated marketplace provides a wide selection of high-quality items to suit your employees' wide variety of interests and needs. You're sure to find the right gifts to delight each person.
- Eco-Friendly Options: The Postal Platform prioritizes sustainability, featuring responsibly sourced products that align with modern corporate values. These options allow you to demonstrate your business's commitment to environmental responsibility with considerate gifts.
- Easy Integration: Postal integrates smoothly with platforms like Workday, BambooHR, and Zapier, automating gift-giving for important milestones to ensure no occasion is overlooked.
- Simplified Logistics: Sending gifts to remote/hybrid employees is effortless with Postal's straightforward process. A digital message allows team members to input the address where they can most easily receive your token of appreciation.
- Market price: Postal ensures fair pricing on all marketplace items, allowing you to select premium gifts within your budget and ensuring employees feel cared about without overspending.
Schedule a demo today to discover how Postal can help you send unforgettable gifts to celebrate employees as individuals and inspire stronger bonds across your team.
