Christmas – a time to make your staff feel appreciated

The festive season is in full swing with joy all around – but it’s also a time reflect on a difficult year for both businesses and individuals.

Looking back, 2023 was a year of soaring inflation and eye-watering energy bills. As well as juggling precarious personal finances, your staff have worked hard to help keep your business moving forward during these tough times. What impact would a little bit of extra recognition have?

For people working in sectors such as retail, the festive season offers no end-of-year wind-down. They are in the maelstrom of the busiest period of their year, doing some of their most important work.

But for those in other business sectors there may be a drop-off in work intensity. This offers the perfect opportunity to allow your team to breathe and ‘take a moment’, to step back and appreciate how much they have achieved. They’ve earned it.

Family fun and time to recharge

No doubt arrangements for Christmas parties and nights out are already in the pipeline. But there are more meaningful ways you, as an employer, can show your staff how much you value them in the next few weeks.

Parents for example, will be feeling their own festive pressures. Whether it’s Christmas shopping or finding time to attend the Christmas fairs, nativity plays and concerts that always seem to be scheduled during the school day.

All too often mums, dads or guardians have to use their annual leave to attend such events. Maybe this year you can let them take half a day on you, as a thank-you.

Increasingly some businesses are even implementing Christmas shut-downs. This gives everyone a little more time off, particularly between Christmas and New Year when there may be no need for the whole team to come in. And if work tails off in the run up to Christmas why not let people go home an hour or two early?

A time for giving

Of course, whether you colleagues are buying for their family or trying to enjoy the festive party season, the rising cost of living has hit everyone hard this year. A nice way to show people their efforts in 2023 meant something that makes life easier – like a Love2shop Gift Card.

The corporate gifting experts at Love2shop have just published their Employee Value Report 2023. It highlights the risks of letting your employees believe you don’t appreciate their efforts, but also the value of getting gifting and rewarding right – to both your work environment and your bottom line.

It revealed just over 5.5m workers – around 18% – said they don’t feel valued at work. Of those disaffected workers, almost 1.5m are willing to leave their job as soon as possible, without a new role lined up.

But those surveyed also told Love2shop how employers can get it right. Additional days off, flexible or hybrid working and spontaneous gift cards as a little pick-me-up are the top three ways employees say bosses can improve their happiness.

And for a relatively low cost, you can show your appreciation with Love2shop Gift Cards, e-Gift Cards and vouchers. These are quick to deliver and can be tax efficient.

HMRC offers a Trivial Benefits allowance. This allows an employer to give non-cash gifts up to the value of £50. They can be given in the form of a £50 Love2shop gift card or e-gift card. The beauty of these gifts is that they are tax-free and require no additional paperwork.

You can find out more about how to give gifts tax-free using Love2shop’s free Tax-Free Gift Calculator tool here.

Love2shop is one of the best known gifting brands in the UK and is accepted by around 150 retailers. These include well-known brands such as Marks & Spencer, Iceland, Matalan, Argos, Costa, Harvester, Tui, Jet2Holidays and many, many more.

There are big risks to allowing your staff to feel their efforts are not recognised or appreciated. Fixing it is easy. With just a little bit of thought and effort you can create a warm glow around your team this Christmas that will last well into the New Year.

Contact our team here today to discuss how you can get your Love2shop gifts delivered in time for Christmas 2023 or visit our self-serve portal and get started yourself here.