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Five unhappy workers at a Christmas Party

Is a bonus better than a Christmas party?

September 19, 2023/in Christmas rewards, Employee benefits, Employee engagement, Employee recognition, Employee rewards, Employees, Love2shop, Short blogs, Staff bonus, Staff gifts /by Love2shop

Christmas is the time of year when everyone looks to let their hair down – and everyone loves a works Christmas party… right?

Well, to a point. While many people in work get excited about the works Christmas ‘do’, others contemplate it with a quiet dread. There are even some who simply aren’t bothered.

And research supports that. A 2022 study by global workforce consultancy Resource Solutions found that in the UK only 37% of workers expect a Christmas party from their employer and of those who don’t, 42% would prefer a gift or bonus.

Reasons for not wanting a Christmas party included: not celebrating Christmas (11%), not wanting to socialise with colleagues (34%), or preferring to arrange something with close colleagues (30%).

Do people really not like Christmas parties?

Until the pandemic there had been an acceptance that extroverts ran the workplace – the go-getters, the self-starters, the risk-takers and the networkers.

While those attributes are still admired, remote working allowed individuals who are motivated differently to shine, highlighting the valuable contribution quieter workers can make.

As writer Jade McAndrew-Barlow put it: “Now, the calm consideration of introverts is having a moment. They are finally valued for all the wonderful things they contribute to the workplace.

“In all the rush and tumble, introverts take time to deliberate, assess and consider the little details and how they will inform the bigger picture. They bring a calming and reassuring presence.”

It’s estimated that between 25% and 40% of people are, to some degree, introverts. In other words, people who prefer a quieter life, both at work and in their spare time. For them, Christmas parties may be something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

In addition to that, the rich diversity of the UK workforce means that for a significant number of people, Christmas is simply not a relevant holiday. Different faiths have different key gifting and feasting moments to celebrate friendship and togetherness that mean more than Christmas.

Festive stress

The work Christmas party is an event that can cause even the more extroverted among us to take a deep breath.

With its excess of food and drink, sometimes loud, lewd and inappropriate behaviour that keep HR teams busy through January, the festive do is an obstacle course where the prize is often a sore head and some stories that will be heavily edited and recounted for 12 months until everyone is fed up hearing them.

Add to that the expense of buying a new outfit, hairdo, paying for taxis (and maybe even hotels) and suddenly, even if the employer is footing the bill for the party, the event can end up hitting workers in the pocket.

With the cost of living stubbornly rising, is it time to rethink the Christmas Party?

Say thanks – and mean it

So if we ditch the Christmas party how to we reward employees for their hard work this past year?

The challenges posed by the rising cost of living – high food and fuel prices and rising mortgage and energy costs – are getting worse. What your staff may really appreciate this time of year is a little bit of help with the cost of Christmas.

Love2shop’s Employee Value Report 2023 may hold the answer. The report surveys workers across the UK to find out how they feel about their employer and the impact of reward and recognition strategies.

One key finding in this year’s report was that 6-in-10 workers said receiving spontaneous gifts at key times of year, such as Christmas, from their employer made them feel valued.

In addition, 57% felt that days off, multi-retailer gift cards or flexible working were the best ways to reward staff.

And a huge 90% of workers said they felt more valued by their employer after receiving a multi-retailer gift card – such as Love2shop.

What’s interesting about that is, when asked what they would spend such a gift card on, 34% said it would help towards their weekly shop.

The increased cost of living effectively means that giving a gift card can help your employees with their day-to-day shopping – possibly freeing up additional money for them to spend on their families at Christmas.

What’s more, 57% of respondents also reported that their productivity increases when they feel valued.

So with people facing a challenging Christmas this year, instead of giving them an extra cost to worry about, why not make things a little easier for them with a Christmas gift?

Don’t be a Grinch

Rethinking the Christmas party isn’t an excuse to simply do away with any sort of festive cheer.

An astonishing 32.5% of UK employers were offered neither a bonus nor a party in 2022, according to research published by Employee Benefits Magazine.

And the Love2shop Employee Value Report 2023 found that 39% of people felt their employer was not generous at all. Indeed, when asked how does your employee show their generosity, as well as spontaneous gifting and organised team events there were also examples like: ‘providing biscuits’ and ‘giving shout-outs on conference calls’.

Employees who feel recognised and valued are happier, more productive and less likely to leave your business.

And gifting is easy thanks to HMRC’s Trivial Benefits provisions. This allows gift cards or e-codes up to the value of £50 to be given as gifts tax-free, with no national insurance contribution or paperwork – so there’s no excuse.

Let us help make Christmas special

Love2shop is one of the best known gifting brands in the UK. Available as a gift card, e-gift card or voucher, Love2shop is accepted by around 150 retailers.

These include well-known brands such as Marks & Spencer, Iceland, Matalan, Argos, Costa, Harvester and many more. Staff can even use Love2shop holidays to put vouchers towards a getaway with more than 150 leading tour operators.

The Love2shop Business team is here to help you get your Christmas gifting right. Love2shop offers a selection of fun festive card designs to choose from. You can even order personalised cards with your business branding on them, although you need to be quick as the deadline to order those is October 20.

Christmas parties can be a great part of the festive mix but if you really want your teams to feel valued and rewarded in an inclusive way this year, it’s worth considering a new approach.

Get in touch with our team today or visit business.love2shop.co.uk to find out how we can help.

How to Create an Employee of the Month Scheme for the 21st Century

January 3, 2020/in Long blogs /by Love2shop

There are two things that need to be acknowledged when putting together an employee of the month scheme for a contemporary workforce. The first is that all employee of the month schemes are a form of recognition.

The second is that they’re not perfect. There are great benefits, but there are drawbacks. By playing up the strengths and accommodating the weaknesses, you can design an employee of the month scheme that has a huge positive effect on your business.

Your employee of the month scheme could bring your business:

A feel-good factor – Sharing positive thoughts and achievements boosts morale.
Loyalty – We’ve talked before about the benefits of recognition, and loyalty is one of the key areas improved by quality recognition.
Good habits– Making celebration a monthly habit helps ingrain a culture of respect and recognition in your staff.
Employee sentiment – Improve how your employees see their own company, and how quality candidates will see your company’s culture.

This blog will take you through the key thoughts that need to be considered to make your employee of the month scheme a roaring success.

6. Share
7. Be flexible
8. Scale schemes
9. Collaborate
10. Recognise

11. Personality
12. Imagination
13. Rewards
14. Democratise
15. Simplify

1. Know what you need your employee of the month scheme to achieve

What kind of noticeable effect are you trying to generate with your employee of the month scheme?

It could be to increase employee motivation, to experiment with starting a recognition scheme, or to improve morale around the office. They’re all valid needs, and valid reasons to try a new scheme.

It’s a worthy question, because it gives you clarity of purpose. It focuses your other decision-making, which makes it easier to put the rest of your employee of the month scheme together; if it doesn’t serve your clear outcomes, it doesn’t need to be part of your plan.

Keep this outcome in mind when you’re going through the rest this blog, and when you’re organising your own scheme.

2. Treasure consistency

Expectation has a powerful influence on our minds, especially when expectations aren’t met. When you start an employee of the month scheme, your employees will anticipate that you consistently deliver what you set out to do. And they’ll notice if the scheme misses a month or falters.

Consistently delivering your employee of the month scheme makes it easier for staff to anticipate it and stay engaged.

Being consistent helps make sure you’re timely, and being timely is important for recognition. The impact of recognition is at its most powerful when it’s close to the behaviour or achievement you’re recognising.

Keeping your scheme consistent means you’re always as close as possible to something that happened in the last 30 days. While that’s not as good for morale as instant recognition, it’s a huge improvement over 60 days or more.

3. Embrace transparency and communicate effectively

The most common stereotype of employee of the month is the portrait on the wall, with the little bronze “employee of the month” plaque on the frame. It doesn’t really tell you that much, does it?

It also doesn’t really benefit anyone outside the manager/employee relationship. Especially if there’s no explanation for what that employee did to earn their recognition for the month.

Explaining why that employee merits special recognition would have two positive effects for your company.

First, you have a chance to explain your decision making process. Failure to communicate is often at the heart of workplace distrust and angst.

Explaining your decision making process clears up the ambiguity, leaving much less chance that an employee is going to become disgruntled.

Second, you can take an opportunity to reinforce your values. Assuming, of course, you take our advice and make sure the scheme integrates with an overall recognition plan.

As with recognition overall, what you choose to recognise is an endorsement of the business you want to build. Explaining why you’re issuing recognition is an opportunity to build a picture of the kind of values and behaviour you want your company to embody.

4. Boast about your big timers

Share your employee of the month winners, and their achievements, with the public.

Making your appreciation for your staff public has two major benefits. First, you’re showing the world that your company is staffed by employees that excel, and produce achievements worth celebrating.

This improves your public reputation, positioning your company as a place of collaboration, success and recognition. And thus, a desirable partner or supplier.

However, while it’s important to control the external perception of your company, your internal one matters too. How staff perceive your company will influence their motivation, their loyalty, and their behaviour.

By boasting about your staff to the public, and putting their achievements in a public spotlight, you show your staff they work for a company that values them. And that’s a huge part of what recognition is all about – making staff see how important they see they are to your business, and feel that value.

Just be sure to get the permission of any employee you want to feature before putting them in the public sphere!

5. Refresh your scheme occasionally

Companies change. Employees’ work changes, your staff change, and your company’s culture grows.

Which makes it wise to stop and reflect now and then on whether your processes are right for your business today. That includes employee of the month schemes.

Take the time to ask yourself:

Does this produce the outcomes we wanted it to?
Do the processes work?
Is our workforce interested in, and interacting with, the scheme?

If the answers are no, it’s time to think about a refresh in your approach. This conversation would be a great time to open the door to your staff’s thoughts. After all, they’re the group that are supposed to get the most benefit from the scheme itself.

If they’re not getting what they need out of the scheme, it’s worth asking how you can change the scheme to achieve your aims.

6. Don’t let a few stars steal the spotlight

One of the big signs of a stale, ineffective employee of the month scheme is repetition of winners.

Whether they go out of their way to do it or not, a niche group can consistently find themselves passing the baton between themselves.

This could be because of how you measure, who feels enlivened and engaged, or because you aren’t putting the time aside to really think about awarding winners. However you arrive at this point, it’s not a good thing.

It would be easy to say “well, the winners are the winners” and carry on, but that doesn’t cut it with the rest of your staff. Remember, this is part of your overall recognition system.

Alienating most of your staff to focus on a tiny group of number-hitters ruins enthusiasm for the scheme, and can even create distrust.

Consistently rewarding a small group for the sake achievements every month is a sign of poor employee of the month scheme design. Account for areas beyond just numbers.

7. Left-field employee of the month ideas

To make your employee of the month scheme accessible to all staff, you don’t have to stick to celebrating stereotypical individual performances. You can celebrate:

The best mistake

No, it’s not a typo! Sometimes we need to make a mistake and get something wrong to learn the best way to do something. A mistake that leads to significant growth and development, handled correctly, can be cause for celebration. It also downplays the idea that failures are fatal, and encourages staff to accept risk and failure as long as they’re educational.

A big personality

Some staff create huge value to your workplace in ways that are difficult to measure. They bring the mood up on difficult days, they make other staff see their value, they bring calm in emergencies, they uplift the performance of peers. Celebrate the stuff that everyone notices but doesn’t end up on a spread sheet.

Work anniversaries

Not only do employees expect to be recognised for their long service, but long serving employees are a huge asset to your company. Their intimate knowledge of your business and industry, experience and knowledge help others in their own work. Longevity is a trait well worth celebrating in your valuable employees.

An entire department or team

As we’ve pointed out elsewhere in this blog, almost no one at work is an island. Achievements are usually down to the efforts of a team, even if one person appears to be the focal point. A whole team

A whole year’s achievement

Not everyone has a “big” month. Some employees’ value isn’t in their most prolific achievements, but their consistency. Particularly in an uncertain business like sales, someone that produces a dependable and commendable string of results merits recognition. Just as much as some employees merit recognition for one big moment during a year.

The point is, you don’t have to bind your own hands. You don’t have to stick to measuring KPIs and metrics to determine an employee’s worth to your business. And those elements don’t have to be the sole focus of your employee of the month scheme – it’s up to you and what’s important to your company.

8. Scale the scheme to your teams

If you think of the impact of recognition as a pebble being skipped across a pond, the impact runs out of steam the further it goes.

It’s the same for the impact of public recognition among your staff; the further away you go, the lower the impact is.

If your business has 500 staff spread across three sites and 10 teams, it’s unlikely everyone will have intimate knowledge of what other teams and individuals are up to. Or what makes their work so important to the company.

Why does this matter? Because the wider positive effects of public recognition rest on employees understanding the value of their colleagues’ work. And, in turn, understanding why they merit that recognition.

You don’t have to use only one employee of the month scheme for a whole business (more on that later…). If your warehouse team isn’t likely to get much out of seeing the customer support team celebrated, run smaller schemes. Design a scheme, and help your managers carry it out for their departments.

9. Put collaboration before competition

While you can only put one person in the spotlight at a time, you can focus the conversation around the award on how their efforts are collaborative.

Rather than focusing on someone’s individual performance, also focus on how their work contributed to a wider whole.

Put simple KPI measurement and number chases aside for something that’s more valuable to your company’s culture. While it will mean having to put a bit more effort into your scheme, it will pay dividends.

When a scheme shines a light on collaborative success, one individual being highlighted doesn’t alienate others. They become the focal point of a team’s success instead.

10. Recognise that employee of the month schemes are recognition

You will know by now that recognition is extremely valuable to your company. If you’re not sold, take a look at our recent blog on recognition stats here. And as we said at the start of this article, employee of the month schemes and recognition are peas in the same pod.

As a result, an employee of the month scheme should be an extension of your overall recognition system. To be consistent, it should reflect the same values and goals you have in mind for recognition overall. To reap the most benefits of employee recognition, all of your efforts should be complementary.

When recognition efforts dovetail, they bring the best out of each other. And they provide a cohesive, easily understood set of values and behaviours that your company wants to celebrate.

11. Bring your leaders’ personalities in

Your leadership figures need to play an active role in employee of the month schemes.

Recognition in general just isn’t something that can be handed off to a PA or a line manager. There has a be personal element.

Employees are smart enough to see when leaders aren’t invested, and it harms their perception of recognition in your company. And as we discussed earlier, internal brand perception matters as much as external.

As much as is reasonable, make sure your business’ leaders are involved in your employee of the month scheme. It legitimises your scheme, and shows the company’s overall investment in employee recognition.

12. Don’t literally call it “employee of the month”

You might think this is a bit of a petty point, but just calling your scheme “employee of the month” is a bit of a missed opportunity.

You’re immediately robbing yourself of a chance to reflect the best of your company culture in the name, and make that culture an element of your employee of the month scheme.

It’s also a signal to your employees. When you put the time aside to think of a name that reflects your staff and your work culture, you’re showing your own investment in the scheme.

Exercising your own creativity and effort won’t go unnoticed by your employees. In turn, it’s much easier for them to become invested in the scheme themselves.

On both counts your scheme is losing out without a good reason.

13. Include worthy rewards

Rewards are perfect for capping off an employee achievement, and they turn professional success into a lasting trophy.

Rewards also do a much better job of celebrating success than just cash on its own, as we’ve talked about before.

Going for something like a gift card, reward code or vouchers doesn’t burden you with having to pick the reward.

You set the reward level you feel is appropriate, and let the employee pick something they’ll love for themselves.

Gift cards, vouchers and reward codes to delight and excite your staff

Our employee reward range puts the joy of choice in your employees’ hands. Whatever your staff love to do, they can find it through our selection of cards, codes and vouchers.

Digital rewards do the job right

Earlier we were talking about how important it is to be consistent and timely with recognition. It’s not that much different for rewards. Digital rewards make it easy to send rewards quickly, because digital reward codes are sent, received and redeemed digitally.

It’s simple, fast, and gives your staff access to potentially thousands of rewards with just one email or text message. And if your employee chooses to redeem their reward digitally, they don’t involve any single-use paper or plastic cards or vouchers. No postage fees either.

You also don’t have to lose any of the benefits of face-to-face employee recognition by using digital rewards. While the reward can arrive, and be spent, digitally, you’re always free to capitalise in other ways. Like making a speech for the office, sending them a hand-written note, or just a conversation about what they did to merit the congratulations.

14. Think about colleague of the month, not just employee of the month

One typical employee of the month scheme will recognise 12 people a year. You don’t need to be a maths wizard to figure that out. Which is great if you have exactly 12 employees – everyone could earn a spot in the lime light!

But most companies have more than 12 employees. An overwhelming majority of the UK’s workforce, for example, work for a company with more than 20 employees. You are most likely going to have a fair few employees leftover after you’ve counted to 12.

The good news is there’s a way to address this, and it could significantly improve your employee of the month scheme. Democratise the employee of the month selection process and let your employees pick a winner themselves. Instead of employee of the month, think colleague of the month.

Having a hand in choosing a monthly winner gives your staff a stake in the scheme itself. It’s much harder to argue with the outcome when it’s a consensus generated among colleagues.

As long as voters can justify their choices, within your company’s values and goals, you don’t have to stress about your scheme being a straight up popularity contest.

Instead of one person being held up as a winner every month, everyone is a stakeholder and everyone has a voice.

You can read more about our thoughts on colleague, not employee, of the month here.

15. Make gathering employee of the month scheme nominations easy

So, if you’re anything like us, you’ve read the bit above and thought: “I love the idea of letting everyone cast a vote, but I hate the idea of gathering the votes.” And that’s not an unreasonable thought, chasing something that’s not directly work related can be like herding cats.

But it doesn’t have to be that difficult. You can make life easy for yourself by using technology. Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Strawpoll and Doodle Poll all let you grab a consensus without much difficulty.

You can also include special fields to make sure your staff include sound reasoning for their nominations, and provides nominations measured against your company’s values.

Great employee of the month schemes are worth the effort

Putting together an effective employee of the month scheme is worth the effort. You’ll be making a more positive, collaborative, celebratory workplace.

Use the advice here to steer around the rocks of:

Jealousy – Poor communication and lack of strategy lets some departments and individuals feel they’re not as valuable as others.

Inequality – Effectively “locking out” most employees through poor scheme design, measurement, and measurement.

Missed expectations – Damaging internal brand sentiment by falling short of expectations and appearing inconsistent.

Disappointing rewards – Rewards that don’t suit your employees, are hard to use, or don’t arrive in time harm your employee of the month scheme.

Taking the time to get them right ahead of time, and maintain them properly, will pay dividends. If you have any questions, about recognition or rewards, feel free to get in touch with our team. They’d be delighted to hear from you.

get a grip on employee rewards without hitting the books

The best guide to understanding employee rewards you can read in 10 minutes

August 6, 2019/in Long blogs /by Love2shop

Employee rewards are vital to your employee recognition and benefit mix. Getting the most from your rewards means getting to grips with the basics of using them. Enjoy the full rundown on what you need to know about employee rewards.

In this blog, we cover the fundamentals of:

1. What employee rewards are

2. Why employee rewards matter

3. When you should reward staff

4. How to manage your rewards

Click to jump to a section.

What employee rewards are

An employee reward is any token, gift, prize, or cash-value trophy. You use them to thank employees for something you or your company believe is valuable.

That’s the simple part. The harder part is figuring out how you can make the best use of them in your business.

How that intersects with recognition and incentives

Recognition

Rewards act as a signal boost for recognition. We’ve said this a few times, but rewards aren’t the same as recognition.

They’re linked, because rewards can back up recognition. But it’s important to get a grip on how recognition works without rewards to make sure you’re getting the most out of your rewards.

Incentives

It’s easy to confuse incentives and employee rewards and put them into the same neat category. The truth is they’re related, but very different ideas.

An incentive still involves a reward, but to be an incentive the employee reward needs to be withheld until the employee or team hits a target.

An effective incentive also has to be discussed ahead of time to give the employee motivation to complete a task or hit a milestone. Otherwise, you’re firmly in the world of just issuing rewards.

Now that you’ve got the what, we’ll walk you through the why, when and how of using employee rewards for your business.

We’ll start with why they’re so important.

Why you need to offer employee rewards

You need to offer rewards for three major reasons:

Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
Operant conditioning.
Expectation.

We’ll explain each of them here.

Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

In the office, intrinsic reward is the feel-good sensation your staff take from their work. Feeling proud of achievements.

Taking pride in supporting their team. Feeling a sense of accomplishment in helping the business reach its goals.

Many elements go into that sensation. Your management style, engagement, the work itself. And recognition, too. That’s why it’s so important you get a grip on both rewards and recognition.

Extrinsic rewards, the other kind, are the ones you buy from us. They’re external rewards that have some kind of tangible element. Their real-world cash value is what fuels their value to staff.

The two need separate understanding, but they intersect. The physical (extrinsic) rewards make the intrinsic (emotional) rewards more powerful. They do this by turning them into trophies.

Not only do your staff get something they enjoy through the reward, there’s a lasting impact. Non-cash value rewards make excellent trophies. Unlike cash, which we’ve covered already as a poor reward.

Those trophies have an afterglow. They help your employee bask in a sense of achievement whenever they reflect on their reward.

That means employee rewards do more than make employees feel great about one achievement. It makes them feel better about their entire job. It’s a useful tool for building employee engagement.

Combined, there’s a big influence on motivation and job performance. Assuming you deploy your employee reward scheme effectively.

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a fancy way of saying “getting people to do what you want.”

The concept is similar to Pavlov and his famous bell. Only instead of making your employees hungry you make them feel good.

The process is very simple. Your employees do something exceptional. What that is, we’ll address later. Recognising this exceptional event, you reward the employee.

The reward, as we’ve said, doubles-down on how good they already feel about their achievement.

It’s human nature to seek out those good feelings again. Behaviour you reward is behaviour you’re more likely to see repeated in the future.

As a result, you quietly train staff to associate good feelings with work achievements.

The rewards, like the ones we supply, make that easy.

Expectation

Rewards are an extremely common tool for incentives and motivation. Excellence requires acknowledgement and celebration. As we pointed out, rewards are a very effective tool for marking and creating high performance.

The flip side of rewards being commonplace is that they become an expectation. What was once a fringe benefit is something staff assume they’ll receive.

Expectation is very important to employees. Failing to meet it starts to erode the way employees see their employers. Over time, failing to match expectation chips away at their faith in the business.

This has a knock-on effect on employee engagement.

Summary:

To summarise, you need to offer rewards for three primary reasons.

1. They’re good for motivation, morale and productivity. They interact with and amplify the intrinsic rewards we mentioned to do that.

2. Employee rewards help you get more of what you want from staff. That’s by influencing and reinforcing their behaviour through rewards.

3. Staff are expecting to receive them.

Now it’s a question of when you should be doling out the rewards.

When you need to offer employee rewards

As we pointed out earlier, rewards work as behaviour modifiers. As such, rewards need deploying when you have a chance to create a better work culture.

We can’t tell you every single situation in your company when a reward would be appropriate.

At least not without one of the team getting to know your business first (you’re always welcome to give us a call, we’d love to do just that).

But we can give you, based on your experience, some suggestions to start the engine for you.

Reward employees for:

Exceeding performance targets
Exceptional customer service
Sustained outstanding performance
Putting other people’s needs before their own
Going beyond their job description for the company
Spotting major roadblocks and coming up with ways around them.
Exceptional ideas for the future. You should already have a way to submit ideas, and you should reward the most exceptional ideas
Volunteering their free time to support charities you value
Putting your company values first in their work and behaviour
Taking up an exceptional amount of voluntary training
Solving a long-standing problem
Organising fun (but appropriate) social events or drumming up community spirit
Referring valuable new clients
Displaying notable loyalty to the business
Being a leader in the office, whether it’s making sure the office gets cleaned or helping employees deal with change

If you’re ever unsure if an employee should be rewarded, run a mental checklist. Ask yourself if the situation is:

Notable: For both the employee and their peers, the reward should attach to something obviously notable.
Positive: It should almost go without saying, but only reward positive behaviour.
Values-based: In clear alignment with your company values.
Purposeful: Contributes to the purpose and mission of your company.
Timely: Don’t let time pass between a noteworthy employee event and your offering of a reward.

Now you know what, why and when. It’s just a question how rewards should find their way to staff.

How to reward employees

The different types of employee rewards, how to deliver them to staff, and the relative merits of each approach.

Digital, physical, a blend of each, the benefits and drawbacks.

Types of rewards

Cash.
Cash-value.
- Gift cards.
- Vouchers.
- Digital reward codes.
Trophies.
Merchandise.
Experiences.

The pros and cons of different employee rewards

Cash

Cash is not a great reward, even if it is a popular one. Read more about our opinion on that here. But to give you the summary: your staff are used to it.

It’s an existing transaction. Money is also a source of stress. It doesn’t make sense to confuse pay and rewards by rewarding with cash.

Gift Cards

Gift cards are versatile and exciting. Our gift cards come with more than 95 in-store retailers, and e-gift cards.

E-gift cards are a further selection of physical and digital brands accessed by swapping the value of your gift card online. Gift cards work for just about anyone, assuming you can get them delivered.

Vouchers

Vouchers are simple, tactile and immediate. We still see a place for the voucher in the reward marketplace.

Particularly for on the spot, quick rewards among staff that can’t use a phone or computer at work.

Digital rewards

Digital reward codes (or e-codes) make it simple to ping rewards about teams that aren’t always in the same.

By using SMS and as delivery, anyone with a phone or computer can receive the reward.

Experiences

We’ve watched the demand for experience grow massively over the last two years. It’s a sign of changing times, as more of the younger generation enters the workforce.

As a result, there’s less emphasis on items and more longing for adventure. Whether it’s a group experience or individual experiences, they’re rising as workplace demographics change.

Trophies

There’s still a place for the simple trophy. Even if other rewards become their own sort of trophies, an actual trophy has value.

They’re very effective for capping off internal contests or light-hearted competitions. And they’re extremely cost-effective compared to the positives impact on morale.

Merchandise

We don’t just mean a company-branded windbreaker. We’re talking about electronics, fashion, kitchenware, cameras, sporting equipment, luggage and more.

Demand for merchandise tends to trend toward older generations, but there’s a lot of older workers to cater for.

Sourcing your rewards

Obviously, we’re a bit biased on this subject. But you would have to be mad to try to source and house a catalogue worth of rewards on your own.

Especially if you want to use a mix of rewards. Let a third party handle that for you. Reward suppliers offer you reward management, platforms, expertise on running schemes and quick delivery.

Our employee rewards as a case study

Your company doesn’t have to just pick a reward and stick with it. Love2shop’ teams are a great example of using a blend of rewards.

We have logistics, office-bound and mobile staff across multiple locations. We have to mix up how we reward teams.

Our warehouse staff spend most of their time away from a computer. To keep the warehouse ticking there’s a lot of picking, packing, boxing and counting going on.

So any kind of employee reward tends to be physical. Our warehouse teams also swell quite a lot during the run-up to Christmas. Gift cards and vouchers are timely and tangible.

In a warehouse environment, without phones or computers handy, they make perfect sense.

Some of our sales staff, on the other hand, are mobile. And we also have a second location down south.

Mobile sales staff are only in the office once or twice a month, and our second office come to HQ even more sporadically.

For them, a reward essentially has to be digital. We can send digital rewards quite easily with a digital reward code.

Anyone, anywhere, gets a code through their phone or email and cash them in straight away.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of flexibility for our permanent in-office staff. Because all of our employees have an Everyday Benefits discount gift card, we can top them up as a reward.

It saves us issuing a brand new gift card for every reward opportunity. They then spend the EDB discount card just like a regular Love2shop Gift Card.

We can also draw on business occasion cards and occasionally digital rewards.

Just like our clients, we have a mix of options at our disposal because we have a mix of staff.

What you need to do now about your employee rewards

Start implementing. Worry about formalising and automating later. You could spend a long time planning and worrying about the perfect reward scheme, but just getting started matters.

Time spent dithering is time spent not trying, doing or learning. You will want to deploy, assess, re-assess and adjust as time goes on. Starting with a modest, deliverable plan and expand on your successes.

Use our list of behaviours as inspiration to get started, and assemble a list of achievements to look for. Once you know what you want to reward, consider how your employees work.

Their unique work conditions will dictate the type of reward and how it’s delivered. Then just get to it.

If you want anything, whether that’s some gift cards or just some advice. Get in touch. We’d love to talk to you. Just use the live chat on this blog, call us on the number at the top of this page, or shoot us an email.

rewarding employees - ask these five questions first

5 questions you need to ask yourself before rewarding employees

August 6, 2019/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

It’s import to get rewarding employees right. Rewards aren’t just a nice bonus to make staff feel good. They’re a business tool. That’s not to say you should take the joy out of giving employees rewards, but you should be smart about how you use them.

A poorly timed or a poorly thought-out reward is just your company’s money down the drain. That’s a tragedy when you could be getting so much more out of rewarding employees.

When you think someone deserves a reward, take just a few seconds to ask yourself five questions about the achievement in question.

1. Does it reflect your values?

Rewarding employees for living your values builds engagement with those principles. It’s important to make sure employees are recognised, and sometimes rewarded, for upholding your company values in their work.

By closely linking achievements to company values, staff are more familiar with your company’s purpose. This also creates positive links between staff, your business and your rewards.

Rewarding for behaviour that doesn’t reflect your values has two negative effects. Your employees lose faith that you believe in your own organisation’s values. And they will see that you actually treasure them working outside of those values.

2. Is it notable?

Would your employee, and their colleagues, agree their achievement is notable?

A reward is a waste of cash if the employee doesn’t also see their achievement as noteworthy. That doesn’t improve when other staff see the reward and think the same thing.

Rewarding for behaviour that employees don’t see as notable is jarring. It implies disconnection between you and your staff. Or at least a difference in what your team values and what managers think is important.

3. Is it timely?

To make the most of the combination of rewards and achievement, time is important. It’s vital to issue rewards as close to someone’s achievements as possible.

If you’ve left it too long, it can feel a bit like you’re not paying attention. Or that you’re playing catch-up with your staff’s achievements. And by that time, the emotional impact of your reward will be long gone.

4. Is it positive?

Rewarding employees should be associated with positive behaviour. Like we said, you’re training your staff on how to behave when you reward them. It’s an endorsement of what they did and how they achieved it. What you reward should always be something you’d be proud to talk about in public.

5. Is it repeatable?

Could another employee aspire to make this achievement for themselves?

When you reward employees you show everyone what the organisation thinks is important. Sometimes it’s appropriate to reward a one-off achievement, but tread carefully.

If employees can repeat behaviour that gets rewarded, they’re more likely to try and earn that reward again. If your plan is to build better behaviour with positive feedback, it needs to be something other employees can do.

Your turn

The first four questions are the real quiz. If you can say “yes” with a straight face, it’s high time to break out the rewards. The fifth one you’ll have to play by ear and use your judgement, depending on your specific business.

But make sure you give your rewards a bit of thought before dishing them out. It’s worth it.

Flu shot rewards – Use gift cards and vouchers as incentives to protect vulnerable patients

August 1, 2019/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

Flu season starts in October, every year. But if you have medically vulnerable staff, or staff that interact with vulnerable people, your flu season starts a bit earlier. You need to prepare a flu shot reward to incentivise staff to take up their jabs.

Leave it too late, and you’ll be well into flu season before you try to catch your staff up on their jabs.

Why you should offer flu shot rewards

Cost of flu to medical workforces

Cold and flu alone cost hospital and community health services 325,305 days of work in the winter of 2016-17. In a four-month period between November and February, some trusts saw more than a hundred working days lost just among their nursing and health visitor staff. [1]

Absent staff cost you money when they can’t work. Even worse, many sick employees come in and create sick departments through presenteeism.

Sick departments suffer in performance and increased stress in every business. This is even worse in a medical environment where your staff support vulnerable patients.

There’s a three-pronged crisis caused by the flu:

Your staff pass flu among themselves and on to patients
Your patients become more difficult to care for when suffering flu
A sick and understaffed team struggle to care for patients that need extra attention

Minimising the risk of this problem is as simple as making sure staff get their flue jabs. To make sure they take up the offer, offer them an exciting reward as incentive.

A 2018 report from NICE concluded that incentives prove popular among staff. They also noted that expert testimony support NICE’s recommendations to increase flu jab uptake. That included offering incentives to employees. [2]

Outside a medical environment

Flu shot rewards aren’t just useful for medical teams. You may have employees with immune systems issues. Or a vulnerable condition like asthma, COPD or diabetes. You might also have pregnant staff, or workers over the age of 65.

Flu is dangerous for vulnerable employees, and could put them out of action for a long time. And just like in a medical environment, you don’t want a team beleaguered with flu picking up the slack either.

You want your employees coming into work, and coming in healthy. What you lose with a flu-ridden staff is considerably more than what you’d spend on organising work flu jabs and offering flu shot rewards.

Overcoming natural malaise

We know your staff aren’t callous about your vulnerable patients. Or deliberately spreading their flu microbes. But they are busy as anyone else. A tantalising reward punches through the fog of daily life and your staff a reason to take part in a new scheme.

Rewards light a fire under your employees. Thousands of businesses get their staff motivated by using our rewards every year. We know they work when it comes to getting someone moving. If you want to push people into action, you need to give them a reason to move.

How to manage your flu incentive

Our clients tend to fall into two broad categories. Spread a budget out over your staff as individual rewards, or put all the funds in one place as a lottery. Which one you choose depends on the needs of your staff.

Know your workforce, and consider your budget. When you have less staff, you might generally consider yourself as having a smaller reward budget.

But at the same time, a small team is even more affected by sickness. It’s a balancing act depending on your business’ needs. If you’re unsure about which way to go, get in touch. Our team is always happy to talk.

Plan and promote your flu shot rewards

Name it and promote it. Our other clients have given their anti-flu campaigns funky names like Flu Fighters (get it?).

Make sure you communicate the value of the jab, and the value of the reward. Getting out ahead of the actual jab itself is important. You want staff that see why they should take the flu jab well ahead of time. And be fired about what they can do with their rewards.

The sooner you start planning, the more effective your flu shot reward campaign is likely to be. As ever, if you need anything, you can find us on phone, email or the live chat on this site.

References:

Everyone forgets one important thing about plastic gift cards

June 24, 2019/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

Plastic gift cards can be reloadable!

We want to banish the idea that plastic gift cards are single-use, disposable products.

We stock reloadable gift cards that offer real long-term value. Reloading takes a one-off gift and turns it into a reward mechanism that works for years.

Reload your own gift card

Reloading plastic gift cards is the crux of our Everyday Benefits (EDB) service.

Staff reload their own gift cards at a discount, and make huge savings. Even a casual EDB user will save hundreds of pounds a year.

Beyond discounting gift card top-ups for staff, the card comes with other benefits. That includes:

Cinema tickets
Theme park tickets
Holidays
Other gift cards
Supermarket card top-ups

Read more about our Everyday Benefits gift cards here.

Reload someone else’s gift card

Reloadable plastic gift cards offer you more than a one-time reward. They give you the chance to think long-term about staff rewards and customer loyalty.

Staff achievements

Topping up Everyday Benefits cards makes rewarding employees easy. You don’t need to order new rewards every time you thank staff for their achievements.

Top up their reloadable gift cards. Then thank them face-to-face, or through your company’s recognition systems, like you would anyway.

This makes it very simple for situations like:

Large-scale team achievements
Issuing different values of reward across a whole organisation
Rewarding staff across multiple sites
Needing to reward mobile or remote staff

It also works for rewarding a single employee, too. It doesn’t matter if you’re rewarding long service, reaching milestones, or anything else.

It’s simple and effective when you use a reloadable plastic gift card.

Customer gratitude

Our Member Benefits card is the customer-facing version of the Everyday Benefits card. Rewarding your customers for their positive behaviour has two benefits:

Boosting loyalty through rewards
Building more positive behaviour in the future

Reward for pure longevity, buying promoted products, referrals, and more. Anything that makes sense for your business and your customers.

The customer doesn’t even need their card on them – you only need to keep their card number in your database to top it up.

You can then email or call them to say thank you after the top-up. Or say it face-to-face when they’re on the premises.

Talk to us

By the way, if any of this sounds like a good idea for your business, get in touch. We’re experts on this, and we always want to talk about it.

We’d love to guide you through setting up a customer or staff reward scheme.

Use the form at the bottom of this page, or get in touch on our contact page.

Drop the idea that a plastic gift card is a one-dimensional product

A reloadable gift card lives many lives. Especially multi-retailer plastic gift cards like ours. One reloadable Love2shop Gift Card is access to fashion , a holiday, a skydiving experience, cinemas and more.

What makes reloadable Love2shop Gift Cards so special

Love2shop Gift Cards are among the most exciting reward products in the UK. Spend them in-store at more than 95 popular stores, or exchange card balance online for our e-gift cards.

The e-gift card exchange on Love2shop.co.uk lets cardholders swap the funds on their gift card for an extra set of brands.

Combined, reloadable Love2shop Gift Cards offer a huge choice of high street retailers, online shopping, holidays, exclusive experiences and more.

11 low and no budget corporate rewards you can implement in less than a week

November 2, 2018/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

some secret santa Christmas gifts for colleagues you might not have thought of

£15 or less: Secret Santa Christmas gifts for colleagues

October 12, 2018/in Christmas rewards, Short blogs /by Love2shop

Secret Santa gifts for colleagues can be difficult to choose, but it’s no reason to despair! We’re here to help.

If you’re staring at your Secret Santa name this year thinking: “What on Earth am I going to buy them?” then this list is for you.

The best Secret Santa Christmas gifts for colleagues

Really good socks

Hear us out! A really comfortable set of socks is un-ironically a fantastic gift for a colleague, despite the stigma around socks. Bonus points for getting a bit of personalisation in there.

Candles

Winter is very much the indoor season, especially for those that already enjoy the great indoors. Seasonal scented candles are a lovely treat for colleagues that like a cosy night in.

Credit card tool

The perfect present for the perpetually over-prepared. Credit card tools work as can-openers, screwdrivers, bottle, openers, wrenches, and compasses.

Just in case you end up stranded in the Alaskan wilderness on your way back from Pret.

Steel straws

Plastic straws are on the way out, but not everyone is happy with the paper straw, and some people with disabilities can’t enjoy their drinks without a straw.

A stainless steel straw is the perfect alternative and a great gift for a colleague. Infinitely reusable, just as good as plastic, and saves your Secret Santa from soggy-straw-mouth.

Spider catcher

Did you know it’s a myth that spiders move inside during winter to escape the cold? But it’s true that humans do!

Clearing creepy crawlies from the house during the winter months without killing (or touching!) them is simple with a spider catcher.

Cards Against Humanity

One of the modern greats in party games, and all-but guaranteed to produce at least one memorable moment per round.

The full game will stretch your budget, but versions are out there for £15 and less.

A custom coffee/tea mug

There’s few things more aggravating than seeing someone using “your” mug, is there? Of course it doesn’t have your name on it, and it looks like all the other mugs, but it’s YOUR mug.

A problem easily solved with a personalised mug to your Secret Santa.

Hot sauces

For some people there’s really nothing more exciting than a new thermonuclear, sinus-searing hot sauce. A brilliant stocking filler and a great Secret Santa gift for colleagues with a capsicum addiction.

A book of insults

Sick of hearing the same tired insults in your office banter? Spice up the chat with a selection box of new insults, put-downs, castigations, and ripostes.

A desk fan or hot water battle

Equip your Secret Santa with a weapon to fight their guerrilla war in the battle over office air temperature.

A speaking button

If you’ve never seen one before, it’s a programmable button that says a phrase when pressed to celebrate little victories. Get them in “yes”, “no”, “sorry”, or even Donald Trump catchphrases.

A Christmas gift card

The Love2shop gift card is always one of our most popular Christmas gifts for colleagues. You can also go single-store if you know exactly what your Secret Santa likes, or you can use a multi-retailer card to cover all your bases.

Head massager

If you’re going to sit there and say you can resist having a go on a head massager, we’re going to say you’re lying. Even dogs love playing with them.

Over to you

When it comes to giving Christmas gifts for colleague, Secret Santa is great fun. Gifts like gift cards and vouchers work, and make sure there’s a light-hearted, personalised gift for everyone in the office.

If you can’t find a volunteer to run your Secret Santa, or you want to give your teams a gift from the business to thank them for their hard work, gift cards make an excellent choice.

They let everyone pick out a special gift for themselves, and they’re an easy gift to organise no matter how many people you need to recognise at Christmas.

Get in touch if you’d like to know more, we’re always happy to chat!

*All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 1000 employees. Fieldwork was undertaken between 11th – 19th November 2021. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of British business size.

We’re tired of dancing around it: Cash is a garbage employee reward

September 7, 2018/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

Cash is a garbage employee reward. It’s been said, it can’t be unsaid. I can, however, explain why we say that.

Cash is sort of like coal

Cash isn’t scarce, so it isn’t special. I’ll use an example to illustrate. Cast your mind back to the days when coal used to get delivered on a lorry. The coal man comes, and because Mrs Smith found Derek the coal man’s lost dog last week, he gives Mrs Smith some extra lumps of coal for the month.

Do you think Mrs Smith is going to treasure those extra bits of coal? Will she put them up on the mantelpiece, fondly remembering that time Derek Mortimer gave her some extra coal? Or, will she say, “thank you, Derek, that’s very kind” and throw them into the pile with all the other lumps?

We both know it’s the latter, and that’s why cash doesn’t work as a reward. Cash for labour is a pre-existing transaction between you and your staff, and handing out extra cash only dilutes that transaction.

Cash is stressful

One of the single greatest sources of stress for everyone is money. This isn’t limited to low-earning employees either; a healthy glut of people earning above £50k a year find themselves in some financial agony every month.

When you reward exclusively with cash, you’re trying to employ one of the greatest sources of stress in modern life as a reward. And, as we pointed out earlier, we’re terrible at dissociating transaction cash from reward cash.

Non-cash employee rewards become trophies

Not every trophy is actually a trophy. Some trophies are memories of a nice meal, some novelty tea towels, new walking boots, a television or a certificate. Non-cash rewards feel “earned,” and become trophies of achievement.

For example, imagine you use a gift card as an employee reward for making a particularly effective promotional deck that wins new business. They use the card to buy themselves a Bluetooth speaker for their kitchen. A friend is over for dinner and says to your employee, “I like that speaker.”

The difference between a trophy and a cash purchase is how your employee responds to that compliment.

If it’s a trophy, “Thanks, I got it through work for winning us new clients.”

But, if it’s a purchase, “Thanks, got it off Amazon.”

If you want your rewards to be impactful, you want your staff to see their rewards as trophies. Trophies can be traced back to individual achievements, driving home the positive emotions and associating work victories with personal joys.

What actually works for employee rewards

Give your employees choice. Let them pick a reward at a corresponding value to their effort. Maintaining a catalogue of rewards in-house is an absurdly complicated task, so it’s best to outsource the effort.

Gift cards, vouchers or online codes are the easiest way to do that. You can easily reward at a cash-value without having to actually use cash, and employees can choose something that makes them happy.

Their items, or experiences, will be easily compartmentalised into trophies because they were earned through work but not purchased through cash.

Christmas gifts for employees that won’t get re-gifted or binned – 25 great ideas and 5 really bad ones

August 17, 2018/in Short blogs /by Love2shop

It’s time to think about Christmas gifts for employees, because Christmas will be here before you know it. Whether you’re counting sleeps until the 25^th, or trying to figure out what to do, it’s coming all the same. And with Christmas comes the expectation you’ll organise some Christmas gifts for employees.

So, just for you, we’ve got 25 great staff Christmas gift ideas that won’t find their way to the bin or end up re-gifted to someone’s least favourite cousin. And, for a special treat, five really bad ideas you need to avoid at all costs.

1. Gift vouchers

Simple and easy to combine with a thank-you note, vouchers are can be unfairly called a ‘lazy’ option. But the reality is that the only laziness is in presentation.

Put some effort in and make a fanfare of the occasion. Give your staff a few ideas on how they can use them, drive home the excitement, and make a fuss of all the choice the vouchers offer.

2. Gift cards

Gift cards function almost exactly like a voucher, but with some key advantages.

You can get them branded to your company’s look so they’ll be more effective at generating gratitude. They also often come with an online option. That could be direct online spending, or an online exchange to trade the funds for another selection of gifts.

3. Wine tasting at home

For plenty of our staff, a bottle of wine over Zoom with friends and family has become a weekly staple. One way to keep it fresh is to try some new wines (or beers!) together. Companies like Laithwaites and Virgin Wines offer at-home delivery services that make it possible to sort out some casual wine-tasting at home.

4. A big night in

With so many of us making the most of the great indoors since lockdown, we’re noticing a few more charges from Just Eat and Uber Eats on the monthly bank statement. A family-sized voucher or gift card for a home delivery service gives your staff one big guilt-free night in.

5. Friday night bingo, or a quiz

Normally you’d have a big Christmas party at the end of the year, but as we know now, that’s off the table. Most of the clients we’re talking to are cancelling their Christmas do, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have a little event. It won’t be the same as a big do, but a big end-of-year company quiz with some big prizes would be just the thing. Get everyone together, have some fun, and take the chance to thank everyone for their work through the year.

6. Active gifts

Something for the lockdown fitness promise that became a New Year’s Resolution. Whether it’s a new bike, running gear, or yoga equipment, there’s plenty out there for the people trying to make a change in 2021. There’s no better way to give them a head start on their goals than gifting them a leg-up with the right gear. Halfords and Sports Direct make it easy for someone pick up gear for cycling, running, football and more at reasonable prices.

7. Wholesaler memberships

A membership to a wholesaler like Costco could save staff an enormous amount of money on bulk household items. Litres of toothpaste isn’t exactly a ‘Christmas-y’ thought, but your employees with families will be grateful. Especially during the winter seasons when they’re entertaining a houseful of guests. They make helpful and well received christmas gifts for employees.

8. Special coffee or tea mugs

The UK drinks more than 60 billion cups of tea every year. That’s more than enough cause to know special mugs make a great gift.

9. Digital reward codes

Reward codes are sent over sms or email, then redeemed online. They make more sense than gift cards or vouchers for more “online” staff.

To give them a more personal touch, spruce the delivery up with personal messages of appreciation.

10. Flexibility

The Christmas period is hectic, and with so much uncertainty this year that’s not going to change. The cash might not be there to fork out for a load of gifts for staff, but just being flexible with hours during the festive period could be as welcome as a fancy bottle of wine.

11. Tote bags

We all want to make less waste, but that means lugging more containers about with us.

Rucksacks aren’t always a chic choice, but totes are. A quality sustainable fibre tote is a great gift for someone sick of dragging a tatty Bag for Life around.

12. Great books

Books are often a byword for boring gifts. But that’s because they’re often just the latest vapid celebrity biography, or a tenuous link to a hobby.

Put some time and thought into a good book and it will be a fantastic gift. it shows not just that you’ve thought about someone, but that you actually know them well enough to pick them out a great book.

13. Luxury gift cards

We have already mentioned gift cards. But special gift cards for high-end shops like M&S or John Lewis are different.

Even the most dour employee can find something delightful with a luxury gift card. Only being able to get something luxurious makes them great Christmas gifts for employees.

14. Recognition

For some employees, offering your heartfelt thanks would go much further than any cash-value item. Knowing their efforts are valued and noticed as they head into a Christmas break does as much for morale as rewards might.

15. DIY vouchers

Spending more time at home means spending more time with those little jobs we never quite get around to doing. Things that you used to be able to ignore, but now you’re looking at them all day you can’t get them out of your head.

That door that doesn’t close quite right, that broken fence panel, or that patch of unpainted plaster slowly driving you crazy. Gifting vouchers or gift cards to places like B&Q, Homesense, Wickes is just the thing to help them get those little jobs sorted out over their Christmas break.

16. Donation to a charity

You really need to know the room before making a call like this. People might feel let down, or maybe even a bit patronised.

But if you look at the office and can’t imagine what to get for your socially-conscious millennials, a donation works. As long as it speaks to a cause they’re invested in – which means knowing them well enough to make the call.

17. Custom print cushions, pillows or luggage

Submit someone’s picture, or maybe a picture of their pet, and it becomes a print of the item. That could be pillows or cushions.

But the best is luggage – there’s no debating who a suitcase belongs to when your face is all over it.

18. Wireless shower speakers

Ideal for anyone that really can’t go a minute without a bit of stimulation. Not even for the duration of a shower. Also ideal for an employee that likes a long soak in the bath with a good podcast.

19. Pocket-friendly powerbanks

Always running out of charge is annoying, but so is carrying around a giant power bar all day.

A pocket-friendly power pack helps your electrically-challenged employees stay online. Without taking an unwieldly battery everywhere.

20. Multi-tools for outdoorsy types

Our outdoors types love a multi-tool. Especially the specialised ones for cyclists, climbers, woodsmen and more.

Depending on what your staff get up to in the outdoors, there’s a quality multi-tool out there.

21. Slippers for indoorsy types

Our indoors types, by contrast, love a good pair of comfortable slippers. Everyone loves a really comfortable pair of slippers for those cold nights in.

22. Infusion water bottles

Supplying staff with their own refillable, non-toxic bottles benefits you and your staff. They cut down on waste, saving money on disposable cups, and they help staff stay hydrated during the work day. Infusion bottles also let staff stick a bit of citrus fruit of a tea bag in for a healthy flavoured drink.

23. Speciality coffees

Caffeine is an essential office supply. A specialty coffee selection is a great gift for anyone that always says “yes” when the barista offers them the special blend.

24. Streaming services

Not unlike the Just Eat and Deliveroo charges piling up, the standing orders for streaming services are adding up as well. It would be a nice gesture to help keep your staff entertained while they’re at home.

25. Adult learning classes

For someone that’s always wanted to speak Spanish. Or wishes they knew how to paint with oils or create pottery.

They’re fun and personal. And they let your staff do something personally fulfilling and enriching outside their work.

[Edit this to include that there’s loads of time at home now]

Five Christmas gifts for employees to avoid at all costs

It’s the thought that counts, unless you’re thinking about really bad gift ideas. Or even worse, if you don’t think about someone at all. Steer clear of this stuff if you want good Christmas gifts.

1. Being forgotten

Forgetting to buy some employees gifts is a miniature morale crisis. That goes double if they’re remote or mobile. They’ll already have their guard up about not being in the office, and being forgotten amplifies that feeling.

2. Cash

Old reliable, and reliably boring. No one hates having more money, but cash doesn’t make a great Christmas gift for employees. Especially in companies where year-end bonuses are the norm for performance targets among sales teams.

3. Cheap and boring food and drink

Anyone can walk into a supermarket and buy themselves a bar of Dairy Milk. It’s not interesting, thoughtful or special. If you’re so out of ideas you’re thinking about buying someone a Toblerone, just get them a decent gift card.

4. Gag gifts

Sometimes they work, but it’s best avoided unless you really know them. That goes double if you’re the boss. Remember that as an employer that you’re “punching down.” You’re in a position of authority or power over your staff, and what seems harmless to you can come off as a dig on someone’s work, or their position in the company.

5. Self-help books

The Secret and Rich Dad, Poor Dad might have completely turned your life around. but don’t try to pressure other people into “improving” themselves. It’s incredibly patronising and not exactly exciting at Christmas.

Four simple guidelines on Christmas gifts for employees

Keep a few ideas in mind when you’re looking to gift to stay on the safe side.

1. Be fair

It’s a gift, not a bonus. No one should feel hard done by when you save the lion’s share of your gift budget for the best performers.

2. Be consistent

Pick a price range you’re confident you can stick to next year too. A big blowout one year and little the next isn’t great for internal credibility, and it gives off uncomfortable boom/bust vibes.

3. No company logos

We love employee engagement but we don’t want to see staff turned into walking billboards for their company. Let your employees enjoy their gift without having to sport the corporate logo everywhere they go.

4. Keep HMRC happy

Keep in mind the value of what you gift is subject to tax regulations. Especially if the cash-value of your gifts adds up to more than £50 per employee over the year.

Talk to your finance people and make sure you keep everything square with the tax man when gifting.

Remember: There’s no need to stress about it

If you’re stressing about it, let me stop you right there. Just get the basics right. Put the effort in, try your best to anticipate the tastes of your employees, and act in earnest gratitude. Hit those notes and you’ll be just fine.

And if you’re still not sure, get in touch with us. We’d be happy to talk you through a few options.

Or read about the Christmas gift options available through Love2shop here.