As the biggest gift-giving season approaches, you may wonder what you can give your employees to show them how much you appreciate their hard work, diligence, and perseverance.
Hanukkah, Christmas, and Three Kings Day are popular days to gift employees. Employers give presents to employees as a way to show them appreciation and to recognize all the hard work employees give throughout the year.
While giving employees a nice gift is often appreciated, some gifts are more valued than others. These gifts usually rank high on the reasons employees feel loyal and enjoy their workplace.
It’s important to know that while gift-giving is nice, it doesn’t make up for a toxic work environment. One employee explained, “Truly, from bosses I liked, anything was great because I appreciated that they thought of me. From “bad” bosses, anything would annoy me. You can’t make up for being a jerk with a token of any kind once a year.”
Let’s dive into more important gifts that truly build a team and inspire employees at work and home.
An Extra Day Off to Celebrate with Family
Employees value time with their loved ones. Give them an unexpected paid day off to spend with family or run errands so they can be home and present in the evenings. Whether they spend the day with family or catching up on other obligations, an extra day will allow them time to spend as they please and provide a welcome relief to the business of the season.
Employees rank time off as the second most important benefit at work, according to SHRM. You may want to address common reasons employees don’t take time off, such as the fear that no one else can do their job and they’ll come back to a heavier load or the guilt of leaving their team to carry the burden for them. Consider hiring temporary help to alleviate the stress caused by time off to really make it possible for your employees to enjoy this gift!
Flexible Schedules During the Season
Flexible schedules is one of the fastest-growing, sought-after benefits for employees. A 2018 survey found that 80% of employees would take a job with flexible schedules over those that didn’t.
Flexible schedules vary widely. To some, flexible schedules can mean the ability to come in an hour later or leave an hour earlier. Or, it can mean the ability for employees to set their own schedules completely.
Flexible schedules are a popular employee gift not only at the end of the year, but also during the summer months.
Patience with Mistakes
This year, give your employees the gift of the benefit of the doubt when they make mistakes. It can be easy to assume that employees were neglectful, careless, or sloppy when big mistakes happen. But often, employees may be focused on the wrong focus, spread too thin, or feeling overworked and tired when mistakes occur.
Giving employees patience and emphasizing your appreciation for them is one of the best gifts you can give an employee who made a blunder. And celebrating failure can lead to greater innovation in the workplace!
Autonomy
Show your employees you really appreciate them by giving them a little more autonomy. It can be especially hard for some personality types to give up control but letting your employees take greater ownership in the decisions that impact their job functions shows them that you value their opinions and experience.
And employees who are granted trust usually rise to become even more worthy of it. If your employees feel micromanaged and underappreciated, there isn’t really another gift that can have a greater impact than giving them more control over their workspace and job responsibilities.
Work from Home Options
Nearly 30% of employees value the ability to choose where they work more than they value paid time off (survey). While we don’t recommend you abolish your PTO, providing additional flexibility for employees to work remotely during the holiday season can help alleviate many holiday stress and time constraints.
You employees can save time and money on their commute and be a little more available for family vacations through a workcation instead of having to cancel or stay home while their family celebrates. Workcations are becoming more popular because it allows employees to work remotely during the day, but spend the evenings on vacation with their families.
Solicite Feedback (and Follow Through)
Employee listening is a new term that often describes employee surveys. Yet the biggest gripe that employees have with employee surveys is that the surveys don’t do any good. Employers who survey or ask employees for feedback but fail to make any changes fare worse in employees’ eyes than those who don’t ask at all for feedback
But, listening to your employees about what’s important to them profoundly impacts employee productivity, happiness, and loyalty. When employers take the time to listen to employees, they can better provide the tools employees need and make changes that have the greatest impact for employees, customers, and partners alike.
Recognize Employees Frequently
Show your employees you truly appreciate their efforts by recognizing them frequently. Depending on which survey you look at, between 18% and 25% of employees say they don’t get recognized at work over an entire year.
While those numbers may be accurate (let’s hope not), employees will likely forget about infrequent recognition. Employers who frequently recognize using the various love languages of recognition more effectively communicate appreciation to their employees.
Recognition should be specific, timely, and frequent.
Conclusion
Employee gifting is often meant to express gratitude for employee contributions. Gifting is one way that managers express appreciation and recognize employee efforts. But, too often, a generic, cheap, or company-promoting gift fails to really communicate how much an employee is valued. Give your employees a gift that makes them feel valued, appreciated, and individually respected at work.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.