How Corporate Gift Strategies Can Benefit Your Business, Employees, and Clients

A corporate gift is a great way for you as a business to show your appreciation and better client relationships. Corporate gifts can also keep your employees motivated, appreciated and incentivised as well as improve employee morale.
This is why one an important “best practice” is to create a gift strategy for both your external clients and your internal clients each year.

If you do not yet have a strategic plan, and you just put your company logo on your corporate gifts and only give gifts around the festive season without budgeting for them beforehand, then you may want to rethink a few things. Not to be the bearer of bad news, but your business should be doing the complete opposite of this when it comes to giving gifts.

One of the primary benefits of having a corporate gift strategy is that you will end up surprising and delighting your customers and you will also show them that you really value and appreciate the relationship. Overall, your clients will be that bit happier and you will also be kept top of mind because of your strengthened relationship.

When it comes to giving gifts to your own employees, you can assist in increasing employee morale, work ethic and happiness when you are recognising your employees with an award or a gift. And because of this, you will be able to show appreciation for a job well done. Another idea would be to use an incentive program in order to recognise your top-performing employees and encourage friendly competition in the workplace.

Below are some things to take into consideration when you plan your next employee or corporate gift strategy.

The Right Timing

The most common time for businesses to send out gifts is during the festive/year-end season. This may not work in favour of your gift strategy as it may be “expected” if you do this every year.
Think outside the box, try to surprise and delight by giving gifts at random times of the year. You could even send a series of gifts throughout the year in order to show more appreciation. But be careful when taking this route, you do not want to give too many gifts. A way to determine when to give a gift is to think of the specific customer and the reason for giving a gift, for example, you could send a small gift each time a customer makes a purchase.

The Right Decoration

Consider how you are decorating the gift. When you are gifting an employee gift or a corporate gift, it is not the type of gift you print your logo all over. Once you put your logo on it, call to action, or marketing message, this is no longer a personal gift to show appreciation, it is advertising.

If you are serious about giving a gift, ensure that it is personalised and not imprinted. There is a wide variety of gifts that you can easily personalise with your employee or clients name or the client’s logo. It is highly recommended that is you want your employee or customer to feel special and appreciated, that you should personalise the gift instead of “print” on it.

The Budget

When giving an employee or a client a gift, you should go for the higher ticketed items instead of getting items that you can buy in bulk in order to get a discount.

In order to find out how much you should be or are able to spend, you should make sure you have created a budget. When doing it this way, when it comes to buying the gift, you will know the right amount to spend according to your company, strategy and program.

Below are some tips for setting a budget just in case you are not sure where to get started. Try to set your gift budget to:

– Years of service for employees, and years of continued business for clients.
– The nature of the program. Always consider the outcomes and the desired result that you would like to achieve and create your budget according to a percentage of your results.
– Customer lifetime value.. Consider how much your client is “worth”, basically, what the relationship is worth to you. And then determine your budget according to a percentage of those qualities.
– You could also set a random budget that is based on what you or the company is able to afford.

Just like most things in life, you should be aware of what could put a damper on your gift strategy:

– Always remember to do enough research to find out whether gifting is even allowed at certain companies.
– Do some research on the actual client to see what their likes and dislikes are.
– Your gift should be given to show gratitude, not before asking for a big favour or to up their budget.

While having a strict gifting strategy or incentive programs are not always necessary, it could be very beneficial to incorporate into your business. They can also have quite a bit of impact on the way you show how much you value and appreciate your employees and clients.

If you have decided that your company should be part of gift-giving, take the time this year to ensure that you have a strategic plan or program in place. This will assist in achieving the desired results, which will help your business grow.

Service Award Rewards Employee Loyalty and Longevity

Are you or your company taking advantage of the overall value of a certain service award as a component in your business’s employee recognition process and program? The service award is a very valuable component when it comes to an organisation’s overall employee recognition efforts. You will just need to value, understand, and appropriately utilize the service award in your formal employee recognition mix.

Awarding an employee with a service award is an opportunity for a company to recognise the employee for their longevity or tenure with the organisation. You can have your service award come in many different variations just as they approach your business uses to recognise an employee with the award can vary.

Here is all you will need to know about the what, who, why, and when a business may want to supply a service award to an employee. Why not give it a try? Employees absolutely love service awards, it is just another way for you to show them how much you appreciate and value them. Employees want to feel special and cared for, they need to know that their loyalty and longevity deserves an award.

Some of the Advantages of Providing an Employee Service Award

Employers should consider offering a service award in their company in order to celebrate and recognise the longevity of an employee for these reasons:

– The service award the only compensation or bonus component that gives recognition to the length of time that an employee has been working for the company. The length of service is usually only recognised in the public sector jobs, and in the private and public sector in union-represented jobs. An employer can informally recognise some of their longer-term employees because of their higher salaries due to the annual increases over a certain period. However, in a future that is driven by individual compensation based on contribution, merit pay will rule the day.
– A service award is there to recognise that a valued employee has served an appreciated amount of time in your company. This award gives the employer the opportunity to thank the employee for their service. Consequently, you will often see employers recognising a year of service with a service award. Then, the general service award recognises, depending on the company, 3 years, 5 years, ten years, fifteen years and so on.
– Years back, a service award was also a celebration for the company itself. The service award acknowledged that it had retained employees for a certain amount of time. This helped show that the company was a good place to work and that it is deserving of employee longevity and loyalty. This assisted with building up a positive reputation for recruiting new employees.
– A service award is also a way for a company to acknowledge the solid performers who may not be getting the biggest bonus or being recognised for a groundbreaking company accomplishment. For those employees who are the top performers, the service award is just another way for the company to show their gratitude for continued astonishing performance.
– The service award first originated during a time when companies and society venerated the older people in their culture, perhaps a lot more so than the way we do it today. Basically, a service award lives out a tradition from an earlier time when knowledge, wisdom, and experience was honoured and esteemed more publically than today.
– Think of the service award as a symbol of continuity and company memories and a way to acknowledge service. A service award that is awarded publically allows for the telling of company stories and a walk down memory lane with your employees. The ceremony where the service award is given is an opportunity for members of the company to reminisce about the company’s founding and history. It is an opportunity to enculturate the new employees with the stories and legends that have made the company what it is today. In some organisations, like the US Army, Navy, and Marines, a military enlisted person will receive a service stripe which is called a hash mark of each period of time served. This hash mark is added to dress uniform as an acknowledgement of service and a celebration.
– By virtue of long service, the employees who receive a service award are usually positive about working for the company or organisation. These employees who get these awards contribute to your company’s positive environment and culture, so it would make sense to make an effort in recognising them.

Some Recommendations about a Service Award

Many companies and organisations do well to take advantage of the positive employee feelings, which are generated with receiving a service award. When a service award is given quietly without making a big deal about it will fail to properly capture all of the opportunities and advantages available to affect employee morale in a positive way. Recognition and awards that are presented in public help enhance the value of the recognition for the person who receives it. There is no better feeling than reviving that trophy in front of all of your team members and co-workers.

These are some recommendations about how a company can go about providing a service award while still trying to create a positive impact and increasing employee morale and that overall feeling of appreciation.

– Choose a cross-functional team of employees to give suggestions on how your service award program or process should work.
– Give the chosen team parameters. For example, along with their trophy or corporate gift, the service award should contain a certain component that will last long.
– Gifts of money do not hold value for very long, and the same is true when it comes to gifts of merchandise. One the watch is incorporated into the person’s life; it has very little value as the service award they received. So, merchandise will need to have a certain component that helps set it apart from what an employee can purchase for themselves in a store. Often a trophy or an official company plaque with the person’s name on it will make it a proud memory.
– For the same reason, you should try to present the service award at an all-employee ceremony or meeting in order to enhance the value of the award recognition. The ideal person to present the award is the company president, CEO, or head of the division, at all depends on the size of your company.
– Every employee who reaches the agreed amount of years should get the same award. This is one of the employee recognition opportunities that should always stay consistent, equitable, and fair.
– Accompany the trophy or plaque with a written acknowledgement of the employee’s service. This letter should state how long the employee has been at the company and thank the employee.

At Shades of Ngwenya, we manufacture from plate glass, recycled glass, crystal glass and much more to create our beautiful trophies and gifts. For more information, visit our website on www.shadesofngwenya.co.za.