Building trust and forming bonds with colleagues, employees, and clients is one of the most important things you can do for your business. This is because it boosts productivity, increases employee happiness and well-being, and ultimately leads to a higher bottom line. There are many ways you can accomplish this, from staff meetings and retreats to weekly one-on-one lunches and quarterly happy hours. But another, often understated way of building trust and forming bonds with others is through corporate gifting.
Corporate gifting is the act of giving a meaningful or valuable gift to a colleague or client in order to form a connection with them. It strengthens existing rapport, fosters a feel-good moment between the giver and recipient, and creates a warm moment of trust that has long-lasting professional benefits. An employee who receives a customized gift box with luxurious, artisan-made products as a “thank you,” for example, will develop feelings of joy and gratitude for their employer.
Studies from the National Institute of Health actually show that dopamine-producing areas of the brain are engaged when someone gives and receives a gift. So when you give or receive a corporate gift, you are literally activating the happy hormone in the brain. If this isn’t enough reason to include corporate gifting in your annual budget, we don’t know what is!
So how should you budget for corporate gifting? And what’s the best way to go about it, especially with some employees working from home? Fortunately, the answers are simple.
Depending on the occasion or reason, an appropriate range for employee corporate gifting should fall between $50-$150. Smaller “thank you” gifts may be closer to $50-$75, and larger gifts or holiday gifts should be $75-$150, on average. Of course, how much you spend doesn’t matter too much. It’s more about what you’ve gifted.
To activate that happy hormone and strengthen work bonds, give some thought to what the employee enjoys, appreciates, and finds useful. After all, if you spend $100 on tickets to a sporting event, and the employee doesn’t really like sports, that act of corporate gifting may not result in a strengthened bond.
To make the most of corporate gifting, whether your staff is in the office or working from home, take the time to get to know them first. Meet with them one-on-one, in-person or virtually, and ask them questions about their lives and their weekends. Remember details that they tell you (write them down if needed), and then follow up later to talk about them. Engaging in conversation in this way builds rapport naturally and sets you up to have the most impact and success when it’s time to begin planning your corporate gifting. Then, when your employees receive a gift that is personal and relevant to them, they’ll feel even more valued by you and therefore invested in their role. Having employees that feel valued and invested is huge for the success—or failure—of your business.
Ready to get started? Head over to our Corporate Gifting page. Our custom box design and curation services are ready to help you with all your corporate gifting projects, big and small.