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And what to do instead to actually make your team feel appreciated this holiday season
There’s something revealing about a company holiday gift. It isn’t found in the price or the packaging.
A company gift says a lot about how well the leaders at the organization listen and how seriously they take the people behind the work. Their teams just spent all year hitting goals, working weekends, and closing deals. Like it or not, this one object or experience stands in for twelve months of effort.
So, when the gift feels as generic, thoughtless, or disconnected as the list of Bad Gift Hall of Fame entrants below, employees notice. Most employees don’t expect extravagance. But they absolutely hope for a sign their work mattered and the company cares.
Most corporate holiday gifts fail because they’re based on assumptions of what makes people feel valued, not evidence. Giving employees flexible choice is the simplest, most scalable way to show appreciation and build trust.
On the surface, gift cards feel like the safe option. They’re easy to buy in bulk and distribute. It’s a quick way to check holiday gifting off the to-do list.
But a gift card to a single retailer is just another assumption in disguise. It assumes everyone shops at Target or drinks coffee from Starbucks. But your employees all have wildly different preferences, needs, interests, and lifestyles. So, this gift is almost always a bust for a large swath of your workforce. For those who don’t like the retailer, they’ll feel left out and overlooked.
That’s probably why Perceptyx found one-third of workers don’t feel valued by their organizations.
Some of those employees will probably just re-gift the card. Others will chuck it in a drawer and forget to use it. Instead of appreciation, spending a gift card to a place you don’t like feels like homework. Specificity without personalization is useless. The problem isn’t gift cards, it’s restricted gift cards.
A Target or Starbucks card forces employees into someone else’s version of value. But a flexible option they can use anywhere, for anything, hands the choice back to them.
When employees decide, the gift feels like it actually belongs to them. And that’s when it becomes meaningful.
Every year, companies dust off the merch catalog and start clicking: mugs, water bottles, fleece vests, stress balls.
Free stuff is great in theory, but swag almost never feels like a gift. It feels like marketing.
A hoodie with your company’s name on it is a uniform, not a reward. Employees know these items were bought in bulk for a discount, and they’ll treat them accordingly by re-gifting, donating, or tossing them in a drawer.
Swag serves the brand, not the person who worked late nights and hit their goals. When a gift doesn’t center the recipient, it can’t land as recognition.
Instead, put the budget toward something employees actually want — and let them decide what that something is. A flexible gift card gives people freedom to choose something useful, memorable, or meaningful to them.
If they want a hoodie, they’ll buy one. But at least this time it’ll be in their size, in their style, and without the company logo stamped across the chest.
Not every bad gift is covered in logos. Sometimes it’s just…generic.
A scented candle bought in bulk. A desk calendar. A stress ball shaped like a brain. A bottle of mid-shelf wine shipped to every address in the company directory.
These gifts aren’t terrible on their own, but together they send a message. That message sounds something like: we didn’t know what else to get you, so here’s something we found on page two of the corporate gifting catalog.
Even a modest budget goes further when you put the focus back on employee choice. The same $25 spent on a candle no one asked for could just as easily cover a takeout meal, a new book, or it could contribute to something bigger your employee has in mind for themselves.
Few things strike dread in some employees quite like the words “Secret Santa”.
On paper, it sounds festive. In practice, it’s a chore. You’re suddenly tasked with buying a gift for a coworker you barely know, and with the unspoken, but very real, pressure to make it both clever and thoughtful.
And if you don’t want to play? Too bad. It’s “team-building”!
These are just obligations in prettier wrapping paper. You’re basically outsourcing the hard work of thoughtful gifting to your employees. And for those on your team already stretched thin by family and work, or those who simply aren’t in the holiday spirit, it feels like a burden.
If you want to encourage connection, start by making gift exchanges optional. Better yet, give every employee a way to choose how they want to celebrate. Many will join in on a holiday activity with their coworkers, but no one should feel compelled to.
The antidote to bad gifting isn’t complicated. Just give employees a choice in what they receive.
You don’t have to run yourself ragged collecting individual wish lists or trying to play Santa for a hundred different tastes, either. Instead, put your budget into a flexible, employee-driven rewards program that scales.
When companies take this approach, gifting stops being performative and starts feeling like a meaningful holiday gesture of appreciation.
The holidays only come once a year. Don’t blow your shot with a gift that ends up in the donation pile. Want to use Giftly to give employees the freedom to choose what matters most to them? Let’s Talk.
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