Your employees are your company’s backbone.
You will succeed in business if your employees feel part of it and are encouraged to work.
If not, you can expect a decline within a short period of time.
In addition to standard salaries and benefits, sometimes workers feel that they need recognition and to know they are doing well at their jobs.
It is therefore important to surprise your staff with both expected and unexpected gifts.
If you’re curious to discover more, keep reading. This article will provide you with five ways to improve employee engagement through gifting.
Let’s dive right in.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement relates to the emotional commitment the employee has toward your company and its mission.
Employees who are engaged care about how they perform their tasks, are concerned about the performance of your company, and are confident that their efforts can make a significant difference.
Thus, employee engagement is crucial to your business’s success, as it will determine its productivity and work culture.
How to measure employee engagement
Before improving employee engagement, you need to know what your company is doing well and what it can improve. Knowing how to measure your employee engagement will be crucial for this purpose.
Measuring employment engagement is not easy, as many factors influence it. However, you can accomplish this using employee engagement software or any of the other methods listed below.
Organize and conduct surveys
The most effective way to measure employee engagement is through tailored employee surveys.
Through them, you’ll be able to ask ad hoc questions that will provide you with insightful answers about the organization’s pride, intention to stay, and advocacy.
The recommendation is to conduct these surveys periodically and compare their results. The fact that they might have changed for the worse indicates that something has changed in the organization’s processes and way of working, which negatively affects your employees.
If that’s the case, it will be possible for you to take the appropriate measures and make necessary adjustments so that you can restore the old working system or even improve it.
Don’t forget to make these surveys anonymous. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your employees will provide honest responses.
Determine what matters to your employees
Understanding what truly matters to your employees is also vital to measuring employee engagement.
They may place more emphasis on career development, teamwork, or value and recognition, for example.
When you determine what matters most to your employees, you will be able to measure employee engagement much more easily and make all the necessary to improve it.
Perform a driver analysis
A driver analysis helps you understand which drivers have the biggest impact on your organization.
By performing this analysis, you might also discover that employees who are more engaged with a certain driver are likely to rate it more positively.
Hold group sessions
Even a small group session can help you identify some of the company’s pain points. Whenever you are discussing projects, achievements, or anything else related to your company, ask your employees for their opinions.
Thus, you will have a better understanding of what employees think works and what doesn’t, and you can make the necessary adjustments.
Benefits of employee recognition
As mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, giving employees gifts as a sign of gratitude for their work can serve your business in multiple ways.
Below you’ll find some of the most relevant.
Better results
As a result of receiving gifts and recognitions, employees will be more motivated to work harder. Probably even more than what you requested, so you and your business will enjoy better results.
Attract, inspire, and keep talented people
Periodical gifts can motivate and persuade people to stay with your company for a longer period of time, increasing employee retention. This occurs because the employees feel rewarded for their efforts.
Moreover, your business is more likely to attract new talents if you publicize your gifting system. Many would prefer to work for your company rather than choosing one that does not provide any additional rewards.
Boost morale
Gifts and rewards will surely boost your employees’ morale and happiness. A positive atmosphere in the office is the key to boosting productivity and collaboration.
Therefore, having a happy team will improve your business and make it more efficient.
Improve your company’s work culture
Have you heard or read about companies being named best places to work?
So, if not, companies can be rewarded for offering a great work environment, in terms of collaboration, benefits, and organization.
By rewarding your employees with special gifts and recognition, your business has the opportunity to be included on that list or rewarded as one of the best companies to work for.
As a result, this recognition will increase the visibility and positive public perception of your brand.
5 ways to improve employee engagement through gifting
There are several ways to improve your employee engagement through gifting. This corporate giving tool guide will help you understand how to handle gifts from a business perspective (initiatives and administration).
Anyhow, below are listed some of the best ways to boost your employee engagement.
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Reward milestones
Milestones are objectives that your business aims to achieve within a certain period.
As well as team milestones, you can also assign individual ones to each employee.
When this is the case, you can implement rewards for every reached milestone. The reward can take the form of a monetary bonus, time off from work, or even a vacation.
You can, of course, choose the one that corresponds best to your needs and availability based on your budget and other relevant factors.
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Celebrate personal events
Besides being considered as workers, people like to be taken into consideration as humans, or even better, as friends.
This will help them feel part other than your business, of your life.
This explains why gifting can also be made for personal celebrations, such as birthdays, weddings, or even for having had a relevant positive behavior within your company.
For instance, you may reward one or more employees for being always
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Provide gifts based on your company’s mission
Recognizing employees with something aligned with the company’s mission is a great way to show your appreciation.
You might involve your team in some sustainability conferences or activities that convey the importance of sustainability if your company aims to be sustainable.
This will create a rallying point around the mission of your company through gifting.
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Send holiday gifts
Keep your employees in mind during the holidays. The holidays are a great time to show your appreciation.
If you are celebrating Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday in your country, be sure to show your gratitude for their hard work.
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Offer team recognitions
A team that closes a big sale or develops a new and more efficient feature or process deserves recognition and rewards as a whole and not just individually.
Plus, if you reward a group, you will reinforce the teamwork culture and increase collaboration.
You should reward your team from time to time, even if there hasn’t been a huge accomplishment. Doing so will keep your staff motivated continuously.
Types of gifts for your employees
There are several ways to increase employee engagement through gifting, as mentioned many times in this article.
You can reward your staff on different occasions and there are different appreciation ideas you can employ, not necessarily related to money.
Here are a few alternative ways you can show your appreciation:
- Recognize your employees on social media. Recognition on social media is a highly effective way to show and let your employees know that you are proud of their performance and achievements.
- Offer professional development opportunities. One of the best ways to reward your employees is to support their career development. Allow them to progress and take on more responsibilities. This way, you will demonstrate that you are confident in their abilities and they are capable of covering a more relevant role.
- Award certificates. You can also give certificates of appreciation as a form of recognition for a specific achievement. In moderation, certificates can also serve as an excellent way to let employees feel proud of the things they have accomplished.
- Ask how they’d like to be rewarded. One of the best ways to recognize your employees is to ask them directly what they want as a reward. If you do this, you will make sure to please them as they expect, leading to an improvement in employee engagement.
Final thoughts
Here we are at the end of this article about five ways to improve employee engagement through gifting.
Providing employees with gifts will help you improve collaboration and productivity at the workplace and in the business.
There are many ways to reward your employees. Above are listed some of the most effective that you can implement within your business with ease.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this article. I hope you found it useful and interesting.
If you want to learn more about employee engagement, check out Alaya’s blog. There you’ll find in-depth articles and guides on the topic.
