Jul 2 2009

Corporate Secret Santa Gifts

Corporate Christmas Gifts are a great way for company’s to improve employee moral and get everyone working together on a positive mood.

The tradition of offering Corporate Christmas Gifts is a generally well accepted by employees, and often marks a time of the year that employee moral gets a large boost. In general, there are two parts to this annual tradition. The first and most recognizable corporate Christmas gift is represented by employee gifts give by the employer. Generally, these gifts tend to be little knick-knacks, often with the company’s logo printed somewhere on it. You can often expect to receive anything from clothing, mugs, pens and whole assortment of other promotional products.

Complementing the first type of corporate Christmas gift are the Secret Santas or Kris Kringles. This type of corporate Christmas gift involves employee to employee gift exchanging. Gifts exchanged by employees are often done within a specific department, but may also include inter-department gift exchanges too. The Kris Kringle / Secret Santa corporate Christmas gift often includes a set of rules that are generally encouraged to be adhered to, although this may or may not always be the case.

Generally, Secret Santas or Kris Kringles are secret gift exchanges. That means that employees will draw a name from a hat and is expected to purchase an item, in secrecy, for the person who’s name they drew.Keeping the gift anonymous ensures that no one is labeled as being cheap, or over-generous. Keeping your spending habits or your choice in gifts secret is important to some.

Second, most department heads will encourage that each employee adhere to a price that each gift cost, generally $10.00 – $20.00 is the norm. The reason for keeping the price of the gift low is so that people do not feel that they must overspend in order to not offend the recipient.

The Third aspect to Secret Santas / Kris Kringles is that they not be inappropriate or purposely malicious. Although this would seem like a no brainer, it’s surprising how many people purchase gifts, often with best intentions, but may be symbolically insulting. For example, purchasing a weight loss dvd for someone who is over-weight is more often than not inappropriate, and can constitute workplace harassment. The Department head will generally oversee the whole gift exchange, making sure that the corporate Christmas Gift exchanges are done graciously and tastefully.

Fourth, Kris Kringles or Secret Santa gift exchanges are generally offered during a breakfast or lunch Pot luck or buffet in order to get everyone in the Christmas cheer mood. Christmas tunes are generally played in the background and streamers, balloons and party hats and noise-makers are common.

Most employees rather enjoy Corporate Christmas Gifts, not for the gift itself, but for the spirit of gift giving, which can be quite enjoyable and moral building. Employers see the benefit of corporate Christmas gifts, and are generally very positive on encouraging it.