Swag Ideas for Employee Appreciation !

Staff appreciation is super important. Incorporating employee appreciation ideas into your office can boost morale, increase productivity and create a more positive work environment.

Bringing staff appreciation ideas to your team is a good thing to do, whether your team is in-person, remote, or hybrid. Whether it’s in-person or virtual employee appreciation ideas, there are many ways to show employees that you value them.

Speaking of employee appreciation ideas and hybrid work schedules, our office went hybrid recently. Corporate figured it would boost morale, cut costs and increase productivity. Especially because we’d been having a bit of a gossip problem before going hybrid.

This problem started when rumors started spreading around the office that our accountant, Jerry, was banned from the local coffee shop for stealing silverware. The rumor quickly spread from the break room to adjacent desks and everywhere in between. Eventually, the rumor finally found its way back to Jerry. Turns out it wasn’t even true. 

Jerry had told someone in the office that after work he was going to the local coffee shop to see a band called “Steel Silver.” Through some twisted game of office telephone that somehow translated to Jerry being banned from the coffee shop for stealing silverware. 

This office gossip only got worse and worse – to the point where it began interfering with productivity. Hence, adopting a hybrid schedule and working from home 3 out of 5 days a week.  

This whole scenario eventually led to some pretty crazy employee appreciation event ideas, but we’ll get to that later. 

In the meantime, here’s how you can show appreciation to your employees:

A good place to start for employee appreciation is by hosting employee appreciation day. These can consist of employee appreciation activities or employee appreciation games. The great thing about employee appreciation days is that they can be done both virtually and in the office. 

Corporate decided to host a virtual employee appreciation day for our office after we were required to adopt a hybrid work schedule. Since our office is so tight-knit, they felt bad that they had to separate us 3 days a week. But allow me to explain why they had to make that decision.

For starters, the last time we’d hosted an in-office party, at least five different rumors had  stemmed from the party. One rumor went so far as to say Dave from HR’s mustache is fake (though that rumor has yet to be proved false). The incessant office party gossip is why they chose to host the employee appreciation day virtually. 

Our boss had weighed a few different employee appreciation themes but eventually landed on  a virtual award show. Let’s just say that it didn’t go quite as planned…

We were all tasked with writing awards for each other. But because there was a bit of a gossip problem at the time, a lot of the awards were related to office gossip. For example, Jerry got an award that said “most likely to steal silverware to maximize the company’s budget.”

Maybe appreciation gifting events aren’t quite what you’re going for – especially after hearing that story. If that’s the case, employee appreciation gift ideas are another excellent way to show your employees that you care.

Gift ideas for employee appreciation could include personalized food baskets, company swag, gourmet desserts, or anything else that’s thoughtful.

You don’t have to break the budget either to come up with unique employee appreciation gifts. Inexpensive employee appreciation gifts are just as effective at showing your employees that you value them – especially if you put thought into the gift. 

Some ideas for unique and inexpensive gifts for employees could be as simple as a personalized travel mug for the office coffee lover or a batch of cookies decorated with a personalized message that’s unique to your employee. 

Adding an employee appreciation message or quote to a gift is a great way to personalize the gift and emphasize just how much you value your employee. An excellent idea for a personalized employee message is to point out a specific characteristic of the employee that you appreciate. This could be their knack for being prepared or their eagerness to go above and beyond. 

Other creative ideas for employee appreciation week could include virtual employee appreciation events (hopefully it goes better than the employee award show that we hosted) or an employee social outing. 

After the employee appreciation award show didn’t go quite as planned, corporate decided to host a different employee appreciation event during employee appreciation week. They decided to go with a few no-cost employee appreciation ideas. One was an employee game day. One of the games that they chose was “telephone” oh how ironic that was. 

Looking for inexpensive employee appreciation ideas for employee appreciation day? DIY employee appreciation gift ideas are a good place to start. This could be as simple as DIY employee appreciation cards or an entire DIY employee appreciation party!

And if your team is virtual, inexpensive staff appreciation ideas during Covid or remote work aren’t impossible. Host a free or low-cost virtual employee event!

Other employee appreciation small gift ideas could include snacks, small personalized swag – such as a notebook, beverages, or plants!

We all received personalized snack boxes for employee appreciation at the end of our last employee appreciation week. Brenda got a nut-free basket because there had been a rumor going around about her that she was allergic to peanuts. Once again, that proved to be untrue.

Coming up with employee appreciation ideas for large companies might be a little more difficult because it can be difficult to find something unique for every single employee. Don’t worry we’ve got you covered on some of the best ideas from personalized merch to employee appreciation gift bag ideas.

If you want to personalize your employee appreciation gifts, but don’t know how to do that at a large company, consider giving each employee some personalized merch. You could purchase bulk merch, such as sweatshirts with the company logo on them, and get each employee's name or last name printed on the sweatshirt. This would be with any type of branded merch – from blankets to pens and everything in between. 

Other employee appreciation gift ideas for large companies include gift bags or gift baskets for employees. Personalize the gift baskets with gourmet food items, snacks, desserts, beverages, coffee beans, and more. 

The bottom line is there are tons of options for employee appreciation gift ideas. 

Oh, and back to the story of our office – the hybrid schedule didn’t do much to fix our problem. Instead of gossiping in the break room, some of the office employees resorted to gossiping in the breakout rooms during Zoom meetings.

Needless to say, our bosses at corporate sent everyone back to the office 5 days a week, because at least they could monitor the gossip there. Oh and Dave got an extra employee appreciation gift basket this year. We think it’s because someone at corporate started the rumor about his mustache and they feel bad about it.