What Makes Your Business Stand Out? 8 Tips for Unforgettable Corporate Events and Gifts

In today’s workplace climate full of hybrid opportunities, creating a business that stands out is absolutely critical to acquire a valuable and competent workforce.

While there are plenty of ways to go about this task by marketing your business well, utilizing the proper hiring platforms, and even reaching out to prospective employees, the best marketing for your business is having a fantastic workplace culture.

Of course, there are two sides to this coin. One is your everyday culture. How does your business function normally? What is it like to work there, and how are employee stress levels?

While these features should be in mind consistently, corporate events and gifts are the other side of the coin. These are special and unique moments to demonstrate care to your employees and offer unforgettable moments that they will use to not only confirm the validity of your workplace culture but will help spread the word about the positive space.

In this article, we will outline a number of tips for unforgettable corporate events and gifts that stretch beyond birthdays and anniversaries into more functional, applicable corporate gifts. These will keep your employees satisfied and spread the good word about your business.

1. Ritual Gives the Gift of Time and Treatment

There is an unfortunate fear and discomfort surrounding pregnancy at times within the workplace environment. Some women find themselves concerned about losing their position, getting inadequate leave, or even getting fired as a result of maternity leave.

If you want to not only stand out as a business but demonstrate benevolent ethics, you need to champion those experiencing maternity.

What does this mean? It means that your business provides significant time off with flex opportunities for postpartum employees. It means offering scheduling assistance and various options for your employees who have recently become parent(s). It means giving supplements from businesses like Ritual as a part of company gifts and educating on questions like, “Is folate the same as folic acid?”

This has a number of benefits for your business:

• First and foremost, your employees are healthier. A person under extreme stress — whether in regard to time or money — does not function efficiently in the workplace. Investing in your employees’ well-being ensures the well-being of your business.
• Second, your employees feel valued. Valued employees are much more loyal, much more likely to innovate within your business, and much more likely to maintain a culture of honesty.
• Finally, word of mouth will assist your hiring process and reputation. A business that treats its employees with this level of respect and care is one that people will champion. Word will spread of your benefits and treatment of your employees, which will bring in valued talent.

2. Go on Honest Team Retreats With Teamly

There are few experiences more annoying to employees than team retreats that are not remotely restful. Many businesses engage in retreats and getaways with their employees to deepen relationships, improve team dynamics (with a little help from Teamly), and invest in team building.

All of these are fantastic directives; however, a healthy team is one that is excited to invest in itself. Asking significant additional time from your team without benefits does not create a healthy environment.

Here are a few great ways to do this. Schedule a retreat for your staff, and go away for three days with the understanding that you will be diving into some prepared team function exercises. However, make this a small segment of your escape.

A business that can effectively contrast employee rest, freedom, and recuperation with staff development will produce a staff that understands it is valued by leadership. Small sprints of intentional staff development will allow energized employees to more readily engage as they have had periods of personal engagement and rest.

If you need to force your employees to retreat, you may need to rethink your management style.

3. Send Personalized Gifts From Pacifica Beauty

Birthdays and holidays are among the best times for businesses to show employees how much they care. There are plenty of openings for outings, parties, and gifts to highlight personal care and treatment of employees and build community within the workplace.

This practice can be done with sincere intention or haphazardly, and you can surely guess which one is the better option!

A common missed opportunity when it comes to gifts given by businesses is to purchase duplicate gifts for every employee come holidays or birthdays. This, of course, is still a gift and provides value for the employee but misses out on demonstrating personalized care.

When your business personalizes gifts for employees, it demonstrates that there is a personal, authentic relationship between leadership and employees.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of this. Consider an employee who doesn’t eat meat and frequently mentions enjoyment in their personal care routine. A unique gift like Pacifica Beauty’s vegan makeup would demonstrate active listening to this employee’s personal interests.

Another example could be an avid reader on your staff interested in the sci-fi genre. Gifting this person a book that sits well within their genre and preference shows that there was legitimate thought put into their present.

Gifts like these for your business’ employees demonstrate care in the personal and the relational. In addition, they prompt staff to be attentive and empathetic and create a more healthy workplace dynamic.

4. Embrace Creative Pay Distribution and Financial Planning With Steadily

This one is not a gift in the traditional sense, but it provides an enormous benefit to many employees. Expenses are a regular aspect of every employee’s life. Whether it be car payments, student loans, mortgages, or utilities, all of your employees have regular payments that are attempting to balance.

While your business is not necessarily expected to assist with all of these, there are some ways that your business can support its employees’ financial planning.

One excellent first thing to offer is creative pay distribution. Having a competent HR department that can have the money go straight from an employee’s paycheck into their rent or insurance (upon the employee’s request) can help employees make sure that they are not accidentally spending necessary funds. This can help them better plan financially and may remove daily stress from their lives.

Another gift you can offer to your employees is financial planning services. Whether this looks like an online course you provide to your employees for free, access to information about landlord insurance costs on a site like Steadily, or a specialist that your business keeps on retainer, financial planning services can be an enormous benefit for your workforce.

Providing these services also helps your business in long-term and legitimate ways. Employees that are unencumbered by financial stress have less debt, have more financial certainty, and are far less stressed. That means they may be able to supply your business with more of their energy.

5. Provide Quality Equipment From Incrediwear

If your business is going to give a gift to its employees, it should not be something that will end up in a pile in the back of your employees’ closet — or even worse, in their trash can. If something is not good enough quality for an employee to buy for themselves, then don’t buy it for them.

For instance, say you have a highly active employee who enjoys hiking outdoors. You have considered a gift like a backpack, shoes, or water bottle. Poor quality in this regard may be something your employee is not even able to use. Getting quality equipment from brands like an Incrediwear knee sleeve lets you genuinely invest in this employee’s mental and physical health.

Your employees will appreciate the investment, especially if you have the bandwidth to do it. Employees that experience this level of investment are able to easily understand how important they are to their business. Even more so, when asked about where they received these products, equipment, or pieces of gear, they will reference your business.

This is a phenomenal advertisement of how much your business invests in its people.

6. Provide the Best for What You Do With Stoggles

Let’s talk about the gift of a safe and comfortable work environment. Whether you are an office, a remote business, a medical practice, or mechanics, the right equipment can make an enormous difference in employee lives and comfort.

Within the office category, employees that show up every day to a musty, drab office with slow equipment and ergonomically poor chairs are not going to have a phenomenal experience, regardless of the social culture. Supplying quality equipment — new computers, comfortable seating, a comfortable space, clean areas, and organizing tools— will allow your employees to function more comfortably and efficiently.

Let’s say your business is within the medical field, machining, or other sciences. Providing prescription safety glasses from Stoggles, quality clothing, or insoles may change your employees’ demeanor.

Are you a remote business? Send necessary equipment to your satellite employees. The freedom of using a high-quality piece of equipment that is separate from your own is a huge weight off of a remote worker’s shoulders.

Gifting this kind of equipment up front to employees of your business provides them comfort that they will not forget or take for granted. Be intentional, and go the extra mile. It will save you money and time in the long run and bring you genuine talent.

7. Invest in Wellness Through The IV Doc

Invest in the wellness of your employees. Nobody is happy working while sick, completely exhausted, or sore. Providing opportunities for your employees to improve their wellness can be a memorable and valuable providence.

This may include things like spa days, massages, outdoor excursions, wellness days, or even an IV drip from The IV Doc for sick employees. The key to this process is to engage with your workforce and ask them what they could use to improve their mental and physical stability. This level of care allows you to deepen your staff relationships and to produce a rested and high-functioning workforce.

Additionally, this practice helps to improve employee health within their personal lives, to leave work feeling refreshed rather than drained. Creating this type of culture makes your business a rarity, one that champions its employees above all else.

8. Provide One-of-a-Kind Getaways With Captain Experiences

These certainly depend on your staff, but seeking out truly unforgettable adventurous getaways for your staff can be a way to create an astounding, bonded culture that regularly talks about your business. This may be camping trips, hikes, booking Captain Experiences’ Galveston fishing charters, ski vacations, or other group challenges.

These types of ideas may be a little bit more intense, but they force a new level of corporate bonding and are truly unforgettable experiences. If this sounds like something that might work for your staff, do the research, see if your people fit this category, and dive in!

Know Your Staff

The common theme within any event or gift you provide to your staff is that it is important that you have a relationship with your employees. When you know your people, you are able to truly and genuinely champion them.

So, whether some of these ideas are perfect for your culture or a little bit far off, finding the ones that fit your culture will ensure you demonstrate genuine and intentional care for your employees’ health, well-being, joy, and contribution.

McClatchy newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.