Your staff work hard year round, so when it comes time to reward their performance it definitely pays off to do it with more than a bigger paycheck. Of course, the main reason why your employees work for you is because you pay them, and promotional products should not be a substitute for a larger pay increase. However, they can act as morale building instruments and help to strengthen the professional bonds that have been developed in the work place. It is very important to secure your staff's loyalty with more than just money.



If you are buying promotional products to give to a large work force, your budget restraints might be tight. Mugs, glasses and travel mugs are always a good bet when it comes to giving out gifts to your staff, but there are ways of going easily wrong with this strategy. The most common mistake is to proudly give each staff member a single mug with your logo on it. This is a mistake because what people think when they get your mug is ?what am I going to do with one mug that doesn't match any of my others??

If you are giving out promotional products to your staff, they already know about your company. This means that you do not have to spend extra money having the logo printed on both sides, and you can simply have it put on the bottom of the mug or on the inside lip. Instead spend the money on having sets of four mugs made. Go for simple, white ceramic mugs as these are most likely to fit in with anyone's collection of earthenware and the decorations in the kitchen. Make sure that you pick mugs that are good to drink out of ? not ones with weird handles that force you to hold the mug with both hands to avoid spilling.

If you are trying to avoid spending a lot of money but you still want to give your staff special promotional products, go for pens that are engraved with each staff member's name. These are relatively inexpensive to make ? they can be ordered in batches, each uniquely engraved, for less than $1 each if you look around enough. If your workplace is team-oriented a great idea is to hand out mugs or pens that have each of the team member's names on them. This is a great way to improve team spirit and morale in the work place.

If you are buying promotional products for your staff, you have to walk a tightrope between not spending too much and not spending too little. A cheap gift with no practical use or novel function is worse than no gift at all, because the person who received it will get the feeling that your company is not prepared to spend a little bit of money on them after all of their hard work. This is a sentiment that you hope to avoid by giving out promotional products to your staff.