You'll find a great deal of advice about choosing the appropriate business gifts for clients and important business connections, but far less is said about choosing business gifts for your staff. This is quite an oversight when you consider that your staff is among your most important business connections in the world of business. Treating your staff as you would valued clients will increase their job satisfaction, and in the end, make them even more valuable assets to your company.



At the same time, if you have a staff of several hundred, the costs of personalized gift giving can become prohibitive. There are still ways that you can recognize that special relationship with your staff and reinforce it with business gifts. Promotional products can help you keep those gifts within your budget. Here are some ideas for using business gifts to help cement your staff's loyalty to you and to your company.

1.Think outside the box when it comes to holiday gifts. A printed coffee mug may not be much of a holiday gift when they're simply handed out to each employee, but when they serve as a take-away remembrance of a holiday breakfast they take on a whole new significance.

2.Acknowledge personally significant days with personal gifts. Occasions like birthdays or the birth of a child are not the time to give a promotional product ? unless it fits the occasion. One factory owner invested in a box of infant size t-shirts printed with the company name and ?Welcome to the Family? years back. That box of t-shirts has more than paid for itself in good will over the years and the ?Family t-shirt? is a valued tradition for his workers.

3.Promotional products can be ideal gifts to acknowledge significant business achievements. A company jacket is a special gift when it's given to acknowledge an employee's one year hiring anniversary. It's not so much the gift that counts as it is the acknowledgement of the occasion.

4.Remember that some promotional gifts can be seen as perks of the job rather than gifts ? but it doesn't make them any less valued. Some gifts that fit this category ? printed personal planners at the New Year, desk calendars for all the administrative staff or business card wallets upon a new promotion or hire.

5.Give gifts to your employees on significant company occasions. Celebrate the company's tenth anniversary with a company picnic and hand out 10th anniversary t-shirts to everyone, for example.

6.Reward everyone for company achievements. When a local manufacturer closed a deal with a major chain, the owners celebrated by presenting every employee with a bottle of wine specially ordered from a promotional products company. The label was a bespoke design commissioned from a local artist to commemorate the occasion.

7.Reward employee achievements with promotional products that increase productivity and make it easier for them to do their jobs. Some examples of great employee incentive gifts include MP3 players and USB drives printed with the company name, personal planners and specialty conference folders or conference bags.