How to Reward your Team Over Christmas

With the end of 2022 fast approaching businesses around the world are planning their Christmas parties. But a Christmas event isn’t the only way you can show your team how much you appreciate all their hard work. Here’s how we’re helping our clients reward employees this holiday season.

First off, why should you be rewarding your team around Christmas specifically? With all the holiday anticipation in the air it can be easy for your team to lose sight of your company’s key goals. Through incentives you can directly reward your employees for achieving targets and goals whilst also maintaining team moral and getting everyone into the spirit of the season. But just because it’s Christmas time doesn’t mean everything has to be mistletoe and wine. There are plenty of different ways you can reward your team over the holidays.

Travel

Incentive travel opportunities are an incredible way to motivate your team during the Christmas period. We all know the holidays are a busy time for any business, so providing your team with the proper recognition for reaching their targets under such duress. Our favourite part of incentive travel is the sheer amount of variety available, both in the destination and the activities available. But it’s important to know your team when offering incentive travel. For the colder inclined, destinations like Reykjavik, Copenhagen, or Lapland can be the perfect places to get away to whilst keeping your team members in the seasonal spirit with such activities as Christmas markets, skiing, or even chasing the Northern Lights. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Sri Lanka, Tuscany, and The Canary Islands make for perfect incentive travel destinations to send those looking to spend their Christmas in the warm, exploring savannahs, deep sea diving, or just relaxing on the beach.

Promotional Gifting

Nothing says Christmas like presents! Promotional gifts can give you an opportunity to provide your team with physical reminders of how much their company values their efforts. These gifts of course can be anything, but we find that some of the best things to include in a company gift are seasonal food, luxury drinks, and personalised branded merchandise. We especially recommend the latter of the three as putting your company’s logo on a promotional gift gives you the opportunity to bring your brand into your team’s homes over the Christmas period, making sure they keep your company in mind over the holidays without having to break up that all important work-life balance.

If you’re thinking of giving out gifts to your team this Christmas, try out our in-house personalised corporate gifting service MemMail. We deliver hampers of personalised gifts and individually branded merchandise across Europe and USA every day of the week. Visit our MemMail page to order your own or apply for a demonstration box

Christmas Parties

Christmas parties have been a staple of office cultures for decades now, and whilst organising one can seem like an obvious way to incentivise your team, they can be an excellent way to give everyone at your company something to look forward to whilst also creating opportunities to reconnect with your colleagues and stakeholders.
Something that’s often overlooked when undertaking Christmas parties is the potential variety businesses can take advantage of. As you might expect, the majority of companies simply default to a meal out or a trip to the pub, often at the same locations, year in and year out, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Stand out from the crowd by hosting your Christmas party inside an igloo, at a roof top bar, or, if your team are willing to make the trip, on a sunny beach abroad.

Events

If you’re a larger company, you may want to do away with the idea of Christmas parties altogether and instead put together a dedicated event that can better accommodate your staff. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it affords you a lot more flexibility, especially when it comes to capacity and choice of activity. Incentivise your team by bringing them après-skiing, or to one of the country’s many Christmas markets.

If you truly want to stand out from your competitors, you could even incentivise your team during the holiday period with an event completely unrelated to Christmas. With every company in the country hosting a Christmas party this winter, why not incentivise your team with an Oktoberfest party? Or a party themed around the Chinese Lantern Festival? The possibilities are truly endless.

Rewards programs

Rewards programs are especially great methods of incentivising employees if you’re looking to directly address the accomplishments of individual team members. If your organisation already has a rewards program, or you’re looking to launch a shorter one for Christmas, they can be very easily themed for the season. For example, you can theme your rewards around an advent calendar, with a series of smaller rewards distributed over the course of the month. Each day you could review your current targets and whoever is the closest to achieving them would receive the gift for that day. Or, if you’re looking to prove to your team that you haven’t forgotten about their previous accomplishments, you could set up a system which focuses on the team’s biggest achievements throughout the year, with larger rewards for a smaller group of high-achieving employees. If set up earlier in the year you can even use it as a means of creating a healthy sense of competition between colleagues, which in turn can increase productivity throughout the year.

When incentivising your team this Christmas as long as you’re planning well in advance, putting your team first, and making sure that they feel appreciated for their efforts and looking forward to coming back to work come January, you can’t really go wrong. For help incentivising your team through promotional gifting, events, travel, or setting up a rewards program, be sure to contacts us using the button below.