Holiday gifts for employees are the most common corporate gifting moment and the most consistently average in execution. Companies budget for them in October, order in November, and receive them in the post by mid-December. The gifts arrive, hampers, wine, branded items, gift cards, and are received with the enthusiasm appropriate to predictable gestures.
This matters less than it sounds for the average employee, and considerably more than it sounds for the employees who are deciding whether to stay. Research from Gallup links recognition to retention, with disengaged employees costing businesses an estimated $8.8 trillion annually in lost productivity. Holiday gifting is not a retention strategy on its own, but it is one of the moments where the gap between “we processed a gift” and “we saw you” is most visible. [1]
Key Takeaways
- Holiday gifts for employees work best when they are personal, meaningful, and globally deliverable without logistics complications.
- ForestNation Gift Stories plant a verified tree in Tanzania in each employee’s name, personalised, delivered by email, and generating ongoing impact updates through the new year and beyond.
- Tree gifts avoid the common holiday gifting problems: dietary restrictions (no food), lifestyle assumptions (no branded items), and international delivery (no shipping required).
- ForestNation has delivered holiday gifts for companies including Marriott, Logitech, and Salesforce, scaling from small teams to global organisations.
- Send holiday gifts for employees at forestnation.com/corporate-gift-a-forest.
What Is a Good Holiday Gift for Employees?
A good holiday gift for employees works on three practical levels: it is personal enough to feel considered, it is appropriate for the full range of the team, and it does not require knowing things about the recipient that you may not know.
The common holiday gifts fail on at least one of these. Food hampers require dietary knowledge. Alcohol assumes preferences. Branded merchandise assumes relevance. Gift cards are practical but impersonal by design, they explicitly defer the gift to the recipient’s own judgment.
A ForestNation Gift Story plants a tree in Tanzania in the employee’s name. The personalisation is in the name and the message, not in the product. The gift is appropriate for every dietary requirement, every lifestyle, every location. The impact (CO2 sequestered, community work hours generated, biodiversity contribution) is the same quality regardless of whether the recipient is in the same office or the same country as the sender.
Holiday Employee Gift Ideas by Team Size
Small teams (under 20): Personalised Gift Stories with individually written messages. At small team size, the message can reference specific contributions from the year. “This year you [specific achievement]. Here is a tree in your name in Tanzania, a small record of it.” The specificity is what makes the gift exceptional rather than average.
Medium teams (20-200): Gift Stories with a shared message template plus individual name personalisation. The campaign scales without losing the personal feel. Each employee still receives a gift in their name, with a company message that reflects the year’s shared achievement. A team-wide Forest Profile shows the collective impact growing in real time.
Large and enterprise teams (200+): ForestNation Gift Stories scale to any volume without logistics complexity. No address collection, no warehouse management, no phased delivery by region. The entire organisation receives their personalised gift simultaneously, wherever they are in the world. For global organisations with teams in dozens of countries, this is a practical advantage that no physical gift can match.
What to Give Staff for the Holidays
The choice of holiday gift communicates something about the company beyond the gift itself. A standard hamper communicates: this is what we do every year. A personalised tree planted in an employee’s name communicates: we have values, and this gift is one expression of them.
For companies with sustainability commitments, an employee holiday gift that plants verified trees is a visible, specific expression of those values rather than a policy statement. The Marriott tree gifting programme, the Logitech campaigns, the Salesforce employee recognition initiatives, all of these use ForestNation because the gift itself says something real about the organisation’s values.
For companies without formal sustainability commitments, a tree gift is a simple, memorable alternative to the conventional holiday gift catalogue. The employee remembers it because it is different. The tree is still growing in January when the hamper is long finished.
Holiday Gifting Logistics: Why Tree Gifts Are Simpler
The logistics of holiday gifting at scale are consistently underestimated. Address collection across a distributed workforce. International shipping for employees in multiple countries. Customs clearance. Delivery timing. Items that arrive damaged or late.
Gift Stories eliminate all of these. Delivery is by email. The only information required is an email address. Delivery is instant, globally, simultaneously. There is no Black Friday shipping crunch, no customs hold in December, no late delivery for the Berlin office. Every employee receives their gift at the same time regardless of where they are.
Research and References
- Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023. Disengaged employees cost the global economy $8.8 trillion annually. gallup.com/workplace/393497
- Deloitte, Global 2023 Millennial and Gen Z Survey. 69% of employees want employers to invest in sustainability initiatives. deloitte.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good holiday gift for employees?
A good holiday employee gift is personal (the employee’s name and a message that reflects the year), globally deliverable without logistics complications, and appropriate for every team member regardless of dietary requirements or lifestyle. ForestNation Gift Stories plant verified trees in Tanzania in each employee’s name and are delivered by email with no address collection or shipping required.
What to give to staff for Christmas?
The most effective Christmas staff gifts avoid the common failure modes: food (dietary restrictions), alcohol (preferences and sobriety), branded merchandise (assumes relevance), and generic gift cards (impersonal by design). A tree planted in each staff member’s name in Tanzania, with a personalised message and ongoing impact updates through the new year, is a gift that is appropriate for everyone and memorable for being different from what they received everywhere else.
What is the 5 gift rule for Christmas?
The 5 gift rule is a personal budgeting approach for family Christmas gifting: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read, and an experience. It is primarily used in household contexts rather than corporate ones. For employee holiday gifting, the relevant framework is: personalised, globally deliverable, appropriate for everyone, and lasting. ForestNation Gift Stories meet all four.
How do I send holiday gifts to a global team?
ForestNation Gift Stories are delivered by email globally and instantly. No address collection, no shipping management, no customs clearance, no regional delivery scheduling. The entire global team receives their personalised gift simultaneously. For organisations with employees in multiple countries, this eliminates the logistics overhead that makes physical holiday gifting at scale genuinely difficult.
