Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad • Hacker News Board

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#281

Post by mcv » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

langsoul-com wrote: post #224

mcv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A raise. A raise is the best gift a company can give its employees. And a raise big enough to take an employee's financial worries off the table has a good chance of making them feel more motivated and more valued.

It's not in a companies best interest to give everyone a raise. The less they pay you, given you don't leave, the more they have each year. It's a sad reality, but the one we live in.

This is only true if they don't really care about your work, merely about your presence.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#282

Post by mcv » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

allenu wrote: post #278

mcv wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, giving people an extra form to fill in is not the greatest gift. A better idea would be to go around and ask people what kind of coffee they want and then getting it for them. It's still not going to significantly raise morale on its own, but at least it's not going to sink it further, and it focuses on the nice gesture instead of the bureaucracy.

I agree that somebody walking around asking for your order and bringing it to you while you bang away at code would be a super nice gesture. The problem in the case I described though was everyone was working from home, so picking up your own coffee was the only way to do it. (Again, making it even more pointless as a gesture.)

Yeah, that's pointless. I would expect most coffee drinkers to already have the best coffee at home. I guess it was a really poor attempt to translate the nice gesture to an environment where it doesn't really work.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#283

Post by DontchaKnowit » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #196

jnsaff2 wrote: post #158

So I had a buddy, he was a junior-ish very talented dev in this big retailer where I was working as well. This retailer obv had massive campaigns for black friday, but also obv very shitty and inflexible systems. This buddy of mine found that the black friday promotions pricings import failed 5 min before midnight. Meaning that not only would there be no black friday pricing, there would be no pricing at all on the s…

Let's say he was giving 500,000GBP. 10% Great right? You have just given folks incentive to plant problems and reap the reward. You might say, they can audit and if you caused the problem, you don't get the reward. Great! Now, let's collude with another team mate, I cause they problem, they fix it, we split the rewards. Once you give monetary incentive, folks start figuring out ways to game it. There was an agreement…

Yeah my take on this is that the only appropriate response is a thank you from top level leadership and serious consideration of your heroics when it comes time for salary adjustment.

A thank you without a gift is way less insulting than a thank you with a paltry or trivial gift.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#284

Post by throw33away » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #230

jasode wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The thoughtfulness and kindness what makes a gift, a gift. That gift is priceless for me from now on. It can be a mug, it can be a pin, it can be a watch, or anything. Have a 75-year old friend that thought exactly like this and because of it, her house ended up being cluttered with tons of cat trinkets that she didn't want because her coworkers happen to find out "she likes cats" . So she had cat figurines, cat pot…

This is why I like consumable gifts the best. A dinner, a soap, some chocolate or wine. But even that can trip up people who like to keep stuff in pristine condition. I think there would be a market for products that come in a "open" state - the cover torn off, a fake outer seal broken, 3 chocolate slots empty ("eaten") etc. so they can be more suitable for hoarders.

For the best part of 20 years I felt chocolate as a gift was a poor choice. But a month or so ago someone gave me some figs with the inside replaced with chocolate and it was such a novel gift (for me) that I'd say it is the best gift I got in years. Novelty is king for me.

Similar story with wine. Someone went to the effort of buying me a bottle that you can't get in USA from my home country and it was really special.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#285

Post by jdpigeon » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

For me the best company gifts are small mundane things printed with company-specific inside jokes. Coffee mugs with quotes from the team, references to past projects or humorous incidents, that kind of thing. I'm not going to bring that stuff outside the office, but it does a lot to make me feel like a m member of the team in an "I was there" way.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#286

Post by tablespoon » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

topkai22 wrote: post #225

agentwiggles wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, when I was at accenture (briefly, after an acquisition), they had a similar "points" system where you could cash the points in for rewards. Most of it was absolute junk. I did manage to extract a bit of value when I found they could be cashed in for Nintendo eShop money - there's worse things than a free game - but still. Just ... give me money. In a previous gig we were on the receiving end of a fairly pathetic…

My work was thinking of adopting one of those points based systems for peer recognition. I happened to have been on a team that had already built a small recognition system internally already, so I got to sit in on the pitch meeting. There was a lot to like about the pitch, but my reaction to the “rewards store” was “ugh, this feels like the incredibly manipulative and icky ‘reward catalogs’ we got whenever their was…

> Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it.

The most contact I've had with sales is walking through their area, but it just comes of as a totally alien culture to me. Their walls were covered with posters about this or that quarter's big prize. They even had an area commemorating the big prizes from years past.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#287

Post by Tokkemon » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

system16 wrote: post #264

At my company when we celebrate something like Christmas or a big project milestone, we have a short celebratory huddle in the office / Zoom where our CEO will relay some anecdotes and thank us for our efforts, and then just tells us: "take your family out to dinner at your favourite restaurant and the company will cover it." I think it's a great way to show your employees they are valued. I don't need a pizza party…

That's nice!

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#288

Post by Yhippa » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

I don't want a holiday party, extraneous dinners, random gifts, or any kind of thing where the employer thinks "yeah, that will make them happy or improve morale". I just want the money. Take all that money and redistribute it back into my paycheck when you can. Nothing beats seeing extra money show up in your paycheck.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#289

Post by hnbad » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

kevinmchugh wrote: post #185

bootloop wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily think he should have been compensated based on the (theoretical) loss of money. He was employed after all. And properly someone else would haved saved the day early enough anyway. But 25$ is quite an embarrassment. Nothing would have been better in that case.

It's tricky to reward outstanding work for salaried folks, since it can mess with intrinsic motivation or misalign incentives. Here it's probably appropriate to have a five figure spot bonus for the line employee who made the fix, and a promotion, if they still had the junior title. And also a very long uncomfortable conversation with whichever architects or seniors decided it was okay for Black Friday pricing to onl…

Salary is literally extrinsic motivation. The problem isn't bonuses, the problem is when bonuses become so regular and frequent that they turn into an informal part of the salary and not paying them becomes equivalent to withholding part of the salary.

If you pay a one-off bonus for outstanding work, make sure you tie it to something specific the employee can understand. If it's a reward for a massive deal decide in advance if you want to pay out similar bonuses for similar deals in the future and what the rules are.

An employer-employee relationship is not a friendship no matter how much you like each other. It's a dependent relationship and it needs rules to protect both sides. A five figure bonus is a big deal for many employees so treat them with the dignity they deserve by making sure they can understand the conditions. If you think there aren't any that just means you haven't spelled them out or don't want to be held accountable.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#290

Post by ryathal » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #53

> A good gift gives employees a renewed fervor to work harder, helps them feel more motivated, and makes them feel more valued by their employers. Does it? I’ve never experienced this. A company is not a person. A good gift or a bad gift makes me feel the company made a business decision that affected me, just like any other business decision that affected me.

Previous company had some decent one-off gifts for life events. A couple nice coffee mugs with company colors and hearts for a wedding and bamboo cutting boards with company logo for a housewarming gift were quite nice and actually were appreciated. felt like these were good things to offer. The employee appreciation day "water bottle" was an awful piece of garbage though that honestly felt insulting, a $5 cafeteria voucher would have been better.

I would say the quality of a gift matters. A big part is managing expectations though, if employees aren't expecting a gift, you have a lot more freedom than if something is expected. A free Paczki on Fat Tuesday is more appreciated than a Christmas cookie (especially if referred to as a bonus).