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Comment by unsupp0rted | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

I really can’t imagine a gift that would motivate me as an employee. There are things i might appreciate, but the only “gift” I would find motivational would be a raise.

> I really can’t imagine a gift that would motivate me as an employee.

Extra Leave Days.

That would not only motivate me, but it would result in an overall higher level of productivity.

I worked at a place that when the company did really well you get a bonus of two weeks paycheck. It some times could happen twice a year and nobody had to ask for it you will receive the news through a “thank you” email.

It was very motivating

I've had a few that made me feel valued. Thoughtful gifts when a baby was born, when a family member died, and when I got Covid-19.

But the generic "give one of these to everyone in the company" gifts? Nah.

When my son was born I was working for a company that did grocery deliveries from really good food shops, despite living way out of the area we'd usually deliver to they put together an order made up of things people knew my wife and I enjoyed, then sent a driver out to bring it to us - I was totally blown away, not least because I knew the value of the order itself was in the hundreds of pounds, plus the additional cost of pulling a driver from deliveries for two hours to drive out to my place and back instead.

That sort of thing sadly only seems to happen at small companies where people really know each other. If the CEO says "we're pulling someone off deliveries to send Jon a gift" then it happens, but beyond a certain scale you end up having to go through an approval chain to do so, and someone higher up that chain takes one look at it and says "no, its more profitable for us not to do that, send him an Amazon voucher instead".

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).

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