Employees Don’t Want to Regift Their Benefits
(Editor’s Note: Today’s article is brought to you by our friends at Kronos, a leading provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions. The Workforce Institute at Kronos has a new book out, Being Present: A Practical Guide for Transforming the Employee Experience of Your Frontline Workforce. Enjoy the article!)
Over the holidays, I saw several articles debating regifting. Is it okay? Or is it rude? One thing I believe that everyone agrees on is the point that, if you do decide to regift, you should find a way to do it where you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.
I was reminded about regifting when I saw today’s Time Well Spent from our friends at Kronos. It’s important to give employees things that they want and appreciate in a way that they will respond to positively. I’m not just talking about work shifts, but benefits, perks, training, and workplace culture. You get the point.
When it comes to gifts, you won’t make everyone happy. But you should try. Years ago, I worked for a company that wanted to give employees recognition gifts from a very expensive well-known company. The CEO said that he wanted employees know how much he appreciated them so only “the best” would do. Employees saw it differently. Most of them made minimum wage and had no use for the pricey gifts. They took them to a local pawn shop to get the financial benefits. While I could see both sides, it still hurt feelings on both sides – employees thought the CEO was out of touch and the CEO felt employees didn’t appreciate the gift.
If you don’t know what employees want or like, ask them. When I was the volunteer president of a non-profit, I got other board members involved in volunteer gifts. The items that they proposed weren’t things that I would have ever thought of and I must admit I wouldn’t have thought that anyone would have liked them. But the volunteers loved them! The activity taught me how valuable it was to get others involved because those different perspectives can make a difference, especially when it comes to gifts and recognition.
Give employees an opportunity to do some regifting without guilt. Organizations don’t have to organize gift exchanges like in today’s cartoon. Although some people might find it fun. But when it comes to things like work shifts, employees would appreciate the benefits of a quick and easy way to make a shift swap. And today’s technology solutions allow that to happen along with giving supervisors an easy way to approve it. Which is great because employees can regift when their schedule doesn’t suit them. No hurt feelings.
The last thing organizations should want to do is give an employee something they immediately want to regift. That being said, organizations also aren’t in a position to give employees personalized gifts. So, create a perfect balance with benefits. Give employees the things they want AND give them an easy way to exchange them if necessary.
11