How a, seemingly, simple gift can make a big difference in your company culture
December 2025 | PerfectGift Experts | 5 minute read
With an uprising in companies using AI to solve problems and handle work that employees would normally take care of, now more than ever it’s crucial to show that we recognize their everyday efforts. We want an open line of communication to show that no, we aren’t overlooking you and your hard work, we are appreciative of your role(s) in making this business thrive.
This is why incentives like employee recognition programs are and have been created by many such businesses like yourselves. It gives you the chance as the employer, boss, manager, etc. to recognize the efforts put in by said employees. Those programs typically come with fun incentives like days off, bonuses, personalized rewards, and gift cards.
The role of gift cards in employee recognition is actually bigger and holds more potential than you may think. Many higher ups will be scrambling to make their programs stand out or offer up even more rewards than other counterparts. With gift cards you’re able to find a flexible and feasible reward option that is versatile enough for persons A, B, and C to love.
Let’s take a look at a few key points and give you some ideas on how you can make gift cards a big part of encouraging your employees to continue their hard work.
In this article you’ll read about:
- A Breakdown of Employee Recognition Programs and Their Benefits
- Further Incentives of Recognition Programs
- How You Can Use PerfectGift as a Part of your Business
- Conclusion: The Role of Gift Cards in Employee Recognition
A Breakdown of Employee Recognition Programs and Their Benefits
Showing recognition to all employees builds a stronger company culture at every level.
Employee recognition programs are often built internally by managers who oversee employees both in-house and remotely to acknowledge their contributions throughout the year. Many will wait till the end of the year, specifically during the holidays, to congratulate those on their hard work. An employee recognition program will take time to both recognize and reward all throughout the year.
Think back to when you were first starting out in the workforce, how good it would feel to get a “good job” or other such acknowledgements from your superiors, even if you were just putting grocery carts back or hanging clothes on racks at the mall.
These programs have a few aims:
- To boost morale
- To improve retention and build motivation
- To celebrate hard work via peers and higher-ups
With these goals reached, companies are known to have guaranteed ROI (Return on investment), reduced turnover, and stronger company culture.
Employees often see through inauthenticity, so it’s important that your employee recognition program isn’t just a face but actually holds value and resources that will positively impact those who are a part of it.
O.C. Tanner reports that “strong service award programs significantly benefit businesses by increasing employee retention by 2-4 years, improving employee experience (increasing feelings of belonging by 35%), and building trust in leadership, which applies to all generations, including Gen Z.”
These programs are meant to build a sense of belonging in the workplace, oftentimes you’ll find a lot of employees are disengaged with their work and their fellow employees, so having a program like this makes it so you celebrate these accomplishments peer-to-peer, not just from above.
When employees are actually engaged with their work it creates an environment that’s great internally as well as externally when profits come back and work is reviewed from outside sources and customers alike.
Further Incentives of Recognition Programs
An array of incentives boosts morale amongst employees from A to Z.
You may be wondering what other incentives you can add to your employee recognition program to make a further impact amongst your employees. Well we have a list just for you:
- Work Flexibility and More Days Off: Everyone, even those who love what they do, enjoys time off. Getting a chance to get away from daily stressors, mundane reports, and customer interactions is something we all look forward to. Extra PTO and work flexibility for those moments when outside of work life clashes with work life is probably the easiest way you can make your program wanted.
- Wellness Incentives: Showing you care about your employees outside of the work they do is a certified way to improve their attitude towards their own company. Things like a gym membership, free flu-shots, and physicals are easy ways to prioritize that their health matters even when they’re working.
- Charitable Donations: There is a lot of bad in the world right now and it can be hard to ignore even when you’re supposed to be working on a project that is a small cog in the machine. Find out what causes your employees value and offer charitable donations to those causes as rewards for their work as a part of the employee recognition program.
- Experimental Experiences: We don’t want to fall into a cliche here and be basic when creating incentives for these programs. That’s why we’re going to think outside the box on this one. Being stuck inside an office all day can drain anyone, even you. So why not try setting up “field trips” of sorts to your employees. It can be monthly, bi-montly, or quarterly. It’s like you’re headed back to school when you’d get to go outside the classroom for the day.
- Gift Cards: There is no “one size fits all” gift, and we don’t want to get our employees a gift they won’t use- (bad company swag we’re looking at you). Gift cards are a suitable option for virtually anyone as they can be fit to suit a number of preferences. Pick from a list of verified merchants or choose something like the Visa gift card which can be used at almost any store, restaurant, or online shop that accepts Visa as a form of payment.
A PerfectGift Exclusive:
We pride ourselves on our Visa gift card experience as you can add a photo to create a custom Visa gift card and get it to you fast. PerfectGift prints and ships our own Visa gift cards, so we can guarantee same day printing & shipping (if ordered by 4:00pm ET Monday through Saturday). Since we are all in-house, no one else can beat our turnaround time because a lot of other spaces use third-parties to get their stuff ready.
Gift cards check mark a lot of boxes you might have on your list, especially if you are a company that’s looking to do frequent small rewards while you make time later in the year for bigger ones. You can use gift cards as a way to say “hey we see you, we value you, and we want to show our appreciation for all of the hard work you’ve put in.”
They are gifts that are known to strengthen company culture and that means you need a business that you can rely on for your gift card needs.
How You Can Use PerfectGift as a Part of your Business
We’re set up around the country to make sure that you can get what you need with no hassle and at no extra costs to you and your employee-recognition program’s budget.
Speaking of, with PerfectGift you will get real-time fulfillment, reporting, and budget controls. We have no order limits – no minimum & no maximum number of gifts or purchase value which makes us great for businesses large and small.
We've made our site the exact right place for you to find a worthy gift for employee recognition programs. Robust branding with logos on physical & digital cards and packaging, as well as self-serve management of resending, replacing, reissuing & refunding gift cards you'll be able to fulfill what you need for all of your purposes.
For small businesses you’ll be able to pick between ordering 1 to 50 cards with a $10,000 limit--and for corporations you’ll be able to buy 50+, emphasis on the plus as we are the only on-demand fulfillment center in the country that can print & ship up to 50,000 cards with your logo - same-day, cards at a time.
Corporations will have to create a business account with PerfectGift to get started on an order of substantial size.
A unique gift to PerfectGift only is our PerfectGift+ gift card:
This digital gift card allows you to give a gift card as an incentive but not tie it to any specific merchant. Instead the recipient, aka your employees, get to choose any merchant they want from our vast catalog. This way they get access to hundreds of major merchant gift cards with everyday discounts.
What’s great about PerfectGift as well is you’re able to send gift cards digitally. This means if you have remote workers or team members who aren’t in the same state as you but still contribute greatly to the wellbeing of the company, you can send them a digital reward via their email or phone. This way these specific employees don’t miss out on some of the incentives others who are at the office everyday will get via these employee recognition programs.
Through gift cards you’re able to set the stage up to be a model for all current and future employees. Rewards like these can be set up as often as you like, this way you won’t have any neglected parties.
The Role of Gift Cards in Employee Recognition Programs
We’ve seen what employee recognition programs as a baseline does for companies everywhere. It improves the overall workplace exceptionally. We see employees' overall morale heighten, the work itself doesn’t lack, and there’s a distinct lack of increased turnover.
An easy way to make sure that your own employee recognition program isn’t left to pick up dust is to introduce smaller rewards as the year goes by. By introducing smaller rewards like gift cards, you’re able to spread those incentives out so they don’t feel as few and far between. The role of gift cards in employee recognition programs might seem like a small one, but the impact it has is mighty.
