6 Gift Ideas for the Workplace

Adding extra monitors is a simple way to increase productivity at work. (Olia Danilevich/Pexels)

The holiday shopping season has commenced. As an employer, you want to get your team a gift, but you don’t know what to get them. How about coming up with solutions that make their lives easier at the office? People spend a large portion of their lives at work, and making working conditions more comfortable will lead to happier employees and increased productivity.

Workplace gifts will help your business to thrive by helping to retain your best employees and enabling their best work to be done. However, the gifts you give shouldn’t only be with your revenue streams in mind. While these gifts will undoubtedly increase worker productivity, they’ll also help your team feel better while at work, which can reduce stress levels and increase fulfillment.

This list provides a few ideas you can use when shopping for your team this season:

1. Standing Desk

When you feel good, it’s easier to be productive. Feeling good in the office has a lot to do with ergonomics. Bad posture puts a lot of strain on your body, which will sap your energy and put more focus on your aches and pains.

Few items are more revolutionary than the standing desk. Keeping a good posture is so much easier when you’re standing, and an adjustable desk allows anyone to work comfortably in this position. Even if only for part of the day, standing at work is also good for the body, as sitting for hours on end doesn’t contribute to the healthiest lifestyle.

That’s also one of the best parts about owning a standing desk. You don’t have to stand all day to get value out of it, nor are you forced to. Instead, you can adjust the height to stand for a moment to stretch your legs and regain your posture before settling back into your chair.

2. New Monitors

A vast majority of work today is done on a computer. Making computer work easier for employees will help them be more productive. One of the simplest yet most effective solutions is to add an extra monitor to each work desk. It is incredible how much a single screen can improve productivity when all you’re using is a laptop. A Microsoft study suggests that productivity can increase by up to 50 percent just by adding a monitor to your setup.

With an extra monitor, you have dual screens; you no longer have to tab between pages on one screen. Two screens make tasks such as data entry and research so much easier. For example, an additional screen can be used to pull up customer information, a spreadsheet to get info from for an email, or a notetaking app while participating in a video conference call.

3. Standing Phone Charger

Do your employees spend a lot of time on the phone? In a good way, of course, not just scrolling through social media but taking care of customers and building up the business. In that case, every desk could use a standing phone charger.

Using this charger, employees can prop their phones up for easy use and access while keeping them plugged into a power source. As a result, missed calls will be less common, and battery levels will no longer be a concern throughout an eight-hour shift. Standing phone chargers are easily portable as well, so your hybrid employees can bring them to and from the office with ease. This stand will also make accessing your calendar easier than ever.

4. Noise-Canceling Headphones

Studies have shown that listening to music will make you more productive, and many workers turn to music to help them through the day. So a pair of noise-canceling headphones will be the perfect gift for your office rockstars who want to enjoy their tunes without bothering anyone else’s space. Besides, numerous conflicting speakers can get quite distracting for everyone.

Noise-canceling headphones do more than just keep the music to yourself. They also limit outside distractions. For example, with regular headphones, you might hear your coworker talking on the phone or making a cup of coffee. Cancel out all that noise, and it’s just you, a beat, and the work in front of you.

Some noise-canceling headphones even have high-quality microphones built into them. So if you take a lot of calls during the day, you can continue using your headphones while speaking with clients or coworkers. Just make sure that everything is well connected so that you don’t miss those calls as they come through.

5. Personalized Water Bottle

A water bottle as a gift might seem a bit lackluster, but this is one of the greatest productivity-enhancing gifts you can get. Hydration is so essential for the workplace, especially in the winter when colder temperatures don’t always make us feel thirsty. A nice water bottle for the office can be a reminder. You have much more energy when you’re hydrated, making it easier to focus on tasks and maintain productivity through an entire workday.

To make this gift more personal, add some flair to it. Many manufacturers will customize water bottles to your preferences. For example, you can get them embroidered with the company logo and each employee’s name. In addition, the suitable surface enables the use of colorful stickers that can come along with the gift, with different designs for each individual.

6. Desk Organizer

No one likes a cluttered desk. Essential documents and sticky notes can get lost or misplaced, or the lack of remaining desk space can make you feel flustered. A nice desk organizer can change all of that.

Not much goes into a desk organizer, but it provides a home for binders, papers, writing utensils, and everything else you use daily. Some organizers also serve as monitor stands, providing a two-for-one space-saving service. Of course, some things can always be moved online, like using a calendar to organize schedules instead of thumbing through a clunky planner.

These gifts probably aren’t at the top of anyone’s Christmas list, but they’re all examples of good products that will improve the workplace for everyone. Besides, providing these accessories for your employees means that they don’t have to buy any of these things out of pocket. Additionally, these gifts will be useful year-round, not just when they’re unwrapped.

By John Hall