Imagine being asked to give your employees one simple gift to reduce their burnout, spark motivation, and make them feel valued? What could it be?
For some wellness coordinators, these questions would immediately lead to decision fatigue as they comb through numerous gift options. Others might not know which wellness gifts to consider.
This article caters to both groups. We cover everything to know about wellness gifts for employees, including suitable wellness incentives for various occasions.
Letâs get started.
TL;DR - Unique Wellness Gift Ideas for Employees
Read the whole article for an in-depth guide on introducing wellness gifts for your employees. But if you cannot read the article right away, hereâs a quick rundown of the top wellness gifts to consider:
- Fitness trackers
- Portable workout equipment
- Paid gym subscriptions
- Gratitude journals
- Calming teas
- Paid spa sessions
- Desk plants
- Ergonomic office chair
- Hourglass timers
- Bamboo utensils
- Reusable water bottles
- Mats from recycled materials
What Are Wellness Gifts?
Wellness gifts are simply perks an organization gives its employees to boost workplace engagement and promote healthy behaviors.
Suppose you gift your employees smartwatches to track their physical activity levels through walking and stretching.
On the one hand, the wellness gifts make employees feel valued, which boosts their morale and job satisfaction. On the other hand, the wellness gift will motivate employees to track their daily steps, improving their health and fitness.
Benefits of Wellness Gifts for Employees
Health and wellness gifts offer numerous incentives for employees to help achieve company goals.
Hereâs what B.J. Wiley Williams, our Founder and CEO, says about wellness incentives:
âEmployees want rewards that enhance their quality of life. So if you're going to offer an incentive, have an incentive that really drives the value for the employee, and drives a real sort of benefit for themâŠâ
Below are the key advantages of introducing wellness gifts in your workplace:
- Increased Productivity: Wellness gifts like meditation apps and paid spa sessions help employees stay energized and focused throughout the day, increasing task completion rates.
- Better Job Satisfaction: Thoughtful wellness gifts show employees you care about their well-being, cultivating strong emotional connections to the company.
- Encourages Healthy Habits: Wellness gifts like fitness trackers and healthy office snacks support employees in maintaining healthy lifestyles.
- Reduced Health and Medical Incidences: Wellness gifts help reinforce healthy behaviors, such as healthy eating, proper hydration, and adequate sleep, which reduce employees' risk of illnesses and mental fatigue. Employees are also likely to file fewer sick days and insurance claims, lowering your medical-related expenses.
- Support for Remote Teams: Wellness gifts help address common challenges affecting remote workers, including feelings of anxiety and social isolation. For example, remote workers can use step trackers to compete among themselves, improving the team's overall morale.
Top Corporate Wellness Gift Ideas for Every Occasion
Are you looking to introduce wellness incentives for your employees, but donât know which gifts to include? Below are suitable corporate wellness gift ideas to inspire you.
Physical Wellness Gift
These are gifts meant to promote movement and support employeesâ fitness goals. Some top gifting ideas include:
1. Fitness Trackers: Offer fitness apps and smartwatches to help employees track their physical wellness levels, including daily steps, heart rate, and sleeping patterns.2. Portable Workout Equipment: Gift your employees equipment like yoga mats and resistance bands to encourage regular physical activity.
3. Paid Gym Subscriptions: Offer subsidized gym subscriptions to encourage employees to maintain exercise routines.
Mental Health Wellness Gifts
These gifts help alleviate employeesâ mental burnout and help them manage their psychological distress. Examples include:
4. Gratitude Journals: Personal diaries encourage self-reflection, which helps employees process emotions.5. Calming Teas: Curated tea sets and assorted tea varieties are soothing and help employees unwind after work or on weekends.
6. Paid Spa Sessions: Offer spa kits or subsidized spa sessions to promote self-care habits, especially after stressful days.
Work-From-Home Wellness Gifts
Organize wellness gifts for your remote workers during special occasions like birthdays or to celebrate company milestones. Below are suitable gift ideas:
7. Desk Plants: Desk-friendly plants like succulents are mood boosters and create a calming work environment.8. Ergonomic Office Chair: Most remote workers spend a lot of time seated at their workstations. Ergonomic chairs promote better posture, reducing back and neck pains associated with long working hours.
9. Hourglass Timers: This is the perfect gift to help remote workers manage their time away from their work desks and ensure they have adequate breaks.
Eco-Friendly Wellness Gifts
These are great for marking World Environment Day or for CSR events. They help boost employee morale and show your companyâs commitment to environmental conservation. Consider the following gift options:
10. Bamboo Utensils: Reusable utensils like forks, knives, spoons, and straws are a great alternative to single-use, plastic cutlery, which causes environmental degradation.11. Reusable Water Bottles: Stainless steel water bottles are easy to carry around, which encourages employees to hydrate throughout the day and reduce their reliance on plastic bottles.
12. Mats from Recycled Materials: Yoga and fitness mats made from recycled waste or organic materials like sisal promote physical wellness, while showcasing your organizationâs eco-conscious values.
How to Implement an Effective Wellness Gift Strategy
A common reason wellness rewards systems fail is poor planning. For example, offering the same perks to all employees may cause some to feel left out, especially if the gift is not inclusive.
For this reason, we have provided a step-by-step guide to help you prepare an effective wellness gift strategy for your employees:
- Define Wellness Goals: Determine what you want to achieve with the wellness gifts. Common objectives include boosting employee motivation, reinforcing healthy behavior, or reducing medical-related expenses.
We recommend working with wellness brokers to help you define SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) wellness goals and ensure they align with your business goals. - Understand Employeesâ Wellness Needs: Conduct surveys to identify your employees' lifestyle needs and align the gifts to their wellness goals.
- Curate Wellness Gift Bundles: Choose wellness gifts that support your organization's wellness culture. Suppose you want to boost workplace productivity and your employees want to improve their health and fitness. You could provide wellness gifts that reinforce healthy behavior, including gym subscriptions and healthy office snacks.
- Integrate Wellness Gifts into Wellness Initiatives: Implement wellness gifts as part of your overall wellness program to help you drive meaningful impact. For example, you could tie the gifts to wellness challenges to stimulate employee participation.
- Choose a Wellness Gifts Provider: Partner with a wellness gift vendor to help you personalize the rewards to employees' preferences.
- Communicate the Reward System: Announce the wellness reward system and involve employees during the rollout phase. Let employees know how the wellness gifts tie into the company's wellness culture and goals. Also, explain how participants will qualify for the wellness gifts and how they can redeem them.
- Test and Refine: Track the impact of the wellness gifts to determine changes in engagement rates, employee motivation, and contribution to organizational goals. Also, use our Wellness Program Audit Checklist to evaluate your initiativesâ overall impact and see whether its actually driving meaningful outcomes for employees.
Where to Buy Wellness Gifts for Employees
You could buy wellness gifts for employees anywhere, including from your local convenience store. However, wellness incentives work better when you let employees pick their preferred gifts, which is why we recommend online marketplaces.
We have compiled a list of the best places to buy wellness gifts for your workers.
1. SoHookd
SoHookd is the #1 rated wellness marketplace for purchasing gifts for your employees. It lets you customize wellness bundles that align with your organizationâs wellness culture.
Other SoHookd marketplace features include:
- Less Administrative Hassles: SoHookd provides ongoing support, including selecting employees who qualify for wellness incentives.
- Diverse Options: Employees have a wide variety of gifts to choose from, including fitness apps and nutrition coaching.
- Instant Redemption: Lets employees redeem their gift cards through email or mail without lengthy bureaucratic approvals.
Looking to buy wellness gifts for employees?
Let SoHookd manage your wellness reward system and reduce your administrative hassles.
Start by claiming your free eBook to learn how wellness incentives boost employee wellness participation and drive meaningful results for your organizationâs wellness culture.
2. Retreat Yourself
Retreat Yourself is a general gift marketplace with corporate wellness incentives being one of its offered service categories. Companies can shop wellness gifts and mail them or let employees redeem their gift cards based on personal preferences.
However, some users complained about the marketplaceâs generic catalog, which limits employeesâ freedom to choose gifts that match personal preferences.
3. FabFitFun
FabFitFun works similarly to Retreat Yourselfâit is a general gift marketplace with little specialization in corporate wellness incentives.
Also, unlike our SoHookd wellness marketplace, which lets you customize your gift bundles, FabFitFun curates the rewards on your behalf, limiting employeesâ choices.
Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing Wellness Gifts
The worst-case scenario with wellness initiatives is employees not utilizing the wellness gifts. However, this often stems from mistakes in the implementation steps discussed earlier.
Below are common pitfalls when choosing wellness gifts and how to avoid them:
- Overbranding: Adding your brand logo and theme to wellness gifts often makes them seem like promotional merchandise, diluting the expected impact. Instead, keep the branding subtle and focus on your employeesâ wellness experience.
- Ignoring Personal Preferences: The main issue with sending generic gifts is that employees donât value the same things. For example, some employees could be ecstatic about receiving a spa voucher, while others could find them âuseless.â Our wellness marketplace provides a huge product catalog, allowing employees to choose gifts they resonate with.
- Not Aligning the Gifts with Wellness Goals: Providing random perks undermines the purpose of wellness gifts. Also, the gifts might not support actual well-being. Work with wellness brokers to help align the incentives with employeesâ lifestyle goals to maximize your wellness dollars.
- Overlooking Practicality: Some wellness gifts, though well-intentioned, might not be practical. For example, offering to buy treadmills might seem impactful, but they might not be practical for employees with limited living spaces. The better option would be to provide free gym memberships.
- Making the Redeeming Process Hectic: Wellness gifts with short expiration dates or lengthy redemption steps often create friction and frustration for employees. Our wellness marketplace lets employees redeem their gifts instantly without additional administrative approvals.
Tips for Choosing Health and Wellness Gifts for Employees
Use our cheat sheet below to pick wellness gifts that resonate with your employees:
- Match Gifts to Employeesâ Wellness Needs: The gifts should empower employees to maintain their healthy behaviors. For example, free gym subscriptions help employees pursue their health and fitness goals.
- Personalize the Gifts: Let employees choose their preferred wellness incentives so they pick gifts that align with their lifestyle goals. Our SoHookd wellness marketplace lets employees redeem wellness gifts based on personal preferences.
- Check for Usability: Ensure the wellness gifts are accessible and easy to use to boost employee participation in wellness challenges. For example, employees should not require administrative approval to use their redeemed gifts.
- Align Wellness Gifts with Wellness Culture: Customize wellness bundles that align with your organizationâs wellness goals. This lets you leverage the incentives to drive meaningful wellness results. For instance, if you want to improve employeesâ mental wellness, the gifts could include yoga mats and guided meditation audiobooks.
Watch our free on-demand webinar to learn how to introduce incentives that inspire wellness engagement for employees.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Next, letâs answer possible questions you may have about wellness gift ideas for employees.
Can Wellness Gifts Be Part of an Employee Benefits Package?
Yes. Wellness gifts can be part of an employee benefits package. Usually, the benefits packages include perks like health insurance and paid time off to improve employeesâ well-being or help increase their job satisfaction.
Wellness gifts can complement the benefits package. For example, you could provide paid gym memberships as part of the medical benefits to improve employeesâ health and fitness.
How Often Should Employers Give Wellness Gifts?
Thereâs no specific timeline on how often you should give your employees wellness gifts. Some organizations do it quarterly, while others do it annually. However, we recommend tying your wellness gifts to wellness challenges to boost employee participation rates and drive meaningful results.
How to Handle Wellness Gifts for Remote Employees?
The best way to handle wellness gifts for remote teams is by selecting easily shippable incentives or opting for virtual/digital perks. For example, you could offer e-gift cards that employees can redeem for their preferred products. Our wellness marketplace lets remote employees redeem their rewards instantly and have them delivered to their doorsteps.
Conclusion
This article should help you implement a reward system that stimulates employee enrollment and participation in wellness challenges. However, the most essential tip is to tailor the wellness gifts to your employeesâ interests and wellness goals.
Unfortunately, many wellness services offer generic gift bundles, which fail to motivate employees to participate in the challenges.
Our SoHookd wellness marketplace lets you curate gift bundles that align with your organizationâs wellness culture. Also, employees can redeem their gifts for products and services that resonate with their wellness goals.
Schedule a demo for hands-on experience with our wellness marketplace and reward system!
