What do you do with client gifts?
December 23, 2008
This time of year always poses a bit of a problem for HR professionals when some employees are sent gifts from clients or suppliers, but others are not. Whilst it isn’t ideal to become the Christmas Scrooge and nobody wants to deny staff from being thanked by their clients, receiving gifts from clients does pose ethical questions about the potential purpose of the gift or the future repercussions of having accepted something from a client.
One of the main reasons that gifts should not be accepted by individual employees is that it tends to be the client-facing employees that are sent the gifts, e.g. the sales or account management teams. However normally there are many different ‘behind the scenes’ employees that contribute to the products or services provided for customers, and it isn’t really fair for just a few members of staff to benefit.
Many companies include a section in their policies and procedures on employees accepting gifts from clients, stating that gifts of money should never be accepted, and that gifts such as promotional clothing, wine or food will become the property of the company and should be handed in. This is what I am doing in my company; we have collected all the gifts sent in and will be carrying out a raffle later today to fairly hand out the copious bottles of wine that have been sent. I think this is the fairest way to manage the issue of client gifts.
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