Choosing the right holiday gifts to give to employees can be tough, especially when you want to choose something that feels personal and shows your appreciation. While holiday employee gifts are a significant investment, in a competitive marketplace for talent these kinds of personal gestures of appreciation can make a big impact when it comes to how employees feel about your company and boosting retention. After all, according to a recent study, 66 percent of employees say they would “likely leave their job if they didn’t feel appreciated.”
So what’s the perfect gift to help show your employees some appreciation this 2019 holiday season? My vote is for smartwatches. And here’s why.
Better Health and Wellness
Whether it’s an employee or a loved one, if you care about someone, you also care about their health and wellness. Smartwatches are a great way for employees to become more aware of their health and receive nudges to help them improve it.
Stay Connected With Smartwatches
White Paper
Learn how wearables are streamlining task management and improving safety for mobile workers. Download Now
For example, our Samsung Galaxy Watch Active includes the Samsung Health app, which allows individuals to track their activity, workouts and heartrate, monitor their sleep patterns, and even track their meals and water intake. Employees can also join challenges with friends or other employees and set milestones and fitness goals within the app.
As employees join fitness challenges together, this gift can help create a positive company culture and even increase interoffice relationships. In fact, 85 percent of employers said focusing on employee health and wellness “had a high impact on employee engagement, recruitment, retention and company culture,” according to a survey from Virgin Pulse as reported by HR Dive.
Improved Productivity
Another great aspect of smartwatches is that they can also help employees be more productive and stay on schedule. While this is clearly a benefit to your business, it’s also a benefit to your employees. By helping employees better manage their time and increase productivity, you’re also giving them the gift of more time to focus on the priorities that matter most.
Some of the ways smartwatches can increase productivity are by enabling calendar notifications that remind employees of meetings or upcoming calls. You can also set alarms and add reminders to your calendar by simply speaking into your watch. And, smartwatches also provide instant access to SMS messages and email alerts.
By not having to pull out their smartphone or log in to a computer to receive notifications and messages or schedule calendar events, employees save a little bit of time — and a small amount of time saved for each incoming notification can add up to a lot of time saved when you receive dozens of notifications throughout your day.
Customizable to Your Employees’ Needs
Smartwatches also offer the opportunity to add a personal touch to your holiday gift. They can be customized to support specific business objectives. This can be as simple as adding a branded home screen or watch face to a Galaxy Watch or deploying a task management app. You can even develop apps that support specific business objectives, tying the gift to a business transformation initiative.
However you choose to customize the watch, it’s important the holiday gift is viewed as a gift, and not just meant for you to dole out more work. So, make sure there’s value to the employee in how you customize the watch, such as deploying a task management app that makes it easier and faster for them to do a specific task — taking work off their plate, rather than adding more.
Give a Gift That Keeps on Giving
With the ability to offer ongoing support to employees to improve their health and productivity, smartwatches make great holiday gifts. They’ve also come a long way since they were first launched — now featuring a longer battery life and more functionality. The Galaxy Watch Active, for example, can go nonstop for days on a single charge, can be quickly configured and deployed with your company’s settings, and is sleek, thin and lightweight, making it fun to wear while offering employees a hands-free way to communicate. Who wouldn’t want to receive a gift like that this holiday season?
Ready to give the smart corporate gift this year? Learn more about Samsung’s line of smartwatches and see special offers available for business customers.
