"So," I asked Cindy,* an HR specialist for a Fortune 50, "Do you give your co-workers holiday gifts?"
"They aren't allowed," she explained.
"Not even a secret Santa?"
"If we do anything it's a white elephant gift exchange, but probably not even that."
Next, I asked my friend Ellen* who put in a lifetime in corporate America before becoming a foreign car salesperson.
"Are you going to give your co-workers holiday gifts?"
She shook her head in the negative, "There are too many people to give gifts."
"What about when you worked at the consulting firm, did you give gifts then?"
"I probably gave gifts to people on my team, especially the support staff," she said. "The thing I learned at my very first job is that you never gift up because if you give the boss a gift and others don't, it could create bad feelings."
In my small sample of the gainfully employed, I didn't find anyone who is giving a co-worker a gift. No one. I found consultants giving gifts to clients. I found bosses planning on hosting a holiday party. But, I didn't find one worker planning on giving one gift to a co-worker. From the BlogHer page on Facebook,
For me being in Sweden, Swedes don't do gifts for the coworkers. If I was still in the US, probably something small or a box of homemade cookies.
While some may think the dearth of holiday gift giving in the workplace can be blamed on the current economic downtown, experts say the economy is just a partial explanation. The other part is a shift in attitude that began about five years ago. "No one needs another thing on her desk," says Cy Wakeman, an HR expert who blogs at Fast Company.
Wakeman says today's worker, particularly the Gen Yers, want to focus less on consumerism during the holidays, and more on being a good corporate citizen.
Wakeman is not the only one saying gift giving in the workplace is passé. "Anthropologists have told us for years that the norm around gifts is an expectation of reciprocity," says Diane Swanson, a business ethics expert at Kansas State University, and author of Toward Integrative Corporate Citizenship. Swanson says it's the built-in expectation of reciprocity in gift giving that creates an ethical question of fairness and potential conflict of interest.
Cy Wakeman says another reason why holiday gift giving in the workplace is becoming part of our past corporate history is because today's workplace is more global. "Many people don't mark a holiday in December," says Wakeman, who adds there are also some legal reasons that are putting the kibosh on workplace gift giving.
"If someone is thinking of giving co-workers a holiday gift they should check in with HR before they do anything," says Wakeman, "Many corporations don't allow holiday gift giving or limit the amount on gift giving."
Instead of spending money, Wakeman suggests sending coworkers a handwritten compliment card where you acknowledge co-workers for their contributions to the team. In her own office, Wakeman says instead of giving gifts, her team adopts a family through the United Way, and then goes shopping together to buy toys and dinner for the family. "It ends up being a team building experience. It's fun to go out shopping and makes us appreciate that we all have jobs."
What if your work culture is still one of the few that does exchange holiday gifts? Wakeman says her favorite gift is a book because there is no way to insult someone by giving them a book as a gift.
For other ideas check out the suggestions here, here, and here.
What's happening at your office? Has it changed significantly in the past few years?
*Cindy and Ellen are pseudonyms. The conversations were real.
Elana Centor Editor, Business & Career
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