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Sending delightful corporate gifts for Women's day is important. Why? Well, from the first time women tiptoed into the erstwhile male-dominated workplaces, with the renewed sense of self-respect and financial independence, life has been challenging for them.
Even while juggling between strenuous responsibilities of nurturing the young one, caring for the elders, and endless household chores, she forced the corporate world to take notice of her sharp business acumen that she carries as nonchalantly as she wears her grace, earning the fitting moniker: quintessential multitasker.
However, the ravaging pandemic is taking a lot of hard-earned wind out of the ships of women's workforces. The added home chores, the burden of being there for everyone in the family, and Covid patients in the home are nudging them to hang up the boots and bid farewell to their dreams.
Clearly, companies are on the verge of losing their most-devoted and loyal workforce: women. They need to wake up and take bold steps to prevent this detrimental attrition.
The most logical, proven, and cost-effective method for it is rewarding them graciously through customized and out-of-the-box gifting ideas.
Prasad Dhamdhere
The Need to Recognize Women’s Contributions
More than the much-celebrated Women’s day gifts for employees, this is the time that they need to be valued and given the deserved recognition that they need, and here is why:
1. The ‘broken rung’ is holding women back
Facing up the broken rung at the first step up to manager is the glaring reality for women. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 86 women are promoted. Consequently, men outnumber women significantly at the manager level, resulting in far fewer women to promote to higher levels. It's, then, self-explanatory why the representation of women at the senior manager, director, and vice-president levels has moved at a snail’s pace.
2. Women are more burned out than the men
For female employees, particularly for married ones, more work from home directly meant more work at home. Women with children were three times more likely than fathers to be responsible for the majority of the housework and childcare during the pandemic. An added responsibility of the office negatively exacerbated the already-worsening situation.
3. The pay gap
Women's day gift ideas for employees gather further importance when it dawns upon you that a pandemic has widened the global pay gap between women and men.
In OECD countries, women earned 12.9% less than men in median earnings in 2018. Wage losses due to COVID19 are affecting women disproportionately. In Europe, women are experiencing wage bill losses of about 8.1% compared to just 5.4% for men.
This ruinous pay gap stems from the fact that women who make up a majority of frontline and essential workers in the industries are facing business closures (e.g., hospitality and retail).
4. The impact of me-too movement
Though the me too movement, which emerged in Hollywood in 2017, made some significant changes in the workplace safety and overall mindset regarding women, it has dented the womens’ bright prospects as well.
Studies have found that 64% of senior men shy away from solo interactions with junior women because they are scared of rumors about their intentions.
It clearly means missing out on crucial mentorship opportunities, as men typically have more power than women in most organizations. That’s why 3 in 5 female employees say they feel like their prospects of getting a promotion are worse in their new remote work environment.
5. Women humanize the management approach
Owing to their intrinsic sensitivity, women managers are better at understanding their subordinates. They are actively helping them navigate work-life challenges through workload management and thereby ensuring their overall well-being.
Senior-level women are twice as likely as senior-level men to dedicate time to these tasks at least weekly. Naturally, women are proving to be better cut out for future leadership roles.
This much light on the not-much-favourable circumstances for women employees is enough to substantiate the need to recognise their contribution, in both the cranial and emotional development of a company, through Women's day gifts. Now the question is what to gift.
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Best Corporate Gifts for Women’s Day
Though men and women are equal, they aren’t similar. Their idea of what actually constitutes the ideal gift varies greatly.
Hence, when thinking of women's day gift ideas for employees, companies need to find out the answer to one tough question:
What gifts do women like?
Well, science can be of a bit help.
Even though it’s an axiomatic truth that women are emotional, they are equally practical—if not more than their gender counterparts. They value the daily usable things that might heavy-lift their household chores as equally as special experiences that naturally amuses womanhood.
That’s why your ideology for Women's day gifts for employees has to be a unique and strategic amalgamation of earthly things and heavenly experiences.
Here are a few to make a note of:
1. E-Gift vouchers
Women are more choosy, picky, and particular about their buying. What is a mere maroon to whole men folk is a lighter red for women. Naturally, their deep sense of aesthetics and fitting make them hard-to-satisfy- gift receivers.
E-Gift vouchers, with their singular capacity of letting the receiver choose what goes with their taste and personality, can quell this unrest while gifting to women. But freedom of choice isn’t the only reason women will love gift cards in the form of gifts.
2. Offers for buying
Stores want to move their customers more and more on online mode to reduce the administrative strain and crowd. Their assured way of achieving it is rolling out offer points or CashBack or rewards for buying ónline Gift Cards. Naturally, it's an excellent way for women employees getting the gift to earn as well.
3. Wait till you get the best
Though women are impulsive buyers, they are tenacious enough to wait for the perfect buy. It happens more than often that they don’t find something that clicks their inner guts instantly. But since e-gift cards generally come with a validity of 1 year, women can wait till the new desirable arrivals dazzle them.
What vouchers to hand out?
1. Learning vouchers
As of the August 2020 Fortune Global list, only 13 women (2.6%) were CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies. They further sink in a leadership ladder as the levels progress:
- Executives: 23%
- Senior managers: 29%
- Managers: 37%
- Professionals: 42%
- Support staff: 47%
One among many reasons cited by companies for not allocating women higher positions is knowledge and skill deficit. Letting women upskill themselves by devouring the online treasure troves through learning vouchers, thus, is an ideal instrument to pull them up in the organizational hierarchies.
2. Apparels & Fashion vouchers
Whether she is a homemaker or a billion-dollar deal maker, there is always space for a few more trendy and fresh-off-the-boat fashion apparel in her overflowing cupboard. She simply loves to look Instagrammable by celebrating and showcasing her natural beauty - making fashion vouchers most desirable Women's day gift ideas for employees.
3. Jewellery vouchers
There is hardly anything as everlasting and intimate as the affair between women and gold – particularly the Asiatic women. The desire is ever strong in them to wear the soft golden glow of the precious metal around their neck and nose to look like a princess from the ancient kingdom.
4. Baby and kids vouchers
A significant time and mind’s attention span of female employees go to the child caring, particularly if it’s a newborn baby. During or post maternity leaves, baby care vouchers, indeed, are ideal and helpful Women’s day gifts.
5. Home Décor
It’s very women-esque to wish to decorate the little paradise called home with a melange of eye-satiating things- the moon lamp, an oil painting of a couple in Paris, a wood-carved bookshelf, to name a few. What will sweeten their home décor experience is a voucher that offers steady discounts and early access to the newest collections.
6. Fitness & Sports
Women are bound to face more health issues once they reach the age cap of 30. Iron deficiency, bone weakening, menopause take them over. The familial and official responsibilities make them ignore this slow deterioration of health. Gifting them vouchers to gyms and health centers will pump them up and help them retain their vigor.
7. Gadgets
It’s a myth that women aren’t take-savvy, certainly not the office-going modern women. The truth is, they cherish a gadget that can help them in acing the multitasking -and vouchers with discounts as Women's day gifts can give them a long rope in this regard.
8. Subscription
It’s an open secret that women are the prime TV remote-clingers. They consume more OTT and TV content than men.
A survey conducted among U.S. adults in January 2020 showed that women were 9% more likely than men to watch or stream TV shows every day, with 56% reporting that they did so compared to 47% of male respondents. You can easily amp up their in-house entertainment by bestowing upon them subscription vouchers of their favorite OTT platforms.
Experiences
Women are more emotional, and they value feelings more isn’t just a social truth. It’s scientific truth. According to a Science Direct, compared to males, females score higher in standard tests of emotion recognition.
Neuroimaging studies have discovered that women utilize more areas of the brain than men when it comes to processing emotions. Brain’s mirror neurons allow us to experience the world with more intense emotions. Since hardly anything under the sun triggers emotions more deeply than experiences, gifting unique experiences to women fits in like gloves.
9. Spa Experiences
More than anyone, women want to escape into another world at the first available opportunity, even if it’s momentarily, to shut off from external stimuli. This urgent need to 'get away,' especially in urban decay, is becoming an increasing reality for working women.
Their preferred way to achieve that quick getaway is careful pampering with aromatic lotions and medicinal potions in posh spas. Give them wellness vouchers as Women's day gifts where they can spend their spa-cation with the much-needed me-time.
10. Adventure experiences
Adventure has ceased to be the reserved territory for males only. Women have shown not just the right attitude to handle the adrenaline-pumping stunts but aptitude to master them. Note that such activities are key to boosting the risk-taking appetite of employees and realizing the potential that might have been kept hidden.
Adventures like flying a plane, hot air balloon rides, deep-water snorkelling, high-altitude zip-line ride, sky-diving, trekking, and camping in the snow-clad mountains are sure to resonate well with your female employees and help them break the taboos and inhibitions that they carry in society.
11. Hobbies
By nature, women are nurturers with the innate capacity for creation. The mundane life might have plastered that spark of creativity with dust. By gifting them vouchers of hobby classes, then be it pottery, painting, origami, you can provide an outlet to their flaming desire to create something meaningful.
Also, it’s important to note that hobbies are the biggest killer of the greatest scourge of modern time – stress and loneliness, which are in abundance in this time of the pandemic.
12. Self-defence workshops
However unpleasant it is, the truth is streets aren’t completely safe for women. You don’t know which danger is lurking where. Preparing them for the worst by arranging a short workshop by an accomplished martial arts trainer for your female employees is a perfect way to empower them.
Karate classes, kick-boxing, and martial arts make for helpful self-defense programs. Apart from making them feel confident, vouchers from your end as Women's day gifts for employees instill in their hearts how much you care for their safety and overall well-being.
13. All-girl-gang over a fine dining
Kitty parties, where women forget their worries for a moment and open up their hearts to other women towering laughs, are rare moments of happiness for women. Such tête-à-tête becomes even more memorable with a dash of scrumptious food and colorful mocktails. Hand them over vouchers of a classy restaurant and let them have a bountiful amount of hearty talks.
14. Weekend getaway
Women employees are generally hesitant to think about long holidays with their great buddies. A visual of a disarrayed house without them holds them back. Micro holidays over a weekend, thus, is a perfect panacea for this ailment.
A planned saunter to the nearby hill station or a beach, where they keep all the humdrum at bay with appetizing food and unique activities, can give your women folks the much-needed respite. Remember: A well-travelled woman isn’t just an asset to the corporate world but society as well.
Key Takeaways:
- Working in offices, traditionally male-dominated spaces, by carrying the household responsibilities and worries in mind has always come with an acute pinch for women. The pandemic elevated the intensity of that pinch - forcing them to hang their boots prematurely.
- Companies, then, are clearly looking at the diminishing size of their quality workforce, as women have proved to be better managers and creators of empathy-based culture in organizations.
- That’s precisely why rewarding them rightly and respectfully, by carefully analyzing their likes and dislikes, won’t just help you retain the cream of your workforce but motivate them for higher aspirations.
- Since women always lurk on the thin line of realism and utopia, the right gifting approach for them should be a delectable combination of daily-usable things and once-in-lifetime experiences.
Though international women’s day is marked to value half of the population of the world, considering the stress level that working women are experiencing, the right moment to reward them is NOW.
