Sincere thanks and shows of appreciation can never grow old. The occasional corporate gift or meaningful reward can provide you with an effective, cost-efficient way of maintaining high levels of employee morale and performance if done correctly. I believe it is important to make a distinction between corporate gift giving and incentive program rewards. Incentives are typically awarded for achieving defined levels of performance, while gifts are more or less spontaneous events that are not given as part of a predefined exchange.
If your desire is to express a genuine display of appreciation in thanking a special employee or department, you want to give a gift that is not specifically tied to their job performance. To make the greatest impression, it helps to make the gift relevant to their lives by giving it a more personal touch. For example, think about an aspect of their department's culture, perhaps a long-running inside joke of some sort, that you can tap into by giving a funny gift that only they will understand.
Even the more mundane gifts, like office supplies your employees can use on the job, will feel more personalized if you make them relevant to their department. For example you could give personalized calculators to the accounting department or promotional colored pencils and paints to an art department. Doing this rather than a generic, company-wide gift can help give the impression that you are in touch with each employees' individual needs.
