What to Spend Per Person on a Staff Gift
Set the per-head figure first and let the total follow. Every workable staff gift budget is a number multiplied by a headcount, and every unworkable one is a lump sum that somebody has to divide up later while the list is still moving. Decide what one person is worth, then find out how many people there are.
This is the order the conversation runs in when it goes well, and the reverse of the order it usually starts in. Most enquiries arrive as a total, because a total is what gets approved. It still has to be turned back into a per-head figure before anything can be chosen, and that is the job below. If you already know your number, our gifts for employees are grouped so you can shop straight to it.
Why per head beats a lump sum
Three reasons, all of them practical.
The headcount moves. Between approval and dispatch somebody resigns, two people start, and three contractors turn out to be on the list after all. A per-head figure absorbs that without another approval. A total does not, and the person who has to fix it is whoever least wanted the job.
It is the only number anyone can check for fairness. Staff talk, and what they compare is not the total, which they never see, but what arrived at their desk against what arrived at someone else's. A per-head figure is a defensible answer to that. A total is not an answer at all.
And it survives next year. A per-head figure carries forward, adjusts for headcount without argument, and makes the following year's approval a one-line comparison rather than a fresh negotiation.
The four bands, and what each one buys
Most Australian employers land in one of four brackets, and the jump between them is not linear. What changes as you move up is less about how much is in the gift and more about how much of the gift is presentation, and whether it is meant to be opened alone or shared.
| Per head | What it is for | When it is the right call |
|---|---|---|
| $30-60 | A real gift rather than a token, single-serve, opened at the desk | Large teams, seasonal thank-yous, casual and part-time staff on the same terms as everyone else |
| $60-100 | Something to take home and share with a household | The default for a permanent team. Most end-of-year gifting sits here |
| $100+ | A gift with obvious weight to it, presented to be seen | Small teams, a year that genuinely warranted it, or long-service recognition |
| $200+ | A single significant gift | Rarely a whole-team figure. Usually a handful of individual recognitions inside a lower band |
Pick the band before you look at anything. Looking first and budgeting afterwards is how a twelve-person plan quietly becomes an eight-person plan.
What changes at twenty people, and at two hundred
Under about twenty, you can still gift like an individual. You know who has a new baby, who is gluten free and who would rather have the coffee than the wine, and the admin of acting on that is an afternoon. Personalisation is affordable at this size and it is the main advantage a small team has.
Past twenty, the constraint stops being money and becomes addresses. The gift itself is the easy part. Collecting and validating a hundred home addresses, chasing the fourteen people who have not replied, and handling the three that were typed wrong is the work, and it is the work that runs over. Budget attention for it, not just money.
Past a hundred, treat it as a logistics exercise with a gift attached. That means one decision for everyone, exceptions handled as a named list rather than case by case, and a single order rather than a spreadsheet of separate ones. It is what our corporate hampers are set up for, and gifting to a team of 10, 50 or 200 walks through what actually changes at each size.
The three costs people forget
Delivery to individual addresses. One gift to one office is one delivery. The same gift to sixty homes is sixty, and that is a line in the budget rather than a rounding error. It is standard Australia Post rates for your address, no handling markups, so it is predictable, but it has to be in the number from the start.
The people who are not on the list. Contractors, the agency team, somebody on parental leave, the two people who started last week. Deciding late that they are included is how a per-head figure gets quietly cut to cover them. Decide who is in before you decide what they get.
Time. Somebody has to run this, usually on top of their actual job, in the busiest month of the year. It is the cost that never appears in the budget and always appears in the aftermath.
When to spend unevenly, and how to survive it
Sometimes you should. Long service, a genuinely exceptional year, or a small group who carried something difficult are all reasonable grounds for spending more on some people than on others. The rule that makes it survivable is that the difference has to be explicable in one sentence to the person who did not get it.
Two things make it fail. Spending unevenly for reasons that are really about seniority, which reads as a second pay grade rather than a gift. And spending unevenly in secret, which never stays secret, because gifts arrive at desks in front of other desks.
The usual compromise is a consistent gift for everyone plus separate, clearly named recognition for the specific thing. Same base, visible reason for the difference. Where the difference is dietary rather than about merit, match the value rather than the item and say so.
Setting your number
Take the band that matches the team you actually have, multiply, add the delivery, and put ten per cent aside for the people who turn out to be on the list. Then check the treatment side before you commit, because how a staff gift is handled for tax depends on the per-head figure and not on the total. The wider picture is in the workplace gifting handbook.
When you have the number, send us the list. Give us the spreadsheet and we handle every address, you get one order and one invoice, and we issue a proper GST tax invoice, which is simple for your finance team. Start at placing a corporate order, or call 1300 795 802 and talk it through with a person who does this all year.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Australian companies spend per employee on gifts?
There is no published national figure worth quoting, so the honest answer is a range rather than a number. In practice most employers land somewhere between the $30-60 and $60-100 bands per head, with $100+ reserved for small teams or for long-service recognition. The band matters more than the exact figure: within a band the gifts are broadly comparable, and moving between bands changes what the gift is for rather than just how large it is.
Is it better to give one big gift or several small ones?
One, in almost every case. Several small gifts spread across the year cost more in delivery and admin than the same money spent once, and they are individually forgettable in a way a single good gift is not. The exception is a team that has been through a long stretch of hard work, where something arriving in the middle of it does more than the same value arriving in December. If you are splitting, split by moment rather than by month.
Do you have to spend the same on everyone?
The same value, not the same item. Matching the value is what makes a gift programme defensible, and matching the item is what makes it impossible, because somebody on the list will not drink, will not eat gluten, or will be away when it lands. Swap the contents freely and hold the value steady, and say plainly that this is what you are doing. When someone on the list does not drink, or has a dietary need covers how to collect that without turning it into a survey.