Workflow of the Week: Corporate Gift Giving Guide | Mitra Tech Holdings Co., Ltd.

Corporate gifts are a growing industry, with recent research showing the $242 billion market to grow at around 8% annually through 2024. Not surprising given its proven effectiveness in fostering goodwill and stronger work relationships. In a Coresight Research survey, more than 80% of his respondents agreed that the gift improved their relationships with employees and customers.

However, it is not always clear what is appropriate or which gifts violate the company’s business courtesy policy. In highly regulated or highly compliant industries such as government, financial, legal, and pharmaceutical, we often find out what we can receive, what we must reject, and store this information for future audits. method is limited. Using technology to automate the management, review and approval of these records can eliminate uncertainty, provide standard guidelines, and retain all records and decisions to drive compliance.

Without an automated approval process, employees could consult handbooks to see if the gift falls under company policy, email the legal team, or accept the gift without being fully compliant. is needed.

The first two options are time-consuming and often require follow-up that strains the relationship between the employee and the gift giver. Merely accepting the last option, the gift, puts the employee and their company at risk of non-compliance. In some cases, accepting a gift can look like favoritism or bribery. It’s important to have streamlined and secure processes so that your employees feel comfortable working with clients without endangering your reputation or violating company policies.

Gift and business courtesy workflows are bi-directional for both employees and clients. For example, a self-service portal allows employees to validate gifts they have received. Through a standardized portal, employees can identify the type of gift received by product, price, etc. If gifts are hard to categorize, questions can be triaged and automatically routed to the right person for a quick response. This happens occasionally, but the majority of declarations are handled automatically, validated against company policy on the backend, and generate appropriate guidance. Employers wishing to send a gift can use a similar form to verify whether the gift is appropriate. In both cases, these declarations or requests ensure full compliance with company policies and return a set of data that is stored in case it is needed for internal audits.

Gifts and business courtesies are becoming more and more common, but without proper policies in place and an easy way to declare gifts and courtesies, businesses face new challenges. will be Workflow automation easily overcomes both of these challenges, allowing employees to relax and enjoy the milestones their gifts celebrate.