End of the year at work: what employees actually remember — and what ends up in a drawer

Some time in November, someone in every company gets the task: “Come up with something for the end of the year.” The deadline is short, the budget is fixed and the list of names is long. And so every year it’s the same list: a notebook, a branded mug, a basket with wine and chocolate, a thermos, a chain-store gift card.

None of these gifts is bad. The problem is that almost all of them are forgotten by February. Ask your colleagues what they got two years ago and most won’t be able to tell you. This piece is for anyone who wants a gift this year that is more than a line in the budget — and for the person organising it, who needs it all to go smoothly.

Why most gifts are forgotten

It’s the same for everyone, so it feels like no one’s. A mug that twenty people receive says “the company bought twenty mugs”. Nobody experiences it as something chosen for them.

It’s an object, and objects get put away. The notebook goes in a drawer, the thermos on a shelf, and the kids finish the basket before Christmas. Things get used or they don’t — but they are rarely remembered.

Sometimes it’s even a chore. Wine for someone who doesn’t drink, sweets for someone watching what they eat, cosmetics that don’t suit them. A gift that has to be passed on or thrown away leaves a worse impression than no gift at all.

What people really remember

Research on gift-giving has shown the same thing for years: people remember experiences longer than things, and feel them as more personal — even when everyone got the same one. The reason is simple: the experience is mine. The same voucher for twenty people becomes twenty different afternoons.

When employees describe a gift that stayed with them, three things keep coming up:

• time for themselves — something that pulls them out of work and home for an hour
• freedom to choose — they decide when and how to use it
• something they wouldn’t buy themselves — they want it, but never get round to it or feel it’s a splurge

A massage ticks all three. And it has one more advantage a mug doesn’t: it can’t end up in a drawer. There’s no expiry date, so it waits until the person finds an hour for themselves — and then it gets used.

Why it fits after a year at a desk

By December, most office teams have built up the same thing: a stiff neck, tight shoulders and lower back pain from sitting. We wrote about it in our piece on office work syndrome, and about what we learned working with whole teams in our piece on corporate massage.

A gift that deals with exactly that — the body that carried the work all year — says something a mug can’t: “we saw how hard you worked”. And because our vouchers have no expiry date, nobody has to use theirs in the December rush. Many people save it for January or February, when the holiday glow has faded and work is back in full swing. That’s when it’s worth the most.

How to organise it without the December rush

1. Finalise the list by the end of November. Names, headcount and budget per person. December is the busiest month for companies and studios alike — the sooner the list is closed, the less stress.
2. Decide whether everyone gets the same. The simplest option is one massage for everyone. If your team has different preferences, a voucher for an amount lets each person choose their own treatment — a gentle relaxing massage, a firm one for the back, or a shorter back, neck and shoulder massage.
3. Check how company payment works. Up to 19 vouchers can be bought online by card, with a fiscal receipt issued to the company’s tax ID. From 20 vouchers, you order by bank transfer to the company account, with a pro-forma invoice and a discount on every voucher. Check with your accountant how the gift should be booked.
4. Add the company logo. The logo is printed on the back of the voucher, so the gift clearly carries the company’s signature, not a shop’s.
5. Choose how it arrives. Each employee can receive the voucher directly by email, with a personal message. Or the company receives a summary with all the codes and hands them out in person — at the year-end party, for example.
6. Tell people there’s no rush. One sentence with the gift — “use it whenever suits you, there’s no expiry date” — takes the pressure off and makes sure the voucher actually gets used rather than saved “for a better day”.

When massage isn’t the right choice

To be honest: if part of your team works from another city or only from home, a voucher for a studio in Vračar won’t mean much to them. Send those people something else — and keep the vouchers for the ones in Belgrade. The same goes for someone you know doesn’t like being touched; a short foot or face massage is often a pleasant surprise, but some people simply aren’t into it, and that’s fine.

Finally

A good end-of-year gift doesn’t have to be expensive, but it has to be for someone, not for a list. Time for yourself, with no deadline and no obligation, is exactly that — and that’s why it’s remembered longer than any mug.

Everything about corporate gifts for employees at Runway Massage — from one voucher to a hundred, with a company invoice and your logo on the back — is on our page for companies. Before ordering, you can also see what the voucher with your logo and the email your employees receive look like. The studio is at Golubačka 1 in Vračar, and every treatment comes with a warm drink, slippers and a complimentary foot massage.