Our German Desk
While this time of year is a time for giving and clients and suppliers can be generous, gifts can cause their own set of problems.
To prevent potential conflicts of interest (e.g. allegations of employees favouring suppliers who provide gifts), or complaints from other employees that they are missing out, many employers have gifting policies.
If, as an employer, you have gifting policies, now is a good time to remind employees of their content.
If you do not have gifting policies and there is a reasonable chance that some of your employees may be compromised by overly generous suppliers or clients, or gifts for some employees or groups of employees mean that others miss out, you may wish to put such a policy in place or consider doing so. These policies can be extremely simplistic (such as refusing gifts or requiring the declaring of gifts over a certain value), or more complicated (such as requiring that all gifts be pooled and then shared as per a formula).
