Long service awards: catalogue schemes vs letting people choose

Twenty-five years feels like a ludicrously long time to give to one employer, especially these days. But even so, the reward for it usually arrives as a login: a long service award catalogue, a points balance, and a few hundred items somebody else picked. The other option is simpler, and it makes some finance teams nervous. You give the person a budget and let them spend it where they want.

Quick answer: A long service award catalogue gives the employee points to spend inside a closed branded range, and it handles trophies, certificates and tiered structure well. Gift with choice gives them a budget to spend across a real retail range, with the value visible in pounds rather than points. Catalogues suit programmes built around a physical commemorative item; choice suits programmes where the point is that the person actually wants what they get.

This compares two delivery models, not how to design the programme itself. For milestones, budgets and the case for running one at all, start with our guide to long service awards.

How a long service award catalogue actually works

You buy into a scheme, the provider hosts a branded storefront, and each service milestone releases a points balance the employee spends inside it. Five years opens one tier, twenty-five another. Alongside the points sit the ceremonial parts: a certificate, an engraved crystal decanter, a not-their-taste-at-all watch, sometimes a presentation pack for the manager to hand over. Providers like TerryBerry and O.C. Tanner built this model, and plenty of UK schemes follow the same shape.

Here's the part nobody likes to admit. The catalogue exists to make the budget easy for the company to control, not to make the reward better for the person receiving it. Points are a currency the employer sets the exchange rate on, and you rarely see the pound value sitting behind a point. That's a design choice, and it serves procurement more than it serves the person who's been there since 2001.

Where a catalogue scheme genuinely wins

We'll be fair, gift catalogues on points-based platforms do a lot of things well:

• Physical, engraved, commemorative items: if what you want to hand over at 25 years is a piece of glass with someone's name and dates on it, buy that
• Tiered structure out of the box: escalating values at five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty five years, already built. You're buying a programme design as much as a reward
• A presentation moment: certificates, framed awards, a manager script, something to photograph. The ceremony is often the bit people remember
• Fixed catalogue pricing: finance can forecast the cost per milestone across a headcount plan
• A durable record: long service schemes need to know who got what and when, which matters more than people realise once you hit the HMRC ten year rule below

For a programme whose centrepiece is a physical award, the catalogue model does kinda work. The problem is that most schemes aren't that. Most schemes are a certificate plus a browse.

Where gift with choice wins

The moment the reward stops being a trophy and starts being an item, the catalogue's advantage disappears. The employee is choosing from a range that was selected for the scheme, not for them.

Emily Hall, Head of Engagement at Octopus Energy, put the choice argument better than any provider deck:

> "If I just handed someone £30 right now, realistically they'd spend it on something they need but don't want - groceries, a household bill. But with a curated list of gifts, they get the thing they actually want."

The team at Mercia Asset Management described the same problem from the other end, when they looked at what they'd been sending:

> "It's reminiscent of the standard hamper. People might like 50% of what's in there, but then they give away the other 50%, and that's not really what we were aiming for."

That's where it all falls apart. A lot of the gifts on offer are a bit rubbish. Here's what changes when the award is a budget rather than a balance:

• Value in pounds, not points. Everyone in the chain, finance, the manager and the recipient, is looking at the same number
• A range that moves: Huggg carries 10,000+ gift options across 700+ brands, and it updates without a scheme redesign
• No address collection up front: The recipient adds their own delivery details when they claim a physical gift, so nobody's chasing home addresses for a 20 year anniversary list
• No account for the recipient: The link is the gift, which matters if your list includes frontline people who never open a work laptop
• Options a catalogue rarely carries, including giving the value away. Victoria Shaw, Director of Talent & Culture at Cycas Hospitality, said "A lot of our employees are choosing to redeem their Hugggs for charity. It's a great way for them to give back, and they appreciate having that option"
• Cost you can see: With Huggg you only pay for the gifts you send, with no platform fee on top

Ask any provider what happens to value that's never spent. On a points scheme, unspent balances and expiry rules sit inside the provider's system, so get the answer in writing. With Huggg, gifts expire after a year, and upgrading to Huggg Campaigns lets you set a custom expiry and cancel unclaimed gifts. There's more on the points problem in gift cards vs points based reward platforms and why letting employees choose their own reward works.

What the UK tax rules say about long service awards

Long service awards have their own HMRC exemption, and it is not the trivial benefits one. People conflate the two constantly, including some providers.

The long service exemption applies where all of these hold:

• The employee has at least 20 years' service with you
• The award is non-cash
• The value is no more than £50 for each year of service
• No similar award has been made to that employee in the previous 10 years

Cash doesn't qualify, and neither do what HMRC calls cash vouchers, meaning anything exchangeable for cash. That's a real point of difference between delivery models, and it's the question to put to your accountant about whatever you're planning to send, whether that's catalogue points, a gift card or a physical item.

Note what the rules don't say. Nothing requires the award to come from a catalogue, and choice doesn't disqualify it. The test is the value, the service length, the gap since the last award and whether it's non-cash.

Below 20 years' service you're outside this exemption, and awards at five or ten years get assessed on their own terms. The separate trivial benefits rules (under £50 a head, not cash, not a reward for performance, not contractual) may apply instead. This is general information and not formal tax advice, so check your scheme with your accountant or HMRC.

Which model fits your programme

Pick the catalogue if the award is a physical commemorative item, if you want the tiering and certificates designed for you, and if a fixed price per milestone is what finance needs to sign off.

Pick gift with choice if the award is meant to be something the person actually wants, if your milestone list spans desk-based and frontline staff, and if you'd rather the value be legible in pounds. These aren't mutually exclusive either. Plenty of programmes hand over an engraved item at 25 years and a spendable budget at every other milestone, which keeps the ceremony without paying for a catalogue you barely use.

To see what the choice side looks like in practice, have a look at gift with choice. No account needed for the person receiving it, and the range is the range.

Frequently asked questions

Are long service awards taxable in the UK?

Not always. HMRC has a specific exemption for long service awards: a non-cash award worth up to £50 per year of service, for an employee with at least 20 years' service, where no similar award has been made in the previous 10 years. Awards outside those conditions may be taxable and reportable. This isn't formal tax advice, so confirm your scheme with your accountant or HMRC.

Do gift cards qualify for the long service award exemption?

The exemption covers non-cash awards, and HMRC excludes cash and cash vouchers, meaning anything exchangeable for cash. Whether a particular gift card or gifting product counts as non-cash depends on how it works, so get it checked rather than assumed. The same question applies to catalogue points.

What is the alternative to a long service award catalogue?

Gift with choice: you set a budget in pounds and the employee picks their own gift from a live retail range, with no points currency and no closed catalogue. Some organisations run both, using a catalogue or bespoke item for the headline milestone and a spendable budget for the rest.

Do you lose the presentation moment if you don't use a catalogue?

Only if you skip it. The ceremony is something you run, not something the platform provides. A message from a leader, a moment in a team meeting and a printed card with the gift link on it all work, and for a milestone award the message usually carries more weight than the item.