Asked to sort the team's Christmas gifts? Here's where to start

You hear a message alert, and suddenly everything changes. "Could you sort the Christmas gifts this year? 🙏😀". And that’s it, now it's your problem: the list, the budget, the deadline, and the people who'll notice if it all goes pear-shaped. It’s a lot of pressure, the chance to spoil Christmas - even if it is for a team of thirty-to-forty-somethings with mortgages and their own kids’ stockings to fill.

If you're a PA, EA or office manager who's just been asked to sort out the whole team's Christmas gifts, this is the 20-minute version. It's specifically written for UK teams, so it covers the £50 tax rule that a lot of generic guides tend to skip, and it'll save you from building the mother of all headache-inducing spreadsheets… that you really don't need anyway.

Quick answer: Start by agreeing four things with whoever gave you the job: who's on the gift list, the budget per head, the date that gifts need to arrive, and whether they should be branded. Keep the budget at £50 max per person so the gift counts as a tax-free trivial benefit. Then pick one of these three options: the same gift for everyone, a short choice of a few, or a gift sent as a link that people choose themselves. With a gift link, you don't need anyone's home address.

Step 1: Ask four questions before you start shopping

Most of the stress in Christmas gifting comes from not starting with the basics. Trying to return fifty-odd Amazon boxes at the last minute because the boss “isn’t convinced” that’s the right gift? Not the one. But take ten minutes with your manager now, and it saves you a week of back-and-forth in December.

1. Who's on the list? Get actual names, not a headcount. Then check for anyone who might be missed: contractors, new starters, people on parental leave, part-timers, and anyone who's leaving before Christmas
2. What's the budget per head? Not the total, but a per-head number - that gives you a better indication of what you can buy, and helps you stay on top of tax
3. When does it need to arrive? At the Christmas party, during the last working day, or "sometime in December" are three very different deadlines
4. Branded or not? If the company wants its logo on something, that adds weeks of lead time. If it doesn't, you've got far more options

One thing to look out for on the list. In our Christmas Gift Index, a survey of 500 UK workers, 35.2% of people aged 30 and over got absolutely nothing at all from their employer last Christmas, against 9.9% of under-30s. Our best guess is that long-servers might be the ones who get overlooked. So check yours for the people who've been around longest. Read the full finding.

Step 2: Set the number per head - consider fifty quid

In the UK, a gift to an employee can be tax-free under HMRC's trivial benefits rule if you follow a few rules. It has to cost £50 or less per person (including VAT), it can’t be cash or a cash voucher, it can’t be a reward for performance, and it can’t be in their contract.

Go over £50 - even by a couple of pence - and the whole gift becomes taxable, not just the extra. So £50 is a ceiling, rather than a target.

A few practical notes:

• Give everyone the same budget. Different values across one team cause more upset than a smaller gift ever will
• Keep 5-10% back for the people you'll inevitably miss like the late starters and the "oh, what about Sam? You know, who does our social media?"
• Directors of close companies have a £300 annual cap on trivial benefits, so check if you're buying for them too
• Check what the price includes. On Huggg the listed price includes VAT and delivery, so the number you see is the number that counts against £50

There's more detail in our guides to trivial benefits and gift cards and employee gifts and tax. This isn't tax advice, so check anything unusual with your finance team.

Step 3: Pick one of three simple options

You've got three real choices - we’ve got a fave, sure, but they are all right in different scenarios.

The same present for everyone

• Best when: the team is pretty central, maybe one or two offices max, you know them very well, and you want everyone opening the same thing at the same time. The big “wow we all got an iPod/branded bottle of champers/funny t-shirt with highly niche in-joke!” reveal
• Watch out for: specific diets and preferences, like people who can’t have alcohol or hate chocolate, teammates who don't observe Christmas, and anyone not office-based

A limited choice of two to four gifts

• Best when: you want the gift options to feel curated but you’re worried about getting it wrong
• Watch out for: chasing the whole team to make their choices and making a call on the no-replies. That makes what should be a festive, fun time into a big stress

A gift sent via link where people choose for themselves

• Best when: the team is spread across multiple sites and locations, doing different shifts or working from home offices, or it's big enough that you can't possibly know what everyone likes
• Watch out for: a gifting link with no added message looks lazy and insincere. The message really adds a special something (see step 5)

On Huggg, we actually call the third option a Gift with Choice: you set the budget, and each person picks the gift they actually want from the range of about fifty options.

And yeah, there's no simple answer to this. A physical gift handed over at the party obviously has a big impact in the moment. But if your team is spread out, a gifting link syncs up that “awh shucks” feeling because the person in the warehouse gets their gift at exactly the same time as the person at head office.

If you want gift ideas, our staff Christmas gifts guide has 50 priced options by budget - some whoppers in there. And if you're considering a hamper, hampers vs gift cards sets out where each one is the better bet.

Good news: you don't need a mega spreadsheet of home addresses

Most "how to organise Christmas gifts" guides tell you to build a tracker with everyone's home address. It's the slowest, most awkward part of the whole job, and you're collecting personal data you then have to look after. Faffy, slightly legally icky, and just not very Christmassy for you.

Jenny Wieland, People Systems Manager at Cycas Hospitality, put it simply: "Josephine spent two full days just sending out Easter eggs. Entering 70 addresses manually is no fun."

With a link-based gift, you skip all that nonsense. On Huggg, the gift is a link you send by email, by SMS, or yourself over Slack, Teams or WhatsApp. If someone picks something physical, they add their own delivery address when they claim it. If they pick a digital gift, it arrives instantly. Either way, you never hold anyone's address.

That's what changed things at Wingstop, too. Laura Wharton, their People Partner, said: "When we were delivering vouchers to a few hundred people one Christmas, we realised that it was taking too long."

In case you didn’t know… Huggg is an employee gifting platform used by UK businesses to send gifts to anything from one person to 10,000 at once. It's free to use, and you only pay for the gifts you send.

Step 4: Work back from the last working day

Here's what most people actually do: they leave it almost too late. In Huggg's own data from Christmas 2025, 67% of Christmas purchases happened in December, and 97% across November and December. So if you're reading this in October, you're ahead of the curve. Congrats! We’re here for it!

The dates that matter depend on the format:

• Branded or personalised physical gifts: order in October latest. Production plus delivery can run to several weeks in the Christmas rush
• Unbranded physical gifts to one office: order by mid-November, and allow for parcels going missing
• Digital gifts or gift links: these can genuinely go out on the day. No delivery deadline, no last posting date, no parcels sitting in reception after everyone's gone home

On Huggg, the Christmas range is live to browse now. Gift with Choice for Christmas opens to order on 3 November and the wider Christmas range on 4 November, while the everyday range can be sent today.

For a month-by-month plan, see how to get ahead of the Christmas rush.

Step 5: Don't skip the message

This is the part that decides whether the gift lands. In our Christmas Gift Index, 42% of UK workers said their last work gift felt generic, and only 34% said it made them feel genuinely valued. And 31% got nothing at all.

A generic gift and a valued one often cost exactly the same. The difference is usually a couple of sentences that show someone noticed the year that person actually had.

• Write it from a person, not "the management team"
• Mention something real from this year, even if it's small
• Keep it short. Three lines beats a paragraph nobody reads

Every Huggg gift opens with your own message and a digital gift wrap, so the words arrive with the gift rather than in a separate email. If you're stuck for words, our corporate Christmas cards guide has four message templates you can borrow.

Here’s what Lewis Quick, Huggg’s Commercial Director, has seen: “Spreadsheets and more spreadsheets, that’s the complaint I usually hear from people who have to deal with Christmas. It’s just not a great use of anyone’s time - especially if there’s a risk the carefully chosen gift falls flat. Huggg solves that problem, and does it pretty well in my opinion”.

Your copy-and-paste checklist

• Names of giftees - including starters, leavers, contractors, freelancers and people on leave
• Budget per person agreed, ideally at or under £50 (unless you’ve factored tax in)
• Deadline of gifts arriving agreed: party, last working day, or another specific date
• Branded or not: decided
• Format chosen: send one gift, a choice of a few, or a gifting link
• Dietary, alcohol and religious needs considered (Huggg’s choice and links cover this for you, so no-one feels overlooked)
• 5-10% of gifts or gift budget held back for late additions like last-minute hires
• Meaningful message written, from a named person
• Finance told what's coming, and where the invoice will go (Huggg shows the VAT treatment on the invoice and tracks P11D, for peace of mind)
• A back-up plan for the person who says "I never got my gift"

Christmas gifts for the team: FAQs

How much should I spend on each person for staff Christmas gifts?

It really depends on the size of your company and your financial situation, but £50 or less per person (including VAT) is often a practical choice in the UK, because that's where the trivial benefits tax exemption runs out. What is key? Spending the same on everyone in the team.

Are staff Christmas gifts always taxable?

They aren’t taxable if they meet HMRC's trivial benefits rule: £50 or less per person including VAT, not cash or a cash voucher, not a reward for performance, and not in their contract. But be careful. Anything over £50 and the whole value of the gift becomes taxable.

Can I send Christmas gifts to staff on the day, without a delivery deadline?

Yes, of course - as long as they're digital. A gift sent as a link by email or SMS, as Huggg does, arrives instantly, so you can send it on the last working day or even Christmas Eve. Then people can claim the gift they want in their own time. Physical gifts need ordering weeks ahead.

What about people who don't celebrate Christmas?

Call it an end-of-year thank you rather than a Christmas present, say “happy holidays” instead, and choose something that isn't Christmas-themed. Letting people choose their own gift solves this, along with dietary and alcohol preferences. We’ve got you covered.

Eek - someone's been missed off the list. What do I do now?

This happens every year, which is why you keep 5-10% of the budget back. With a link-based gift on Huggg, you can send one more gift link in a minute. With physical gifts, keep a couple of spares and accept that they might have to wait for their treat.

Christmas sorted, with time to spare

You've been handed a job that most people leave until December. And one that a lot of people dread every single year. Ask the four questions we’ve laid out above, set £50 as your ceiling to make life easier, pick a format that fits your team, and write a message that sounds like a person.

If you'd like to send it all as one link, with no addresses to collect, see how Huggg works for office managers, EAs and PAs or talk to us.