Corporate Gifts and Corporate Incentives

I have never been part of the corporate rat-race and I don’t think I ever will be. There are parts of it that intrigue me and parts of it that I know I could never put up with. I think that I enjoy my quality of life too much to sit behind a desk from 8am to 5pm. I need to be moving around, doing different things and to top it all off, traffic is my least favourite thing. I also like knowing when my work day ends my family day starts, I wouldn’t want any over-lapping; work cannot come home with me.

What does intrigue me, however, is the thought of being super important; the 30-story-building-corporate-level important. I want to walk into the building and everyone greets me and holds the elevators for me and I just have to nod and smile at security and they let me in. That kind of importance is hard to find as a teacher or a writer. Corporate importance is a whole other ball game.

I also have a strong need (that must still be satisfied) to wear a power suit - a ¾ tight grey skirt with a white shirt, an awesome tailored jacket and black heels. Yip, I can see myself already. Something else that is rather splendid, when it comes to working for corporate companies, are corporate gifts and corporate incentives.

Corporate gifts can range from chill-out stress balls to a USB Coffee warmer, and mini-me paper clips to a shoe shine kit. Not sure what kind of a message you are sending your employee when you give him stress balls and a shoe shine kit but the other gifts are rather great. Oh, what I would do with a USB coffee warmer. Then there are puzzle clocks, Who-Am-I ID holders, Rubik’s memory sticks, bling memory sticks, golf umbrellas, cyberspace travel sets, and my personal favourite, a pill and plaster dispenser. So, not only do you get to wear your power suit and befriend the security staff, you also get random, but very useful gifts.

According to companyincentives.co.za, 'The Maslow theory on motivation stated that you cannot motivate a person - motivation can only come from within.  You can however use persuasion to motivate a person by either threats of dismissal or a reward.  Threats can have the opposite effect and increase stubbornness and a "don't careless attitude", which is counter productive & obviously not good for your business profits.' So this is where corporate incentives come in. It looks like these incentives are threats with pretty bows tied around them. “Jonny, if you get us this client I will take you and your wife on my yacht for the weekend.” But we all know that if Jonny doesn’t get the client he won’t be going on the yacht.

Corporate incentives, I imagine, do work wonders in the work place, maybe even more than money does. I think that if I had a very well paid corporate job and was asked if I want to go skiing in Switzerland or have R50 000 I would opt for the skiing; an experience over money. Having said all of this while pretending to be a corporate woman, I now have to return to reality and simply cheers all you ladder-climbers (with my cheap chardonnay) for living a life of corporate gifts and corporate incentives and possibly even a corporate cat.