Funny Employee Appreciation Gifts Under $20 (From the Boss Who's Also HR)
Todd Winfield writes the HR-Approved workplace humor series.
Nobody warns you about this when you start a business: you're the founder, payroll, and HR. So when you want to give your team something funny, there's no one to run it past. You're the person you'd run it past.
Most owners solve that by buying gift cards. A $20 card is fast, safe, and says nothing. Your team knows what it cost and knows how long it took you to order. They'll spend it on groceries.
The short version: the funny employee appreciation gifts that actually land are small, specific and desk-sized. Under $20 a head buys something that gets picked up and read aloud; branded fleeces get worn to paint in. Buy one batch, write one line in each, done in an afternoon.
How to choose employee appreciation gifts that actually land
Match the book to the person, not to the price.
That sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. The fastest way to make a $10 gift feel like a $50 one is to pick something that fits the specific human receiving it. The fastest way to ruin it is to hand everyone the same generic thing, or worse, something that reads as a hint.
Skip branded swag entirely. A logo turns a gift into marketing and everyone can tell.
The best employee appreciation gift for the whole team
HR Approved Corporate Sarcasm: A 365-Day Office Humor Desk Companion
If you're buying one thing for the whole team, buy this. It's built as a daily desk book, so it doesn't get read once and shelved; it sits next to the monitor for a year and earns its space every morning. The humour is aimed at the job, not at anyone doing it, which is exactly what you want in a gift that comes from the boss.
At around $11 it works whether you're buying five copies or fifty.
For the employee who's had a brutal quarter
HR Approved Corporate Therapy: A Funny Guide to Workplace Stress & Pretending to Be Fine
Some years, one person on your team has quietly absorbed more than their share. This is the book for them. It's about the meetings, the managers and the reply-all disasters they already survive, and the joke is entirely on the situation.
Coming from an employer it reads as I noticed. That's the whole job of an appreciation gift.
For the one who bites their tongue all day
HR-Approved Ways to Say Things I Can't Say Out Loud at Work: A Satirical Guide to Everyday Office Survival
Every team has someone who is relentlessly diplomatic. They write 'happy to help!' at 6pm. They say 'great question' to the same question for the fourth time that week. They have never once let it show.
This is their book. It runs the internal monologue alongside the professional translation, and the joke lands on the workplace rather than on the person reading it. At around $14 it's a step up from the rest of the range, which makes it the one to reach for when you want a particular person's gift to feel more considered. It's also the second most-reviewed book in the series.
Office gifts for a team that's stopped talking
This or That? HR Approved Edition, or HR Approved Corporate Trivia
Hybrid teams lose small talk first. Nobody schedules it, so it just stops happening, and six months later your standups are purely transactional.
Both office gifts fix that cheaply. This or That is icebreakers you can run in the first three minutes of a Monday meeting without anyone groaning. Corporate Trivia has 500+ questions and works better as a Friday afternoon thing.
Buy one for the break room as well as one per person. The break-room copy is the one that gets used.
The safest bet when you don't know the humour yet
HR Approved Office Survival Explained by Cats
New team, or a mix of people you don't know well? Cats disarm everything. It's the same office observations as the rest of the series, filtered through animals, which removes any chance of someone reading themselves into a joke.
HR Approved Dad Jokes does a similar job. Nobody in recorded history has been offended by a dad joke.
Christmas gifts for employees, specifically
HR Approved Office Holiday Party Survival Guide
At $9.99 it's the cheapest thing in the range, and it's the only one written for a specific week of the year. Secret Santa, awkward small talk, that one coworker. Hand it out in the first week of December and it's funny immediately rather than eventually.
More seasonal picks in our Christmas gifts for employees guide (coming soon).
If you run a finance, consulting or accounting shop
Finance Bro, Explained
Vertical-specific gifts land harder than general ones because they prove you know what the job actually is. This one decodes what analysts and consultants say versus what they mean. Wrong gift for a bakery; perfect for a twelve-person advisory firm.
For the person who just started managing
HR Approved Ways to Lead Without Losing Your Mind
One or two people on your team probably run a rota, a shift, or a small group. They got promoted and then handed nothing.
It's 114 pages of scripts: the thing you want to say, and the version you can actually send. 'I literally just said that' becomes 'Great question, let me recap to make sure we're all on the same page.' Seven chapters, including one on what to say when you're quietly furious.
Give it as a promotion gift, not a team-wide one.
And one for you
You're a small business owner, which means you manage people, which means the leadership book is genuinely aimed at you. How to Be a Corporate Monk is the other one worth your own money: calmer, more strategic, and the closest thing the range has to a proper read.
Three gifts to skip (even though we publish them)
Worth saying plainly, because direction matters more than content with workplace humour.
Ways to Say 'Do Better' Without Drama. Excellent book. Terrible gift from an employer. The title is a performance review.
Ways to Tell Co-Workers They're Stupid. It's the most-reviewed book in the range and it's very funny, but it implies the recipient's colleagues are the problem, which is awkward coming from the person who hired all of them. Brilliant as a peer-to-peer gift; wrong direction here.
The Coworker Coupon Book. Its humour points at the boss. If you are the boss, handing it out is a strange move.
Any book about how to do the job better, given by the person who assesses how you do the job, stops being a gift. That's the test.
Bulk employee gifts: what this costs for a real team
| Team size | At $20/head | What fits |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | $100 | A different title each, matched to the person, handwritten note |
| 10 | $200 | One title for everyone plus a break-room copy of This or That |
| 20 | $400 | Two or three titles, let people swap |
| 40 | $800 | One title everyone gets, plus Things I Can't Say Out Loud for long-tenure staff |
One batch order, one afternoon of notes. The notes are the part that matters and they cost nothing.
Buying for more than forty? See our bulk employee gifts guide (coming soon).
The one rule for funny gifts at work
If you'd hesitate to read it aloud in a full team meeting, don't give it.
That's the entire test. It's the rule this whole series is built on, which is why the books are clean: no profanity, nothing that punches down, nobody made the target. The humour is about the situation, not the people in it.
Funny and safe aren't opposites. Most gag gifts get that wrong, which is precisely why the safe ones stand out.
Questions owners actually ask
How much should a small business spend on employee gifts?
$15 to $25 a head is normal for appreciation, more for holidays and work anniversaries. Consistency matters more than the number. Spending $50 on one person and $10 on another is worse than $15 for everyone.
Are employee gifts tax deductible?
In the US, small non-cash gifts are often deductible as a business expense, while gift cards and cash are usually taxable income to the employee. The rules are fiddly and they change. Ask your accountant before budgeting around it; this isn't tax advice.
Is it OK to give employees funny gifts?
Yes, when the joke is about the work rather than the worker. Meetings, inboxes and the 4:47pm 'quick chat' are fair targets. Individual people aren't.
What about remote employees?
Books ship well and don't need a size, which is most of their advantage over apparel. Send to home addresses and put the note inside the parcel.
When is Employee Appreciation Day?
The first Friday in March. Almost nobody marks it, which makes it a cheap day to be memorable.
Start here
Buying for one team and want the decision made for you: Corporate Sarcasm for everyone, a break-room copy of This or That, and Ways to Lead for whoever runs the rota. That's under $20 a head and it takes an afternoon.
Browse the full HR Approved series · Free office game pack (coming soon)