In Singapore, corporate gifts giving to your clients and customers are very common here. In fact, many countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, China etc practice this habit too.
However, not all corporate gifts are suitable to be gifted. It can be seems as bribery. Singapore adopts a zero-tolerance approach towards corruption. It is a serious offence to bribe, or attempt to bribe another individual or entity. Any person who is convicted of a corruption offence can be fined up to $100,000 or sentenced to imprisonment of up to 5 years or to both.
So, what to give will be best to preserve your corporate image when you gift promotional/corporate gifts to others?
• Set your company’s policies and rules clearly: Write down your policies and let employees understand them, always get your employees to declare and describe the nature and type of gifts before they accept from others. Read more from CPIB https://www.cpib.gov.sg/about-corruption/prevention-of-corruption-act if not sure.
• Keep gifts corporate: Give gifts printed with company logos, reflect the organization’s products and ensure they are intended for official. Suitable items will be printed mousepads, non woven bags of low monetary value.
• Make gifting inclusive: Give gifts publicly and transparently to several team members as opposed to giving to only 1 individual staff or customer
• Prohibit cash gifts as well as gift cards: Avoid giving monetary angbao containing few hundred dollars or few thousand dollars over lunchtime or dinner event to particular client who has given you some heavyweight project or business.