Buying team Xmas gifts

[Littlebrownshoes]

If you're a manager, do you buy your team gifts for Xmas?

Last year I managed a team of 3, and bought each person a bottle of wine and gave a card (sent direct to their home address). This year I have 8! So not as affordable / reasonable. A few non drinkers too so buying suitable gifts would be more of a task.

It would be easier to just get chocolates for everyone to share in the office and a card for each person but some of them are fully remote so that won't work. I'm not quite sure what to do.

Interested to hear if this is the done thing or not.

Yes every year. Keep saying it's the last year as 20 of them now.. but still did it this year! Either beauty advent calendars or wine ones.

When I used to manage a team of 10 I would buy everyone chocolate, a Lindt bunny type thing.

Now I don't manage a team but get my two colleagues a tiny Lindt reindeer instead of a card.

I have a team of some remote and some not. I’m going to buy some beers for the blokes who I know drink beer.

For one of my remote team, I’m going to buy her a costa coffee voucher as I know she goes there often.

My son works with a team of about ten in all. He's the most junior. They do a secret Santa and the boss takes them out for Christmas dinner. The boss will give my son a bit of cash in a Christmas card too, I'm not sure if he does that for the others (my son is on just above minimum wage and is at least 20 years younger than just about all of them).
So the dinner would cost him more than a box of chocs , but he does own the business.

I do. Generally something different each year (Prosecco/candles/chocolates/something from Boots 3for2). I’ve also done a gift bag of mini’s - a mini bottle (approx £2.50), a small candle (approx £1.00/1.50), and a some chocolate or a notebook (£1.50/2.00)

Ive also been in a team where my manager bought us a chocolate reindeer and I loved it, was nice coming in to a little reindeer sat on my desk.

You can give those in the office directly and still post something to the remote workers (though probably not a chocolate reindeer)

Our boss buys a round of drinks for everyone. I run a Secret Santa for the wider team as well.

For my team, I normally buy something small- Christmas biscuits for the vegan, for example.