A good desk lamp
Office lighting is universally bad. A warm lamp is the single best desk gift.
Gifts for a coworker
Some links on this page go to Amazon. If you buy through one we earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend or the order we put things in. Photographs here are illustrations of the kind of thing described, not pictures of a particular product.
For the desk
Neutral, useful, and it stays at work.
A laptop stand
Screen height fixes necks. Cheap and immediately used.
A quality notebook and pen
Neutral, obviously good, and used in every meeting.
A desk mat in felt or leather
It makes a cheap desk look considered and stops a laptop scratching the surface. A neutral color survives whatever else is on the desk.
Safe and consistently well received
Nothing here obliges anyone to do anything back.
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Good coffee or tea for the office
Shared by design, which removes any awkwardness about the gift being for one person. It also improves the working week for everyone within reach of the kettle.
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A plant for their desk
Small, robust, in a pot that will not tip. It sits in the shared space rather than going home, which keeps the register right.
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A voucher for the place they get lunch
Modest, specific to a habit you have noticed, and used within the week. Noticing the habit is what makes it a real gift.
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Proper stationery, if they are that way inclined
A good notebook or a decent pen for the colleague who has opinions about them. Cheap, correct, and used daily.
When a colleague is leaving
The occasion that justifies a bit more, usually pooled.
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A card everyone has actually written in
Chased around the building rather than left on a desk for a week. The signatures are the gift; whatever is bought alongside is secondary.
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A pooled voucher for something they mentioned
A restaurant, a shop, a hobby. Aim it at a thing they have talked about rather than at a generic retailer.
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A framed photograph of the team
Taken deliberately before the last day. Better than a card for people who worked together closely, and it costs almost nothing.
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Plants or books from their desk, kept safe
The small ritual of packing up someone's desk properly for them, rather than leaving it in a box by reception.
Thanking someone who covered for you
Small, prompt, and proportionate.
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Their exact coffee order, brought to their desk
Immediate, specific and correctly small. Doing it the morning after rather than a week later is most of the effect.
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Something for the team rather than the person
Pastries, doughnuts, fruit, it thanks the individual without singling them out in a way that makes them uncomfortable.
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A written note to their manager
It costs nothing and it appears in a performance review. Of everything on this page it is the one with the longest useful life.
For the desk, continued
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An insulated mug with a lid
Coffee that survives a long meeting.
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A footrest or a seat cushion
Both are cheap and both fix the discomfort nobody mentions.
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Good headphones for focus
For open-plan offices, this is the most wanted object in the building.
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A cable tidy and a phone stand
Small desk order, delivered for very little.
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A good travel mug for the commute
Different from the desk mug: sealed, and it survives a bag. Used twice a day.
Gift countdown and order-by dates
Put in the date and see how long you have, and the last sensible day to order each kind of gift.
Save a date you keep forgetting
Work anniversaries, last days, birthdays in the team, we'll remind you about a month ahead.
How to choose
We make nothing appropriate for a colleague, and that is not a limitation of our range so much as a feature of the relationship: personalized keepsakes are too intimate for most working friendships, which is exactly why they are not on this page.
The governing rule for coworker gifts is that the gift should not create an obligation. Anything expensive, anything overly personal, and anything that requires a reciprocal gesture puts the recipient in an awkward position they did not ask to be in.
That leaves a good, narrow band: consumable, shared, useful at work, or genuinely funny in a way the whole team is in on. Within that band it is quite easy to do well.
Questions
Good to know
How much should I spend on a coworker?
Not much, and less than you think. A modest gift is easy to receive; an expensive one from a colleague creates an obligation and is the most common way this goes wrong.
Is it inappropriate to give a coworker a personal gift?
It depends on the friendship, but the safe default is to keep it useful at work or consumable. Anything that would look odd if opened at their desk in front of the team is the wrong side of the line.
What should a team leaving gift be?
A card everyone has genuinely signed, and a pooled voucher aimed at something the person has actually mentioned. The card matters more than whatever it is attached to.
Do I need to give a gift for a coworker's birthday?
No. In most workplaces a card and saying something in person is entirely normal, and starting a gift practice creates an expectation for everyone else.
