End of Project Gift Ideas – Project Completion Awards

Most organizations appreciate the importance of recognizing individual achievement and accomplishment. However many organizations fail to appreciate the necessity of recognizing that same effort and accomplishment when it comes to teams and groups, especially in the successful completion of significant projects.

In this article, we discuss project completion awards and some end-of-project gift ideas.

End of Project Gift Ideas: Projects worthy of recognition run the gamut. 

They can include: bringing a new product to market, or introducing a new software iteration, surmounting a hurdle in the FDA approval process for a new drug, successfully concluding litigation for a plaintiff or defendant, qualifying for an organization-wide certification, reaching a fundraising or revenue goal, attaining an end-user threshold—among many, many other occasions.

We obviously can’t lay out ideas for team awards and gifts for every possible project or occasion. What we’ve done here instead is provide six broad categories for team and project completion awards.

Some of these end-of-project gift ideas and categories are industry-based, and others aren’t. Obviously, these categories can’t capture the full spectrum of possible occasions for team or project completion gifts.  However, they do highlight examples of how some organizations approach, and successfully recognize, the contribution of successful teams.

1. IT Systems Integration Teams

The need to integrate systems can arise under a variety of circumstances. It may follow a merger. Or integration may be necessary to facilitate closer collaboration between joint venture partners or, for instance, suppliers and retailers.  Whatever their immediate or long-term goals, system integrations can require a substantial amount of time and expertise.

2. Litigation Team Recognition

Successful judgments provide law firms with an opportunity to recognize internal staff (and, importantly, clients as well) with litigation team awards.

As with many organizational teams, litigation groups are, again, frequently required to put in long hours over a protracted period of time. Again, this is precisely the kind of collective effort that team awards are intended to showcase and recognize.

The Lucite design below is a great example of a team award that goes beyond a simple generic recognition piece. The design isn’t elaborate but it does offer some highly customized touches, especially in the form of photos of team members.

3. Disaster Recovery Team Recognition

This category probably doesn’t come immediately to mind as one worthy of recognition.

It’s actually a category that might provide contributions most worthy of team recognition.

After all, almost by definition, crises and disasters demand extraordinary contributions. And they are most often accomplished under unusually adverse and stressful circumstances.

One dramatic example is the power restoration effort mounted in the wake of Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 storm that hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

Two things stand out about the commemorative below, which recognized the efforts of PowerSouth employees in repairing in just nine days an astounding 448 miles of damaged transmission lines.

First, the piece is relatively simple. That said, without being extravagant it still has a great deal of cachet and value because it incorporates an actual conductor strand.

4. Pharmaceutical Industry Team Awards

The pharmaceutical industry warrants a separate category here for the important reason that it is one uniquely driven by collaborative efforts and innovation.

There are many opportunities for recognition of significant team efforts in the pharmaceutical industry. They include research collaborations, clinical studies, and development and commercialization agreements, to name just a few.

The recognition award below, a Lucite piece incorporating an actual drug vial, is just one example of a design specific to the industry.

5. Project-Specific Team Awards

There’s an almost infinite array of project teams that could potentially be worthy of recognition.

These range from groups successfully involved in tasks ranging from office openings to software upgrades, product launches, internal compliance initiatives, and RFP bids.

The piece below, recognizing the work and dedication of a systems integration team, provides another example of how these designs can be made more distinctive and memorable than the usual, off-the-shelf interchangeable “team recognition awards”.

As you can see, the centerpiece of the design is a horseshoe. Why the horseshoe? Because the integration project was in the casino/gaming industry.

6. Awards Recognizing Organizational Achievement

This final category refers to instances where recognition is for the achievement of a broader, organizational goal.

Here again, this may take any number of forms. These could include reaching predetermined targets for fundraising or revenues or sales, end-users, clients, subscribers, or setting new records in these and hundreds of other possible metrics.

The number of gifts distributed for such an organization-wide accomplishment may vary widely. All organization members and stakeholders may be included as recipients. Alternatively, it may be decided to provide recognition gifts only to an especially deserving subgroup.

However widely these gifts are to be distributed, there is an opportunity to tailor the gifts in a way that will especially resonate with recipients.

One example, shown here, is the iPhone-themed commemorative celebration of an end-user threshold.

Recognizing Your Organization’s Project Teams 

The categories above hopefully provided you with some inspiration for more successful recognition of projects and teams in your organization.

One takeaway is that designs don’t have to be extravagant to have perceived value among recipients. A related takeaway is that awards and gifts incorporating some design touch unique to the team or project can provide a great deal of cachet. They can also considerably boost that perception of thoughtfulness and value.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been helping clients recognize the efforts of teams engaged in projects covering a full range of industries, regions, and functional areas. Reach out to us about recognizing your organization’s achievements.