Emotional and work were not a perfect pair. Until more recently as brands try to build closer emotional connections with their employees.
For years, employee recognition programs often felt transactional: a generic gift card, a company-branded sweatshirt, or a perfunctory plaque handed out at an annual meeting.
But as companies battle burnout, retention challenges, and increasingly distributed workforces, employee gifting is evolving into something more strategic: emotional infrastructure.
That shift is helping fuel the rise of companies like Goody, a B2B gifting marketplace that works with organizations ranging from orthodontist offices to Fortune 100 enterprises. Under CEO Katy Carrigan, the company is rethinking how brands use gifting to build emotional connection with employees, clients, and prospects.
“Corporate gifting shouldn’t feel so corporate,” Carrigan told me in a recent interview.
That philosophy may sound simple, but it reflects a larger change underway in how organizations think about employee engagement. Increasingly, companies are recognizing that emotional loyalty inside the workforce matters just as much as loyalty from consumers.
From Consumer Shopping To Corporate Engagement
Goody’s roots are unusual for a workplace rewards platform. The company originally began as a consumer app focused on gifting between friends and family. That origin shaped how the business approached corporate recognition.
“At the end of the day, it is individuals who are going shopping,” Carrigan said. “They’re just doing it with their company’s money.”
That consumer-first mindset matters because employees increasingly expect workplace experiences to feel as personalized and frictionless as the apps and brands they use in everyday life.
The old model of standardized rewards is losing relevance. Today’s workforce wants personalization, flexibility, and choice.
Carrigan believes accessibility is equally important. Historically, sophisticated employee rewards programs were largely confined to large technology companies with expansive budgets and HR infrastructure. But platforms like Goody are democratizing those capabilities for companies of all sizes.
“A lot of companies want to better celebrate their employees,” she said. “Especially companies where leadership understands that it’s really the team and the people who make a company successful.”
Why Recognition Is Expanding Beyond Work Anniversaries
One of the more interesting shifts in employee engagement is how recognition is moving from scheduled milestones to ongoing emotional reinforcement.
Carrigan says many organizations begin with traditional employee lifecycle moments—onboarding, birthdays, and work anniversaries. But once those systems are in place, companies often expand into more spontaneous forms of recognition.
That can include celebrating a product launch, rewarding exceptional performance, or acknowledging a team after a difficult quarter.
“What we’ve heard from customers is those moments can be super meaningful,” Carrigan explained. “To send someone a little gift and say, ‘Hey, keep it up. I recognize you. I see the work you’re doing,’ has such a lasting impact.”
That impact may be especially important in an era where many employees feel increasingly disconnected from company culture due to hybrid and remote work.
Recognition, in many ways, becomes a proxy for visibility.
“In the TroopHR community, HR leaders are sharing that the companies losing people aren’t always the ones paying less. They’re the ones where employees feel invisible,” said Tracy Avin, Founder TroopHR. “Recognition doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective, it just has to be real. Having a structured gifting program provides an opportunity to make employees feel connected and valued by the organization.”
The Psychology Behind Gifting
Carrigan believes gifting works because it taps into something fundamentally human.
“Everyone wants to feel appreciated and feel seen,” she said.
She described gifting as more than a transactional exchange. Instead, she frames it as a signal of intentional investment.
“Someone is saying, ‘I’m going to take my resources—my time, my thought, and monetary resources—and put them towards you.’”
That emotional signaling matters. Employees who feel recognized often develop stronger trust and attachment to their organizations, which can influence everything from engagement to retention.
While many HR initiatives focus heavily on process and efficiency, gifting operates in a more emotional space. It creates moments of surprise, delight, and personal relevance—areas that many companies historically underestimated.
Why Choice Is Becoming The New Luxury
One of the strongest themes from my conversation with Carrigan was the growing importance of personalization.
“What matters to you, Jeff, and what’s going to keep you around at a job is probably different than what matters to me,” she said.
That insight is pushing companies away from one-size-fits-all rewards. Instead, organizations increasingly want employees to choose gifts that align with their own interests and lifestyles.
Some employees may prefer travel experiences or live events. Others may want home goods, wellness products, or outdoor gear.
Goody has leaned heavily into that flexibility, allowing recipients to select from curated options rather than receiving a predetermined item.
“The point is to have options,” Carrigan said.
That personalization trend is also becoming geographically nuanced. Carrigan noted that employee preferences vary significantly by region. Employees in Seattle, for example, may gravitate toward coffee accessories and camping gear, while recipients in Texas may lean more toward homeware and entertaining products.
The broader takeaway is that emotional engagement increasingly requires contextual relevance.
The Future Of Gifting: Employees Want To “Trade Up”
One of the company’s most intriguing upcoming features may signal where workplace rewards are headed next.
Goody is preparing to launch functionality that allows recipients to apply the value of a company-provided gift toward a higher-priced item by paying the difference themselves.
According to Carrigan, the feature has become one of the platform’s most requested capabilities—and notably, the demand came primarily from recipients.
In practice, that means an employee receiving a $200 gift could choose to apply that value toward a more premium item they truly want, paying the incremental difference out of pocket.
The concept mirrors broader shifts happening across consumer loyalty ecosystems, where flexibility and personalization increasingly outperform rigid reward structures.
It also reflects a deeper reality: employees don’t just want rewards. They want agency.
Purpose-Driven Brands Matter More Than Ever
Carrigan also emphasized the growing importance of values alignment in gifting.
Goody intentionally curates brands that employees feel emotionally connected to, including female-owned, Black-founded, and LGBTQ-owned businesses.
As companies increasingly tie recognition programs to heritage months, cultural moments, and broader corporate values initiatives, gifting becomes another way organizations communicate what they stand for.
“Employees feel like their employer is connecting to things that are important to them as well,” Carrigan said.
That may ultimately be the biggest shift of all.
Employee gifting is no longer just about the item itself. It’s about identity, recognition, personalization, and emotional belonging. And in a labor market where retention remains one of the most expensive business challenges, those emotional connections may matter more than ever.