£120m lost by businesses on employees' gift cards

Millions of pounds have been lost by businesses in Britain on gift cards for employees, according to new research by Giftcloud.

The digital gift card service found that employees either didn’t use them before the expiry or lost them.

The survey quizzed 2, 363 Britons aged 16 and over about their employee benefits. Having been asked “Have you ever received a gift card from your employer before”, 63% said yes. The top five reasons for receiving one were for birthdays (83%), hitting targets (64%), sign of gratitude for hard work (57%) or a promotion (39%).

Respondents who said they received one were asked if they’d used it before the expiry, to which 59% said yes and the remaining 41% said no. Researching further, they were asked for the reason as to why they hadn’t used the gift cards. The most common reasons being; “it’s for a store that I don’t particularly shop with” (33%), “I forgot about it until it expired” (32%) and “it got misplaced and/or damaged beyond use” (28%).