Dear Peter:

My business is in the property sector on the service side. At Christmas our office is deluged in gifts from suppliers and others who we deal with over the year.

The gifts range from a single bottle of wine or whisky through to cases of wine, boxes of chocolates upto ipads, tickets to events and the like.

What do you recommend is the best way of handling these? I don’t want to offend anyone but I don’t want to do anything wrong either!

Santa Peter answers:

My simple solution to this problem is to arrange a Christmas draw for charity. Allow your employees to buy raffle tickets with all of the proceeds going to a local charity. Use all of the ‘gifts’ as prizes and make the draw in public, say at the Christmas party. Send all of the suppliers a note of thanks showing how much was raised and telling them about the good cause they have helped to support. You can even get some positive local PR for the charity donation and mention all of the suppliers as supporters.

The random element of the simple raffle avoids any question that any individual will be swayed by a gift from a supplier. All of your staff get to share in the Christmas gifts, not just the buyers, and best of all a good cause benefits. Everyone wins and no-one can be compromised by the gifts.

Peter Lloyd is CEO Mabey Group a world leader in trading ethically in challenging markets