Employee joining kits: what to include and what it costs
A joining kit is the first physical thing a new hire receives from your company. It does not need to be expensive, but it should be useful — items that end up in a drawer do nothing for your brand. After packing thousands of kits, these are the patterns we see work.
Start with things people use daily
The items with the highest "keep rate" are a good T-shirt, a steel bottle, a notebook, a pen and a tote or backpack. They are used at the desk, the gym and on the commute, so your logo gets seen. Novelty gadgets are fun for a week; a bottle is used for years.
Three budgets that work
At roughly ₹600–800 per employee, a round-neck T-shirt, an A5 notebook and a metal pen in a kraft box makes a neat starter kit. At ₹1,200–1,500 you can add a 750 ml steel bottle and a canvas tote — this is our most ordered configuration. At ₹2,500 and above, swap the tee for a hoodie and the tote for a laptop backpack, and add an insulated flask. Prices fall noticeably at 50 kits and again at 200.
Keep the branding quiet
People wear and carry subtle branding far more readily than a giant logo. A small chest logo on the T-shirt, a laser-engraved mark on the bottle and a debossed diary look premium. Save the big, bold artwork for the box, where it creates the unboxing moment.
Solving the T-shirt size problem
Sizes are the one thing that derails kit orders. Collect sizes in your onboarding form, and order a small buffer of M and L. If you are hiring continuously, order kits without tees in bulk and add T-shirts in small batches — our minimum for most tees is just 2 pieces. Add the size breakdown in the instructions box when you order and we will label each kit by name if you share a list.
Plan for lead time
Allow a week: a day for the mockup, 4–6 working days for printing and kitting after approval, plus shipping. If joiners are remote, we can ship kits to individual addresses instead of your office.
- #gifting