Why having it written down changes everything
The problem with leaving baby gifting to individual managers is not that managers are thoughtless. Most of them genuinely want to do the right thing. The problem is that without a written policy, every instance of a new baby becomes a fresh decision made under time pressure by someone who may or may not have the context, the budget, or the inclination to think it through properly.
Some employees receive something beautiful. Others get a gift card sent three weeks later. Others get nothing. The people who got nothing compare notes with the people who got something. That conversation happens quietly and it matters more than most HR leaders realise.
A written policy does not mandate a specific gift. It removes the decision from the moment of panic. When a manager learns on a Thursday afternoon that a team member just had a baby, they should not be choosing what to send. That choice should already exist. All they need to do is trigger it.
A gifting policy does not have to be a formal document requiring board sign-off. A single paragraph in your HR handbook or your new parent guide is enough. What matters is that it exists, that everyone with relevant responsibility knows about it, and that it is followed the same way every time.
What a good policy needs to answer
A parental leave gifting policy should resolve five things clearly. Who receives a gift. When it is sent. What the standard looks like. Who is responsible for making it happen. And where the money comes from.
Who receives a gift
The default should be all permanent employees regardless of role, seniority, or parental status. This means mothers and fathers. It means people who adopt as well as people who give birth. Companies that restrict gifting to senior staff or to mothers only create the exact inconsistency the policy is trying to prevent. If you want to differentiate, do it on the tier of box rather than on who is eligible to receive one.
When it is sent
Two moments deserve attention. The arrival of the baby and the first day back at work. The first is the most obvious. The second is the most overlooked and arguably the more powerful one in terms of retention. A policy that covers both performs significantly better than one focused only on the birth announcement. In the GCC specifically, where the return-to-work transition is rarely given formal structure, covering this second moment is genuinely unusual and therefore memorable.
What the standard is
This does not need to be prescriptive to the product level. You can define a tier rather than a specific list. The standard might be: a curated gift box containing items for both the baby and the parent, presented with a personalised card from the team or manager. That single sentence is enough to ensure consistency without locking you into a single product forever.
Who triggers it
Pick one clear owner per office or country. Usually the HR manager or a senior HR coordinator. The policy should name the role and describe the action required. If you use gugu, the action is opening the portal and filling in three fields. It should never require more than that.
How it is paid for
Make it a line item rather than something that gets expensed case by case. A standing budget removes the friction of approval at the point of need and means the policy actually gets followed rather than quietly skipped when someone is busy.
A template you can use today
New parent gifting policy
When an employee welcomes a new baby, the company sends a curated gift to their home address. This applies to all permanent employees regardless of role, seniority, or parental status. Mothers, fathers, and adoptive parents are all included.
When gifts are sent
A gift is sent at two points: when the birth or adoption is confirmed, and on the employee's first day back from parental leave.
What the gift is
A professionally curated box containing items for both the baby and the parent, with a card personalised by the employee's direct manager. The box is ordered through gugu by the nominated HR contact for each country.
Who is responsible
The HR team triggers each gift within 48 hours of being notified. The employee's direct manager provides a brief personal message for the card within the same window.
Budget
Each gift is covered by the HR wellbeing budget. Individual approval is not required.
How to get it approved
Most HR leaders can implement a gifting policy at a reasonable per-gift cost without formal board sign-off. If you do need sign-off, the most effective argument is the retention one rather than the culture one.
The cost of replacing a mid-level employee in the GCC sits somewhere between six and nine months of their salary when you account for recruitment fees, onboarding time, and the productivity gap during transition. A gift programme that measurably reduces the probability of post-parental-leave attrition represents a return that is easy to calculate and genuinely hard to replicate through other means at comparable cost. Frame it as a retention tool with a culture benefit. Not the other way round.
Keeping the policy working over time
Review it once a year. Ask a handful of employees who went through the process what the experience felt like. Ask the HR team whether the trigger moment was smooth or whether there were points of friction. Adjust accordingly.
The goal is a policy that runs so quietly that nobody in HR has to think about it very hard, while every employee who goes through it feels like someone did.
Want someone to handle the execution?
We help HR teams across Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and beyond build gifting programmes that run without friction. Once the policy exists, triggering a gift takes about two minutes.