The least desirable Mid-Autumn Festival gift for office workers was a box of traditional mooncakes and the most desired was cash or gift certificates, a survey released by online job bank yes123 showed.
The survey conducted by the online job board gauged full-time office workers’ opinions on Mid-Autumn Festival bonuses given by companies and their desired gifts.
The survey showed that the three least desirable Mid-Autumn Festival gifts were traditional mooncakes at 34.9 percent, pomeloes at 27.8 percent and liquor at 21.2 percent.
However, the most popular gifts given by companies during Mid-Autumn Festival are traditional mooncakes at 54 percent, pineapple or egg yolk pastries at 45 percent, and pomeloes at 33 percent.
The survey showed that 41.5 percent of office workers wanted cash or gift certificates, 22.6 percent wanted giftboxes of sweets or cookies, 21.5 percent wanted ice cream mooncakes, 16.5 percent wanted cultural or creative products and 13.9 percent wanted a coffee giftbox for the festival season.
Although cash is preferred by employees, only 61.8 percent of the companies in the survey are giving a Mid-Autumn Festival bonus this year; 27.2 percent of companies said they would only give a gift and no cash bonus would be given, and 11 percent said that employees would not receive anything for the holiday.
Yes123 spokesperson Yang Tsung-pin (楊宗斌) said the average Mid-Autumn Festival bonus that office workers are to receive this year is NT$1,361 (US$41.33) — a decrease of 33.4 percent compared with NT$2,045 last year.
In addition, 48.6 percent of surveyed companies said a bonus of between NT$800 and NT$1,200 is to be given to employees for the holiday, while 19.6 percent are to give between NT$500 and NT$800, and 7.5 percent are to give between NT$2,000 and NT$3,000.
Yang said the results could indicate that even if companies are doing well in the first half of the year, they are still concerned about economic slowdown in the second half and are taking a more conservative approach to holiday bonuses and gifts.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 8 and Sept. 17 online, with 1,696 valid responses from office workers and 865 from companies.
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