Small Business Gift-Giving Shifts From Employees to Customers

American Express OPEN just released its Small Business Holiday Monitor, an annual survey of small business owners that details their spending plans for the holidays. According to the survey, roughly the same percentage of small business owners (47 percent) plan to spend the same amount of money ($455) on customer gifts this year, compared to last year. That's the good news.

The bad news is that many of them plan to fund these customer gifts by cutting back on employee bonuses and gifts. The survey found that fewer small business owners (35 percent) are giving employee gifts this year (vs. 46 percent in 2008), fewer to give year-end bonuses (31 percent vs. 44 percent in 2008) and fewer will give raises (16 percent vs. 30 percent in 2008).

If you're sacrificing employee bonuses and gifts for showing appreciation to your customers, just remember to thank your employees for all of their hard work in some other way, be it an extra day off over the holidays or some other gesture of gratitude.