Getting Awards to Employees Who Do Not Work in an Office
Before 2020 we did not offer multi-address shipping at all. Every service award we shipped went to a single address, almost always a company office. Last year we split individual orders across 5,059 different addresses, and another 45% of orders shipped straight to one recipient. Just over half the service awards we send now go to a person, not a building.
Most employee award programs were built when everyone sat in the same place, whether they hand out recognition for a big win or a years of service award for a work anniversary. The award itself did not change. The way it reaches the recipient did, and for a lot of programs nobody redesigned that part. This page is about the mechanics: getting the award to someone who is not in the office, on time, at the right address, without the per-address fees turning into a second budget. Every number here comes from our own order data.
What Actually Changed
The service that makes this possible, splitting one order across many addresses, did not exist here before the pandemic. We launched it in 2021. That first year it ran 219 orders across 2,056 addresses, about 5% of orders. Last year it was 499 orders across 5,059 addresses. The share barely moved, from 5% to 6%, but the volume of individually shipped awards more than doubled.
Direct-to-recipient shipping grew alongside it, from about 40% of orders in 2021 to about 45% now. Add the two together and more than half of the service awards we ship go to an individual address rather than a single office.
| Multi-address shipping | 2021 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Orders shipped to more than one address | 219 | 499 |
| Individual addresses shipped to | 2,056 | 5,059 |
| Share of all service award orders | 5% | 6% |
What Multi-Address Shipping Costs, and How to Think About It
Every address on a multi-address order carries a $10 handling fee on top of the shipping itself. On the median $59.99 award, that fee is about 17% of the award's price. It is not a markup. It covers the labor and packing materials to box and label each piece separately instead of sending one carton to one dock. Expedited methods, and addresses in Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or overseas, run $30 each.
The alternative nobody prices out is shipping everything to one office and having someone there re-pack and re-mail each award. That person's time is not free, and it adds a week while the box sits on a desk waiting for them to get to it. Past a handful of recipients, the $10 usually wins.
The rule I give people is short. Batch to one location when there is a real group ceremony and someone to run it. Ship direct when the date matters more than the audience.
Address Collection Is Where Programs Actually Fail
Ask anyone who has run one of these and they will tell you the awards are the easy part. The addresses are what break programs.
Start with the good news, which is the opposite of what most people expect. Across all of 2026, only 63 awards had to be reshipped for a bad or outdated address. Against the roughly 9,000 awards we sent to individual addresses that year, that is well under 1%. A wrong address is not the disaster people brace for. When it happens, the fix is a $19.99 reship and one more delivery cycle.
It happens because HR address data goes stale on its own. People move, and payroll records catch up late, so the address on file in March may be two apartments behind by the time a November anniversary comes around. The list you pull is a snapshot, and snapshots age.
The fix is a refresh close to when you need it. A short, self-serve address form once a quarter beats a master spreadsheet somebody built in 2022 and never touched. Let each person confirm where they want the award sent, and let them pick a home or an office address.
That last point is the one nobody writes about, and it is the one that quietly stalls programs. When an employer asks for a home address, some people hesitate, and they are right to think about it first. Give a real office option so nobody has to hand over a home address to be recognized. Say plainly what the address is for, which is mailing an award and nothing else. And do not make it mandatory. A recognition program that feels like data collection has already lost the room.
On our end the mechanic is straightforward. After you place a multi-address order, you get an Excel sheet, you fill in the names and addresses, and you email it back with your order number. We check what we can before anything ships, though we cannot verify an address the recipient themselves got wrong.
Central Versus Direct, and When Each Is Right
Most of it comes down to one question: is there a ceremony?
- Ship direct to the home when the date is the point, the person is remote, and no group event is scheduled.
- Batch to an office when a real ceremony exists: a co-located team, a scheduled moment, someone accountable for the handoff.
A remote team that still wants a shared moment has a third path. Ship each award to a home ahead of time and open them together on a call, which our guide to running a virtual awards ceremony walks through.
The failure mode sits between the two. A company batches 40 awards to an office to save on shipping, no ceremony ever gets scheduled, and the box lives in a supply closet until someone finds it in February. Batching to save on shipping costs more than it saves when the award never reaches the person. This is the same pattern one large program running at scale had to design around.
International, Scoped Honestly
We ship internationally, but not the way a domestic order does, so pin down the details before you promise a recipient overseas an award by a certain date.
Where we can, we ship on our own account. That covers a good list of countries, including most of Western Europe, the Nordics, Australia, New Zealand, India, the UAE, and Puerto Rico. Some countries we can only ship to on your company's own carrier account, the UK and Ireland among them. And there is a short list we will not ship to at all, which we will tell you up front rather than after you order.
Two things change once a package leaves the country. Duties and taxes become the recipient's responsibility, and customs can ask them for information before it releases the shipment. We reserve the right to invoice for duties and taxes for up to 60 days after shipping, so an international award is not a fixed number the day you order. A realistic all-in cost runs about $150 to $200 per international address once shipping, duties, and taxes are counted. Business addresses in the EU also need an EORI number on file; a home address does not.
When that is more exposure than a program wants, there is a simpler path we offer often. We ship the award to you domestically, on standard ground shipping, at no extra charge, and you forward it or hand it over yourself. It puts the customs step in your hands instead of the recipient's, and for a single overseas award it is usually the easier answer. For the rest of our methods and timing, see our ordering and shipping page.
How This Connects to Timing
All of this ties back to when awards go out. In our companion look at what service awards actually cost, 67% of companies placed a single order for the entire year, and the average employee waited about 5.5 months for recognition of a milestone that had already passed. A distributed workforce makes that worse, because a once-a-year batch to an office cannot reach someone who is not there.
The fix is the same one that fixes the timing problem, with one addition. Send a monthly list of upcoming anniversaries and attach a destination to each name. The award gets made and shipped close to the real date, to the place the person actually is. Automated milestone tracking can keep that list current so nothing waits on someone remembering to pull it. If you are setting the whole thing up from scratch, start with our service award program guide.
Shipping Service Awards to Remote Teams FAQ
How do you send service awards to remote employees?
Ship them straight to the employee's home. We offer multi-address shipping, so a single order can go out to as many individual addresses as you have recipients, each award boxed and labeled separately. You provide the addresses on a spreadsheet after you order. It costs a $10 handling fee per address plus shipping, and it saves someone from re-mailing awards by hand.
What does it cost to ship awards to multiple addresses?
$10 per address for standard ground shipping in the contiguous US, on top of the shipping itself. On a median $59.99 award that handling fee is about 17%. Expedited shipping, and addresses in Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or overseas, run $30 each. The fee covers boxing and labeling each award separately instead of sending one carton to one location.
Should service awards ship to the office or to an employee's home?
To the home if the anniversary date matters more than a group moment, which is usually the case for a remote employee. To the office only when a real ceremony is scheduled and someone is there to hand the award over. The mistake is batching to an office with no ceremony planned, where awards sit in a closet until someone finds them.
How do you collect home addresses for employee awards?
Use a short, self-serve form and refresh it about once a quarter, because home addresses go stale as people move. Let each employee choose a home or office address, say plainly that it is only used to mail the award, and do not make it mandatory. A real office option matters, since some people would rather not give an employer a home address.
Can you ship service awards internationally?
Yes, within limits. Some countries we ship to on our own account, some require your company's carrier account, and a few we cannot ship to at all. Duties and taxes are the recipient's responsibility, and a realistic all-in cost is about $150 to $200 per international address. When that is too much exposure, we can ship the award to you at no extra charge and you forward it.
How far in advance should you order for a remote team?
Further ahead than for a single office. Build in your normal production and proofing time, plus transit to each address, plus a quarterly address refresh so the list is current when you order. For international recipients, add customs time, which is not guaranteed. The simplest approach is a monthly list of upcoming anniversaries with a destination attached to each name.
What happens if an employee's address is wrong?
It gets reshipped, and it is rarer than people fear. In 2026 only 63 awards out of roughly 9,000 sent to individual addresses had to be reshipped for a bad address, well under 1%. A correction means a $19.99 reship and one more delivery cycle. We check addresses where we can before shipping, but we cannot catch one the recipient entered wrong.
About this data. Figures come from Awards.com order data. In 2026, multi-address shipping covered 499 orders across 5,059 addresses, about 6% of orders, up from 219 orders across 2,056 addresses in 2021, the first year we offered it. Another 45% of 2026 orders, roughly 4,000, shipped direct to a single recipient. The 63 reshipped awards are counted against those roughly 9,000 individually addressed shipments. This reflects companies that buy physical awards from us, not an industry survey. It cannot see an address that was wrong but still delivered, or a recipient who never said the award arrived.