Employee ID Lanyards: What Should You Print on Them?
An employee ID lanyard is a small, constantly visible piece of real estate. Getting the content right matters more than it might seem, both for brand consistency and for practical, day-to-day usefulness.
Company logo
Your logo is the obvious anchor for an employee lanyard design, ideally in a simplified, high-contrast version that stays legible at the lanyard's actual printed width.
Employee identification
The lanyard typically holds the employee's ID card or badge rather than carrying individual employee details itself; see the variable data limitation below for why that distinction matters.
Brand colours
Using your exact brand colours on the lanyard reinforces consistency with the rest of your company's visual identity, especially important for a highly visible, daily-wear item like this.
Department
Some companies use lanyard colour or a printed label to indicate department (for example, a distinct colour for security, reception, or management), making it easy to identify a staff member's role at a glance.
Event/company name
If the lanyard is for a specific event rather than ongoing company use, the event name is usually printed alongside or instead of the department label.
ID card
PrintOnline's Full-Colour Custom Lanyards product is the lanyard itself; the PVC ID card it holds is a separate purchase. The holder, though, can be added to the same order: a standard ID card holder is AED 5 for one, around AED 3 each at 100, and a rigid holder is available for a more structured card.
Security/access
For workplaces using lanyard colour as part of access control, decide your colour-coding scheme (by department, clearance level, or employee vs. visitor) before ordering, since changing it later means reordering.
What should not be printed
Avoid printing individual, sensitive, or frequently-changing information directly onto the lanyard itself, things like an employee's name, ID number, or role are far better suited to the ID card or badge the lanyard holds, which can be reissued individually without reprinting the whole batch.
Variable data: one design, whole batch
This is stated outright on the product page, so there is no need to guess at it: variable-data printing is not available on the Full-Colour Custom Lanyards product. The same approved artwork is printed across every lanyard in the order. There is no mechanism to put a different name or employee number on each strap.
That is not a shortcoming so much as a division of labour, and it is the reason the advice above holds. The lanyard carries what everyone shares: the logo, the brand colours, the department colour-coding. The ID card carries what differs per person, and a card can be reissued for one leaver without reprinting four hundred lanyards.
If you genuinely need individually printed straps, PrintOnline asks you to contact them before ordering to see whether another product or production method can do it. Its separate Lanyards for Office product answers the same question with "it may be possible, consult a sales rep first", so the conversation is worth having rather than assuming a flat no.
Order custom employee lanyards from PrintOnline.
Related: custom lanyards for companies in Dubai: the complete guide, custom lanyards for events, conferences and exhibitions and choosing the right custom lanyard.
