As the holiday season approaches, you might be thinking about ways you can express employee appreciation to let your team know that they are valued at work. Even if you’re on a tight budget, there are plenty of things you can do to show your team you care.
The Basics of Employee Appreciation
Showing genuine appreciation to your employees is often dependent on your overall company culture and work environment. Today, we’re going to go over ways that you can show appreciation at a base level along with some more supplementary ideas.
Employee appreciation is more than providing your team with free lunch from time to time. It’s about helping your employees feel valued and comfortable at their jobs. Let’s get into some high-impact, low-cost ways you can let your employees know how much you care.
Celebrate Them
This one is arguably one of the easiest ways that you can convey to your team members that they are appreciated at work. We recommend keeping track of these two basic milestones for each of your employees: their birthday, and their work anniversary.
For birthdays, it’s commonplace for employers to send out a company-wide email giving the birthday person a shoutout. You could also take it a step further by ensuring that all team members receive a birthday card on their special day. For extra points, you could also implement a personal holiday that employees are free to use on or around their birthday.
Celebrating work anniversaries, even for years that aren’t “milestone” numbers, is great for boosting employee engagement. It can allow you to intentionally tell your employees that they are an important part of your team. If your schedule allows it, you could even throw in a personal day off here, too.
As adults, people are typically not celebrated or even recognized as often as they may have been in their younger years. Thus, the public celebration of your employees can really do the trick in showing them your appreciation.
Fun Staff Events
Providing opportunities for staff bonding events can be a fun way to show appreciation to your team. Possible event types depend on whether your team lives near each other or not. For in-person offices, this could look like a good, old-fashioned office pizza party, a staff retreat, or a recreational sports league.
If you have an all-remote staff, there are still plenty of options out there for team bonding. While it’s not quite as easy to do physical activities together, you can still encourage coworker interaction remotely. Set aside time for virtual coffee breaks, do a virtual gift exchange during the holidays, or organize a remote-friendly book club.
Keep in mind: It’s no secret that sometimes, even with the best of intentions, staff events can be both obligatory and unenjoyable. It might be worthwhile to plan events during paid work hours. Or if that isn’t possible, ensure that your employees know that attendance is actually optional.
Small Gifts
Gift-giving almost universally communicates appreciation, and you can easily translate it into your work environment.
There are plenty of small gifts you can give to your employees to show them that their work is appreciated and valued. A few ideas could be:
- Personalized desk decor
- Gift cards to their favorite stores
- Snacks
- Company swag
Pro tip: These gifts don’t have to be extravagant to make an impact, and they also shouldn’t be overly expensive or intricate. While gift-giving can be a simple way to show appreciation, it’s also important to note any power dynamics that might be affected by giving gifts. Setting boundaries when it comes to giving gifts prevents unfairness that could negatively impact work relationships.
Flexibility
While it’s great to implement employee appreciation that feels like an “extra” benefit (such as gifts or events), focusing on the overall flexibility of your company goes further than you might think.
A common issue that people who work 9-5’s encounter is finding time for necessary appointments, like seeing a doctor or a therapist. One advantage of many remote companies is a greater sense of leniency around leaving your desk for a few hours to attend to personal matters.
Flexibility in terms of scheduling appointments or errands around work hours can be vital to feeling supported at work. You can show your employees appreciation by giving them space to work on themselves. Or allowing them to take care of something important at convenient times.
Of course, we understand wanting to be able to account for where your team is during the workday. Communication is the key here. Be open to what your employees need and work out a schedule that suits both parties.
Close Early When You Can
Since we’re on the subject of flexible work schedules, a similar way you can show your employees that you care is closing the office early whenever it’s feasible.
Some companies put this into practice with a trend often called “Summer Fridays.” This is when an office cuts or eliminates their working hours on Fridays during the summertime. Employees then have a chance to recharge during the summer and enjoy a better work-life balance. As more businesses adopt practices like this, job seekers are prioritizing the opportunity for this kind of perk at work.
This isn’t just a summertime option, either. You could also give your hardworking people some extra time off on other grounds. (Examples: when a challenging project is finally finished, before a long weekend, or as your team reaches a significant goal). Whatever the reason, or even if there’s no reason at all, your employees will be grateful for a shorter workweek.
Final Thoughts
Gifts and greeting cards can be impactful gestures to show your employees that you appreciate them. But, as this year starts wrapping up, think about how you can show appreciation to your team all the time. (Not just during the holidays or for other special observances!)
Maintaining a healthy work/life balance is becoming more of a priority than ever. And part of appreciating and retaining your staff is making sure that they know their personal time is truly important. Sometimes, a pizza party can only do so much!
We hope that this article gave you some inspiration for ways you can show employee appreciation to your team. If you have questions about what we covered today, please contact us!
