The following is an excerpt from this week’s webinar on ‘How to Celebrate Employee Appreciation Day Virtually’ with Intuition co-founder Sammy Courtright. Continue reading below or watch the recording here.
Virtual Events that show your employees your appreciation.
We can all agree that celebrations continue to look different this year. 2020 was about adjusting and adapting and with reduced headcount, decreased budgets, less job certainty, a global pandemic, forced remote work… it’s been quite a ride for employees across the world.
But here we are in 2021, kind of feeling like we might have our groove. And now it’s time to show employees how much we appreciate them, virtually. While I want to talk today about ideas specifically for Employee Appreciation Day, l also want to touch on the larger conversation about the importance of recognizing and rewarding employees beyond March 5th.
Ideas on how to celebrate employee appreciation day, virtually.
Virtual Events
Virtual events are easy to implement, they are interactive which means employee are engaging with the host or the content and its a great opportunity to disconnect from work. The top virtual events clients have booked Intuition for next week include:
- Cocktail crafting classes
- Crush It/Kudos ceremonies
- Stand Up Comedy
- Virtual scavenger hunts
TIP: Schedule these now!! Keep the events between 30-45 minutes.
Care Kits
These can be alcohol, food, snacks, plants, wellness related boxes. Caroo makes it incredibly easy to keep your distributed team feeling connected and cared for with unique and memorable employee care packages of better-for-you snacks and premium goods they’ll love. Other great ideas:
Let’s not forget that pairing a care package with a virtual team event is quite a popular combination. Think alcohol care packages paired with a comedy set.
On that note, if this is the direction you want to consider, some packages may not arrive by next Friday, but you can always announce the package and let employees know they will arrive the week after.
Personalization
A handwritten note/card, or something personal. It sounds traditional and simple but a handwritten, thoughtful note goes a long way. People remember kind words said to them. Plus there are a ton of companies who take your handwriting, print them on cards and mail them to employees for you. Companies like scribe-less, Postable, Felt.
This may sound time intensive so our recommendation is to delegate, and vave department heads write notes for their team.
For smaller organizations, there is also a company called My Intent that allows employees to select meaningful words that can be placed on a nameplate that can be worn around your wrist or neck. You can customize the metal and the color of the band.
Subscriptions
There are a ton of subscription services available today. Like Hulu and Netflix to mental wellness subscriptions like Headspace or Whil.
There are flower delivery subscription services like Bouqs, UrbanStems and Bloomsybox. And pet subscription services! It’s never ending. The trick is to aggregate a list based on budget and let employees select which subscription they would like to use.
Traditionally we see folks offering an annual subscription but covering just a month or six months of a subscription still goes a long way.
Finally, to align this with work, consider your company values when curating a list. If you value mental wellness and that is a company-wide initiative perhaps that is the subscriptions you focus on, if its continuing education then LinkedIn Learning or Materclass are options to consider.
Host an Employee Appreciation Day Ceremony
Awards like: ‘Brainstorm Champion’ or ‘Best Slack Reactions’ are awarded to employees. The idea is that these are fun titles and rewards. So the award ceremony doesn’t go on for three days, have each department host their own ceremony. Department heads need to lead this initiative and make it a big deal so employees are excited. Perhaps all employees show up wearing a crazy hat, to make the zoom call more fun! Or have employees order pizza so its a virtual pizza party too.
A little goes a long way. To be recognized in front of your peers, for many, is just the type of validation employees are looking for.
