Employee Appreciation Ideas & Tips

If you are looking for employee appreciation ideas and tips, it’s probably been some time since you thanked your employees properly. The world is strange, and your workers feel a lot of it. If you haven’t shown appreciation for your workforce, now is the time to do so.

Running low on ideas for employee appreciation day? We can help you! We have a guide to employee appreciation ready for download so you can easily share it with coworkers. Continue reading for even more ideas!

Employee Appreciation Day Ideas

Every company is going to have different capabilities for employee recognition and appreciation. There are no true “best practices” for employee recognition other than you ensure everyone gets the same appreciation. 

Here are some of our favorite ideas to help show your employees how much you appreciate them.

Send Employee Appreciation Gifts

Want to make an impact? Send out some fantastic employee appreciation gifts. There are plenty of companies out there that were created to send out appreciation. You can send out things like sweet treats, experiences, or even branded merchandise they’ll love. Your appreciation gifts can be anything from cookies to a pair of customized company AirPods.

Give Them Some Time Back

Time is one of our most precious gifts, and it’s something we cannot get back. One way to show recognition is to give employees some of their own time back. How do you do this? You can give out random days off or half days. This is a great way to show how much you care about work-life balance and your employee’s personal life.

If that doesn’t seem realistic for your workplace, there are other ways to give them time back. Are you working through training? Go online and allow employees to work remotely if they don’t have that option. Give them chances to skip out on meetings every so often (particularly the longer, boring ones). Tell them to come in late the day after a long holiday weekend.

While this motion may seem extreme initially, you’ll see it is possible.

Set Time Aside For Fun

Sometimes, you must set aside time for fun activities with your team. Whether you break this down into different departments with managers who lead activities or you want to have company-wide fun is up to you. This can be an hour or half a day of fun, depending on what you do. 

Some great ideas include:

• Escape Rooms (virtual or real)
• Cookie Decorating
• Cooking Classes
• Scavenger Hunts
• Games (Jeopardy, Trivia, Bingo, etc.)
• Show and Tell
• Air Bands
• Talent Shows

Highlight Employees When You Can

Whenever you get a chance, highlight your employees. There are a few different ways you can do this. Many companies use social media to highlight employees who are doing something special. Those employees then share that information with their friends and family, so you’ll get more eyes on your brand. This is a win-win for you and your employees. You can also highlight an “employee of the week,” which allows you to recognize employees more often than an employee of the month. 

Another option is to have ongoing employee recognition for those who go above and beyond their job descriptions. At Trakstar, we have a Slack channel specifically for these call-outs where everyone can celebrate the employee doing a good job.

Write an Appreciation to Employees

One of the simplest ways to express your appreciation and gratitude to your employees is to write an appreciation letter. This doesn’t have to be something overly saccharine or treacly. Instead, make it a message from your heart. If you are the type of person that doesn’t say a lot, don’t think it needs to be more than a few sentences.

If you are in a remote workspace, you can send an email or a message over Slack. In-person, you can send personalized messages for a smaller workforce, leave a message in a common area, or still use your email.

When is Employee Appreciation Day?

There is a National Employee Appreciation Day every year. However, if you only send tokens of your appreciation on employee appreciation day, you might not be doing enough. Right now, there are plenty of jobs, and people will leave if they aren’t feeling appreciated. There are days for specific employees, such as secretaries or professional services workers, so you may want to mark those on your calendar.

In the United States, National Employee Appreciation Day is the first Friday in March. This is an excellent opportunity to celebrate your employees, but what are some other employee appreciation ideas?

Consider recognizing your employees during these times as well:

• Work anniversaries
• Quarter/Sprint ends
• Birthdays
• Random times
• Before extended vacations

Need Help Engaging Your Employees? Contact Trakstar

Struggling to engage and retain your employees? It’s harder than ever! At Trakstar, we tie talent development to retention rates and engagement. Our software was purpose built to help increase engagement at every stage of the employee lifecycle so that you can have more opportunities for recognition and appreciation.

Ready to get started? Schedule a demo of our platform today to learn more about our integrations, pricing, and so much more.