Employee Appreciation Ideas Throughout the Year

8 Employee Appreciation Dates you Shouldn’t Forget

Employee appreciation is at the heart of company culture. People make up your business, and ultimately, how you treat them will determine if your business thrives or fails.

You should show your employees appreciation throughout the year. Take advantage of every opportunity to remind your employees of how valuable they are, and how appreciative the company is of their work.

This is especially true in the age of the remote workforce. Now it is more important than ever to find reasons to spread the positive feelings and let your employees know they are appreciated. We’ve rounded up a nice list of ideas and moments that you’ve probably not thought about as a great time to show your employees some love.

Check out the list below, and then get more inspiration about employee appreciation from our other blog posts:

Work anniversaires

Work anniversaries can be a lot of different things. It can be the yearly occurrence of the date someone was hired, for example. It could also be marking the day that someone transitioned to a new role or got promoted.

Work anniversaries are important moments to demonstrate employee appreciation because they reflect an ongoing commitment between the company and employee. Celebrating a shared history is a great way to remind where they came from and all that has occurred since they first started working at the organization.

Take some time to publicly acknowledge the work they’ve done, and how they’ve grown in the years since they took on their new role. Hopefully it will motivate others to want to reach the same place eventually!

Swag Idea: Celebrate an anniversary with a luxury duffel bag from TOPO Designs

Employee birthdays

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned employee birthday party? This is a classic, must-celebrate that no matter what anyone tells you, they expect and look forward to.

Celebrating birthdays for employees can feel like going through the motions if you don’t put any thought into it. But if you do, it’s an amazing opportunity to show someone how much they’re appreciated, and how much your company is invested in continuing to see them grow and prosper. Make sure you do the work to find a nice, not tired-out way to celebrate: we even recommend giving them the day off!

When considering a gift for employee birthdays, consider giving a suite of items that can facilitate an experience!

Swag Idea: Send a customized box of luxury wellness items to give your employees a spa retreat day on their birthday.

Personal Life Achievements

Paying attention to the personal lives of employees is incredibly important when it comes to creating a company culture of growth and appreciation. Most people don’t live for work, so it makes sense that what they do in their off hours will define them more than their role. And recognizing out of office achievements is a great way to build a caring company culture.

If you know something big is going on in the life of one of your employees, call attention to it and celebrate them! Some of the biggest and most common things you can watch for:

Graduation from school or certificate program
Participation in a competition or high-level hobby
Completion of a big fitness goal (marathon, triathlon etc.)

Find out what’s important to your employees and make sure they feel like the company supports them in pursuing those goals

End of quarter wrap ups

At the end of the quarter, take some time to go over the wins over the last few months and let people know their hard work is appreciated. Whether you have solid goals that you were measuring success by or not, end of quarter employee appreciation is crucial to getting people excited about what’s next and feel acknowledged for what they’ve achieved.

Some organizations do quarterly wrap parties a few times per year. Now that so much work is happening virtually, consider offering your teams gifts in celebration instead. Remember— Swag.com can help you customize, shop and ship boxes of great promotional items to your remote teams around the world.

National Employee Appreciation Day (first Friday in March)

Did you know that there is an official day of the year specifically for employee appreciation? Now you do!

Employee appreciation day is a no-brainer chance to demonstrate to employees how much their work is valued. Companies around the country take the first Friday in March to plan big events and initiatives all aimed at showing employees they care. Some places give the day off, while others create elaborate team building exercises and picnics to make the day fun and relaxing.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure underneath the gifts or time off there is a clear communication of how much your employees are valued! The more personal the better, so try to get on top of this well ahead of time.

Swag Idea: Send custom bluetooth speakers and suggest your employees hit the beach

New Year’s Resolutions

While this isn’t technically a “day,” New Years brings with it important opportunities to support your employees and demonstrate an appreciation for the work they put in over the last 12 months.

Use the time around New Years to reflect on the state of the company, and make new goals for what comes next. Be public about celebrating the wins from the year and make sure to tie them into the work each team contributed. As much as possible, be specific about individual actions or initiatives that stood out.

Also consider finding a way to help support your employees’ New Years’ resolutions if you can! Perhaps this means gifting them a tool to help with fitness tracking, or maybe gifting a new kitchen set to inspire them to finally learn to cook.

Swag Idea: Support New Year’s wellness by gifting a FitBit fitness tracker

Bosses’ and Managers’ Day (October 16th)

Managers are important employees that deserve appreciation too! Celebrating managerial work as an essential part of operations goes a long way to inspiring continued excellence and healthy leadership throughout your organization.

Rewarding managers is essential to retaining senior talent as well. Experienced execs and people managers are always in demand, meaning you have to go out of your way to demonstrate to your managers that they are valued and appreciated where they are. Sometimes this requires a gift that goes above and beyond a traditional token of appreciation.

Family milestones and events

You might not think about it, but celebrating your employees’ families can be just as meaningful as celebrating the employee themself! In our modern era of remote work and WFH lifestyles, people’s families can become all the more important to their performance at work

Here are just some of the family events you’ll want to keep an eye out for and celebrate when they occur:

Birth or adoption of a child
Graduation of a child / college acceptance
Marriage (or marriage of a child)
Getting a new pet

Any big event that feels important to your employees should feel important to you too.

Conclusion: show some love whenever you can!

Employee appreciation is the bedrock that great company culture is built on. To get the best performance from your employees, you must make sure they feel valued and appreciated. These ideas are just a few ways you can create opportunities to celebrate your employees— we’re sure you’ll be able to find many more.

What are you doing to demonstrate your employee appreciation? Reach out to blog@Swag.com for a chance to be featured.

Employee Appreciation Ideas Throughout the Year