8 ideas to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day remotely

Employee Appreciation Day is taking place 5th March, and is a perfect opportunity for employers to recognise their people for working so hard, especially during challenging times. While I’m a big believer that organisations should appreciate efforts all year round, it’s a great reminder to say thanks for all that you do and to shine a spotlight on those who make your world a better place to work.

Before we uncover the eight ways to boost recognition and celebrate Employee Appreciation Day this year, I want to take a few moments to set the scene for why we should recognise our people in the first place.

Why employee recognition matters

people-holding-hands-1Strategic employee recognition goes beyond saying 'thank you.' Whether our people are working on the front lines, or going on month 11 of working remotely, they’re facing more stressors than ever before – some of which we can’t even see on a day-to-day basis.

While Employee Appreciation Day is a catalyst for celebrating your people, the ultimate goal is to create a culture of continuous recognition – one where employees feel valued and are excited to show up every day. 

It’s essential now more than ever before that employees feel connected to their company's overall mission, purpose and values and realise how their contributions can impact the recovery and growth of the organisation. 

Learn more about our reward and recognition solutions »

And engaged employees build better, stronger, more resilient organisations, in three key ways:

 1. Engaged employees make better decisions for their companies and clients because they understand more.  2. Engaged employees are more productive because they like or love what they are doing.  3. Engaged employees innovate more because they deeply want their organisation to succeed.    
 

As business leaders, we need to connect our hybrid workforces better, and show our people how much they matter to our organisation’s success. 

 

Now that we’ve started with the why, let’s uncover some examples to bring this to life: 

8 ideas for using technology to boost connections

Being thankful is shown to make us more positive, more resilient and improve our relationships, too. People who regularly take time to notice and note the things they're thankful for, experience more positive emotions, sleep better and express more compassion and kindness towards others.

Sending employee rewards or eCards can help make someone’s day. Here are just some of the reasons to encourage your employees to say thank you to one another:

1. For helping out with a project, or work that you needed support with. 

2. For making you laugh or brightening up your day with silly jokes or for just checking how you are. 

3. For listening to you when you shared a personal problem or how you have been feeling recently. 

4. For not making you join any more Zoom quizzes (I think we’re all grateful about that one!).work-from-home-9

5. For being understanding or supportive while you juggle work meetings with teaching the kids long division (can’t we just give them a calculator?).

6. For doing their absolute best over the last year despite caring for someone/home-schooling/working with loud housemates (fill in the blank). 

7. For going above and beyond at work while living your company values.

8. For any reason really... everyone deserves some appreciation after last year. 


Even though we may not all be together this Employee Appreciation Day, we can still show our people how much we value them and connect them back to a larger purpose. 

If you’d like to celebrate your people this year, and improve employee recognition within your organisation, sign up for a free trial of Reward Gateway for Small Business. 

Get your free trial