For many of your employees, their time spent at work is the same, week in and week out. Their days are spent focusing on the tasks at hand — reaching KPIs, increasing sales and revenue, working toward business goals and objectives, dealing with customer service requests, and getting their jobs done. But sometimes, receiving recognition and a show of appreciation for all that they do can be a wonderful change of pace and a nice morale boost for your employees.
From smaller gestures, such as free lunch once a month or gift cards for special occasions, to large-scale gestures, such as employee appreciation events, showing employees how much they mean to you and your company is a great way to honor them for their hard work, make them feel more invested and involved in the company, and motivate them to work harder and outperform their goals.
If you’re planning an employee appreciation event, there are several things you can do to customize the event to make it even more special for them.
Tips for Customizing Employee Appreciation Events
When an event is customized, your employees feel more appreciated, and it shows them just how much you care about them as people — not just workers. Here are some of the top things that you can do to customize your next employee appreciation event:
1. Get your employees involved
One great way to customize your employee appreciation event is to get your team involved! Send out a survey to all your employees asking for their input on the event. You can ask where they’d like the event to be, who they’d like to cater the event, whether they’d prefer a luncheon or dinner, or whether they’d like to do a team outing, such as going to a sporting event or playing miniature golf.
Giving your employees some say in the event shows them that their opinions really matter to you and the rest of the leadership team.
2. Embrace themed events
Nothing makes an event feel more unique than giving it a theme. Of course, you don’t have to go all out to make a themed event special, but you certainly can if you want to! A themed event can be as simple as a color-coded dress code or as in-depth as a costume party with full decorations.
There are immeasurable possibilities regarding the theme you can choose, and it helps to build up more excitement in your team members.
3. Give out custom awards
Recognize all the hard work that your employees have done for you by creating custom awards to present to them. When you work with a custom designer, you can make beautiful and unique awards that represent your brand, mission, and values while showcasing the specific reason you are recognizing and honoring employees.
A custom award is far more meaningful than a generic one that you would give to all employees and will create excitement and drive for your team members to earn one.
Your employees are what keep the company moving forward and operating day in and day out. It’s important to keep them motivated by regularly showing your appreciation for all the amazing work they do. And what better way to do that than through customized employee appreciation events?
Follow these three steps to make an event that will leave no doubt about how much you value your team.