Recent employee data has highlighted a concerning trend. Over two-thirds of employees feel emotionally disconnected with their work. It’s no secret that when your workers are happier, they are more effective and productive too. Companies know this now more than ever, they are pushing perks and flashy rewards to entice new hires and motivate employees.

Employees who feel valued work smarter and faster because they have fulfilled a fundamental human need, a need to belong. Placing a greater emphasis on inspiring value is critical to crafting effective employee appreciation programs. 

So if you are looking for some ideas that are going to show your employees that they are an integral part of your team? Well, you are at the right place.

25 Memorable Employee Appreciation Ideas

1.Field Trips

Take your employees to the field trips. You can plan this at every quarter and ask them where they want to go and what they want  to do. Have some fun with horseback riding or pedicures for females, as they love them. 

Get some dinners and activities or hire a painter for a day who can come in and give you some painting lessons. The key is to do something that’s amazing, out of the box and connect with your team and find out what they are interested in.

2.Work Anniversaries

Celebrate work anniversaries because this is an interesting thing because I think we put a lot of focus on birthdays and other types of anniversaries. But work anniversaries are really important particularly when you have team members who have been with you for a really long time.

So put emphasis on that and give them appreciation and thanks. It can be simple as an email that you put out to everyone in the organisation, or a small little gift that’s appropriate based on the amount of years that they have been at your organisation or on your team.

Just appreciating people for the amount of energy and effort and the time they have put in is a beautiful thing and I highly recommend it.

3.Town Hall Meetings

You are probably scratching your head. Why am I bringing this up for appreciation? Well, it’s really simple. Company town hall meetings usually consist of bringing in the whole organisation, along with all their senior management.

It’s an opportunity for employees to ask senior management some questions, have some Q&A feedback. So when you do things like that and you take the time to bring everyone together, it shows your employees how important they are and how their opinion matters. So that’s another form of appreciation to show your team.

4.Surprises 

Who doesn’t like a random surprise? There’s some really fun and amazing things that you can do for your team. You can order lunch in. How satisfactory is it that now lunch is coming to them? And it’s a great way for everyone to connect.

What about coffee and donuts when you are coming in the morning? That’s a really nice surprise too. Best yet is maybe having an early dismissal on a Friday, particularly when it’s a long weekend coming up. That’s a really great way to show a surprise and give appreciation to your team.

5.Give Thanks

Ask yourself when was the last time you said thank you to one of your team members? It’s so important and a great way to show appreciation. It could be a simple thing like picking up the phone and just saying,”Hey, I really thank you for a great job that you did.”

It could be an email. It could even be a little note that you stick on their computer screen if they are around. But just acknowledging and giving thanks for the great work that they are doing. It’s a lovely way to show appreciation.

6.Give Shoutouts

Take notice of any performance goals that have been met or any performance goals that have been surpassed and shout them out for it. Give them a mini shout out, let them know that they are doing a really good job.

We all have heard of the employee of the month. That’s always a good thing that you can do as well. What we used to do on the team is actually we connected our performance goals with our core values. So team members can nominate each other for displaying our core values.

At the end of the month, the person that has the most nominations would get swag from us. You can give them T-shirts with team slogans on it.

7.Give Gift Cards

Reward with gift cards. It doesn’t have to be that much. Just $10-$20 is all it takes to genuinely show your team members that you see them and you appreciate them. You can just walk around with a $100 bill and give out a $100 handshake.

Walk up to a team member and say that “I just want you to know that I really appreciate everything that you do for the team and here is something for you and your spouse to go out for dinner.”

This spontaneous activity will be loved by your team members because they would never know to expect it.

8.Brag On Them

Brag on them with their significant other or a family member that they are connected to. If you have an opportunity to be at a barbecue or a picnic and significant others/parents/siblings are invited. Then take the opportunity to go to the significant other or that parent and let them know how great their son/daughter/husband/wife is doing.

By doing this you are letting that person know that this person who is connecting to you is doing something amazing. This activity would bring a lot of pride and joy to that individual as well as your team member.

9.Organize Potlucks

Ordering food for a team, especially if you have a big team can get really expensive. If you are trying to do that regularly, then that adds up and becomes a huge bill. So instead you can organise an event or a lunch where everyone brings a dish.

We live in a society where we are very diverse. So you are going to be eating some really good food. You can just organise this lunch and ask people to bring a dish which represents them and where they are from. Your employees will always remember this.

10.Develop An Abundance Mind

You have to switch your mindset from scarcity to abundance. When you stick in this scarcity mode where you don’t have enough or there’s just not enough money in the budget to do things then you are going to stick to more conventional ways of doing things.

But if you think in terms of an abundance mindset, then you are going to get creative about achieving your goal through other means.

11.Acknowledge The Little Things

Anything that can be an identification or recognition of something minor. If somebody goes out of the way to help an employee and do something that’s not in their job description. Make sure that you recognize it because the more insignificant that is, the more it will align with your organisational and team values.

Your team is going to appreciate the fact that you are recognizing every little thing that they do. This could be something as basic as sending them an email, writing them a letter or just saying or verbally in passing like ‘I appreciate you stepping out of your way to help your fellow employees’.

12.Create some Recognition Incentives

If your teams are working towards a specific goal or incentive, then it’s going to be a lot easier for you as a manager to recognise them when they are doing something right.

For example, if you are a part of a project or a campaign, then you can say that if your team hits the campaign milestone on budget and on time then you will have a Friday off, or you are going to have a pizza party or whatever those incentives look like.

It can also be a recognition certificate or a $50 gift card at the end of the month. Just create a structure around incentive and recognition and make sure that your teams know that you are going to be on the watch for positive momentum and positive recognition.

13.Create A Culture Of Peer Recognition

If you have a constant touch base with your team members, the very first thing that you want to do is that you as a manager need to say the employees to constantly recognize them, praise them in person and then ask the question ‘ Has anyone else seen Mr.X do something really amazing that you would like to point out?”

If you are having a Zoom meeting then just call employee Mr. X for being really great in this specific instance and thank him for that. Open the floor and ask if anyone else wants to recognize some other person for doing something amazing.

By encouraging your team members to create recognition from peer-to-peer, it takes you out of the equation to recognize every single time that someone does something right. If your team members are working together, without you having to be there then this will lead to your team members having a better relationship with each other.

14.Understand Individual Interest

When you are recognizing employees and you are giving them some level of incentive then it really helps to know what they are interested in. If an employee loves a coffee shop down the street and you are trying to incentivize them or reward them. 

It doesn’t necessarily make sense to give them a Dunkin donut’s gift card. It goes a lot further if you can personalise the appreciation so that you are able to align it with their personal interest. It amplifies their recognition and also your way of recognizing them.

This idea would mean a lot to them if you can make the incentive personalized for them specifically. This will require you to know them on a personal level or to get connected with someone who knows your employee on a personal level to tell you the information you need to know. 

15.Celebrating Weird Holidays

You could probably Google any number of weird holidays that you can celebrate whether it is ‘National Ice-Cream Day’ , ‘National Coffee Day’, or ‘National Bring Your Dog to Work Day’. There are a lot of weird random holidays that your team can celebrate and all it requires on your end is just a little bit of planning.

So if everyone has a pet then you can plan to have a dog park day on a particular day. You can ask your employees to bring a different flavour ice-cream on national ice-cream day. Figure out how you can celebrate these fun-filled weird holidays that you can celebrate.

Plan ahead of time and create some cultural event around those holidays or weird events. This will be a fun, quirky and memorable time for your team.

16.Free Stuff

I mean, you don’t love free stuff, right? Here I am talking about free swag, different purchase items, things that they don’t have to buy for themselves. You can buy team shirts, team jackets, matching hats, team pens or team notebooks. Everyone loves free stuff and if you can do it every quarter then it’s great.

People don’t really get free stuff very often so if you are looking for employee appreciation ideas then this one is perfect.

17Have A Trophy

In professional sports, the grand champion’s trophy travels from one year’s winner to the next. You can create a trophy of this sort. You can either get an actual trophy or a rubber chicken or stuffed animals.

That specific item can be recognized as a symbol of staff appreciation. You can pass it around the workplace to staff members who have accomplished something. These types of fun recognition can really take on a life of their own. This can also help solidify your company culture.

18.Go Public With Appreciation

Show that you appreciate your staff by really extending it beyond in-house recognition. Let your customers know through signage or social media. Take a photo and talk about how much you appreciate your staff or what a particular staff member did and how they earned an honour or achievement.

It’s okay to be a bragger when it comes to your employees and public recognition. It just absolutely matters.

19.Treats 

Who doesn’t like treats? The key is to make it random and make it a surprise. Have a pizza lunch, grab bagels or muffins and leave them in the break room. Treat your staff just because you appreciate them.

Treat an individual just because you noticed their hard work. There are actual people who have stayed at their jobs years longer than they should have because of the treats and spa days that their workplace provides.

So that’s the trick with retention. We can’t expect a lifetime commitment with your employees but we can only hope that we retain them longer than the average.

20.Staff Page On Website

Make sure you have a staff page on your website. Everyone wants to be able to point themselves as a contributor for where they work. Employees need to feel seen so this is a simple and mostly free activity.

It is a fun way to show a company’s culture. This is a great idea for employee recognition as they can show their friends and family that they work at a place they are getting appreciated.

21.Dog Parks

For a creative twist to employee parties, how about an afternoon at the dog park? Not every business can allow pets at work but if you have staff members who are really pet centric then consider having a dog park event where everybody’s pets can meet each other.

This is one of those appreciation events that can possibly be shared with your customers as well as your employees who might get enjoyment and connection out of meeting other furry friends.

22.Create Memorable Small Moments

I want you to think about what words come out of your mouth on a regular basis and what your actions say. Moments of reward don’t make up for months of action and words that show very little appreciation.

So ask yourself, if you have an employee who is going above and beyond right now? Make sure of something that the office functions or if they are improving your personal work-life balance.

If that’s the case then you need to come up with a way to recognise them on an ongoing regular basis.

23.Spend Time With The CEO Day

This is a great way of giving recognition to your employees. On this day you would let them interact with the CEO or President of the organisation. They will be ascertained that their good work is being actually valued by the organisation.

There can be special meetings with the chief exclusively for those who have earned it. It can be based on various criteria such as performance, good attitude, tenure and creativity etc.

24.Time – Most Valuable Gift

Time is the most valuable gift that you can give your employees. Your employees, just like everyone else, are trying to juggle a lot of things in the 24 hours of the day. Moreover, who doesn’t want some extra time to spend with family or to just relax?

If you reward your employees with flexible timing, they undoubtedly love it.

25.Flexible Choices

Do you know what our employees will absolutely love? It’s a gift or real choice. When your employees have the option to choose a tangible reward for a job well done.it will give them the utmost satisfaction.

So, next time you want to reward your employees, ask what they want. Another easy way to do that will be through a point based rewarding system. Point base rewarding is becoming a more and more common tool for employee recognition.