Celebrating your team’s achievements and success is vital to letting your people know that they are valued. As much as possible, big and small milestones need to be taken note of and given due appreciation. Employee engagement and appreciation are the buzzwords in the corporate world after all.
Depending on your team budgets, you can have big, small, or medium-sized events but what’s important is that your team’s successes are being celebrated, and individual achievements recognized.
Here are five extraordinary ways to celebrate your team’s success. Feel free to tweak and add your touch to these suggestions.
An Employee Cookout
Sure, there’s nothing special about burgers and BBQs. Wouldn’t it feel strange barbecuing at work? But what if it’s your supervisors, managers, or the leadership team donning the chef’s apron and playing master chef for a day? How extraordinary and memorable would that be! Yes, they’d have to roll up their sleeves and get greasy too.
The concept of being of service is what’s driven here. It’s not payback time for some of the leaders who have been slave drivers but instead shows that everyone should help and work as a team for a happier and more conducive work environment regardless of rank.
An Open House Picnic
This is a little huge and might be better as an annual celebration where the employee and their families are invited to a pre-decided venue if the office doesn’t have a large enough space for it. With drinks and snacks on the house and employees and their family members in attendance, this can be one big extraordinary time of bonhomie.
It gives co-workers the opportunity to get to know each other better and allows family members to get to know the people their loved one works with every day. This helps form friendships and support systems even outside the workplace.
The rewards and recognition can also happen here, with team members being recognized for their achievements in front of their spouses, kids, parents, or siblings. Very similar to a graduation throwback.
Let it Rain with Egift Cards
In the workplace, most of the best players are motivated with incentives because these are extras that can help them with their expenses. Let’s admit that money is one of the greatest motivators.
Add a little creativity by celebrating your team’s success. The best egift cards can be customized, so ensure the team is on the card, or better yet, consider your branding efforts and have your logo on the card as a reminder with each purchase.
You can set goals to qualify for egift cards. Be clear to them that yes, these incentives are for them, but they also have to earn it by going above and beyond their regular work expectations. And if they did an excellent job, give them instant gratification. Ring the bell and have them pick their egift card.
You will be surprised with how much motivation these egift cards have to make your employees perform better and be more successful – a win-win for you, the employees, and the organization.
A Trip with the Team
Everyone enjoys a good adventure, and it can be more enjoyable if you know that the company is paying for it because your whole team worked hard to meet all the goals and even exceeded expectations.
Team outings do not necessarily have to be to foreign locales. If you have a team budget but a limited one, you can plan a trip someplace close. It can be a day at the amusement park, a hike and picnic, swimming at the local beach, or anywhere that’s agreeable by the whole team.
Make it extraordinary by doing team-building activities and scavenger hunts that will foster better teamwork, improve strategies and help with decision making – all while having fun.
A Grocery Dash
Coordinate with your company’s accredited supermarket or local store and let the top performers celebrate their excellent work by participating in a 60-second grocery dash. The time can be adjusted, and you can tweak the rules of the dash, but the same principle follows that whatever they successfully cart in the given time frame is theirs.
Employees with families, especially with babies, will go above and beyond to be part of these which means that you can expect better performance from everyone because of how much help it can provide to the household expenses. Talk about diapers, milk, baby wipes, and other essentials that you can stock up for the next two to three months. Imagine being able to secure your family meals for the entire month. Go, go, go!
These activities and events are different ways of saying “thank you” to employees who are doing their share (and more) to contribute to the company’s success. Remember that every employee’s success is shared by the whole organization and vice versa.
