Show your appreciation with swag

Employee Appreciation Day is coming up! If you’re wondering when it is? Allow us to explain…

National Employee Appreciation Day in the United States takes place on the first Friday of March each year. Though you don’t have to dedicate just one day to celebrating your employees. Employee appreciation can be done any day of the year!

So, what is this day about? 

Employee Appreciation Day is the chance to show your employees just how much you value them and the hard work they put into your company. There are so many fun ways to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day, but above all, focus on making your employees feel important. 

Allow us to tell you a little bit about our most recent Employee Appreciation Day…

Fanny had just spent a week of her time counting branded company sweatshirts, hats, and mugs. She’s organized it all into a spreadsheet by color and size. And she never wants to do this again. Because as far as fanny’s concerned, the organization is more important than giving the swag away and messing up her spreadsheet. 

Now Fanny is adamantly anti-employee appreciation, and she most definitely doesn't want to be in charge of the employee appreciation gifts – yet she is.

The entire time that she was sitting at her desk organizing the employee swag, she was sighing. She probably averaged about 5 sighs per minute. It was very much a bah-humbug attitude.

If you’re not as anti-employee appreciation as Fanny is, then you’re probably trying to decide how to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day. There are so many different Employee Appreciation Day ideas, from appreciation gifts to employee specific gifts. Other things to do for Employee Appreciation Day include throwing a party or taking your employees out of the office to enjoy a fun event or activity. 

Handing out swag to employees is another great option. After all, we did it in our office and everyone loved it – well except for Fanny… 

Despite Fanny’s dismay with the piles of swag, the enthusiastic CEO loves swag and wants to order even more this year. The CEO doubled the sweatshirt, hat, and mug orders with even more colors. On top of that, he also ordered matching sweatpants, windbreakers, t-shirts, pens, notebooks, and a whole bunch of other swag that was going to burden Fanny’s spreadsheet. 

On that note, here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day:

There are so many ways to say “Happy Employee Appreciation Day” to your hardworking team. One of our favorites is handing out personalized employee appreciation messages. If you’re not sure what to say on Employee Appreciation Day, our best advice is to compliment a unique characteristic of the work an employee does. For example, Jane is great at pitching innovative ideas. So that quality of hers was pointed out in her employee appreciation message. 

If your employees are remote, consider using employee recognition apps to generate unique and thoughtful messages for each and every employee. Of course, employee recognition apps can be used for in-office employees as well.

Fanny certainly wished that we’d used employee appreciation apps instead of ordering pounds of merch for every single employee. Once the CEO put in the order for all of that swag, Fanny had to go ahead and begrudgingly get more of whatever the boss wanted – even if it means her spreadsheet will forever be messed up and disorganized.

If you don’t want to save the employee appreciation gift giving for National Employee Appreciation Day, consider pitching an employee recognition program proposal. If you’re not sure how to communicate a reward and recognition program, you could consider incorporating a point system with specific employee recognition program guidelines. For example, each time an employee does something positive that warrants a point. When they reach a certain amount of points, they get an employee appreciation gift. You could work some sort of variation of this into your company’s employee recognition program.

This is what our CEO did. This is why all of the swag was ordered in a much larger quantity the second time around.

The swag was a big hit for employee recognition gifts in the office. Though Fanny didn’t think so. Of all of the employee appreciation gift ideas, she went on and on about how upset she was that it had to be bulk swag. 

She decided she had to come up with a plan of her own. She started creating section after section in the spreadsheet to keep up with all of the swag the office had in inventory. There was a reward, perks, gifts, and incentives section. And then there was a gift basket and gift boxes section, and then a snack stash, alcohol, superior dishes treats section. If anyone walked by her desk while she was working on the spreadsheet, they’d get a headache just looking at the dozens and dozens of rows. It was insane. 

Fanny started to get a headache herself from all of the spreadsheets. And decided to give some swag away on her own as a part of some employee recognition programs. 

Employee recognition ideas don’t just have to include giving away tons of swag at the expense of a spreadsheet. Some of the best employee recognition programs consist of creating a reward system that gives employees an incentive. This incentive doesn’t have to be swag. It could include fun virtual events, fun social events, activities, and more. You could even incorporate an office-wide incentive for employee recognition. For example, if the office meets its goals at the end of the quarter, everyone in the office gets to celebrate with an employee recognition party. 

Other employee recognition examples could include a fun virtual employee awards show, desserts with employee recognition words written on them, social outings for employee performance, free coffee for everyone in the office, or any other event/gift that makes employees feel valued and appreciated for their hard work and dedication. 

There are so many reward and recognition ideas that you could use to show your employees just how much you value them. And when it all comes down to it, swag always makes a great employee recognition gift.

Just make sure you don’t have a Fanny in your office before ordering all of that bulk swag. Because Fanny might get so stressed out by her spreadsheets, she starts giving swag away any chance she gets. 

Though Fanny soon realized that giving away all her swag was a blessing in disguise. Her spreadsheet was empty because there was nothing left to track.  

Now that all of the swag has been given away in the name of employee appreciation. Fanny has so much time on her hands. She can't believe how tied up she was with her spreadsheets. She decides to quit her job and travel the world.