5 Creative Work Anniversary Ideas For Your Team

Now that many teams work remotely, traditional work celebrations are not always possible. Even so, work anniversaries are still an excellent opportunity to celebrate your employees.

Boost team morale, happiness, and retention by simply recognizing employees for their work.

If you’re looking for remote-friendly ways to celebrate your team members’ big milestones – keep reading.

Here are five creative work anniversary ideas.

1. Recognize Team Members Publicly

At companies with more than a couple hundred employees, writing personalized notes for individual achievements is not practical. At this point, many companies look for ways to streamline the recognition process – usually publicly and in real-time.

Publicly recognizing your employees creates an opportunity for the entire team to join in the celebration. There are plenty of ways to do this, but here are a few examples:

• Virtual Parties: Hosting a celebration over a video conferencing platform, like Zoom, is a safe and fun way to recognize your employees’ milestone. The kind of party you host is up to you. Try a virtual happy hour, or hire a magician or comedian to perform on-screen.
• Peer-to-Peer Recognition: An employee recognition software like Kudos® helps you publicly show appreciation for employees and their contributions. Plus, it eliminates the manual work that typically makes years-of-service awards so time-consuming. Each employee’s milestone is posted in Kudos on their special day, making it easy for everyone in the company to send their well-wishes. Each milestone can be accompanied with a certain number of points. These points can be redeemed for a Kudos Reward or a custom company reward.
• Social Media Posts: Publicly celebrating employees on your company's social media pages is a great way to show appreciation – it doesn't get much more "public" than that. We just suggest checking with individual employees before posting to make sure they're comfortable with it. Recognition through social media can also benefit your brand image, because you can demonstrate to the world how much you care for your team.

At Kudos, we take a hybrid approach with our employees. Everyone receives a KudosAward® on their work anniversary – with tons of comments and congratulations from the rest of the team. But we also like to do a little something extra and hold a monthly virtual “Birthdays & Anniversaries” party – just to get everyone together for a little fun.

Pro Tip: If you’re using Kudos, your managers will receive automated reminders about employees who are about to celebrate a milestone or birthday. Use Kudos to get a head start on your planning.

2. Provide a Virtual Career-Planning Session

In 2020, the average worker changes jobs around every four years. There are many potential reasons for this – better pay, more amicable boss, shorter commute. Oftentimes, employees get bored and simply want to embark on a new adventure.

But here's the thing – employee turnover is expensive. Replacing quality workers every few years isn't a great way to build a high-performance culture, let alone a successful company.

Try scheduling a virtual career-planning session, to meaningfully recognize milestones in your employee’s career.

In these sessions, employees can learn about levelling up in the company, new roles that might interest them, and potential income-boosting opportunities.

In doing so, you send a clear message that your company values the personal and professional growth of their employees.

3. Create a One-of-a-Kind, Personalized Piece of SWAG

Instead of giving your employees a generic, one-size-fits-all piece of SWAG, consider personalizing your gift. Name the person you’re rewarding and call out the values and qualities they display on the job. This level of personalization reminds your team members why they’re valued in your organization.

Pro Tip: In Kudos, you can easily identify the qualities and values that are highest in each employee’s KQ.

4. Support an Employee-Chosen Charity

Your employees also have personal values and causes they want to help further. That's why supporting an employee-chosen charity is one of the best work anniversary ideas out there.

Recognize, support, and help your teams make the world a better place by donating to a charitable cause on their behalf.

5. Provide a Book of Memories

Forget the glass trophies and autographed photos of your CEO – when an employee has reached five, ten, or more years of service, they’ve probably created a lot of great memories. The thing is, over time a lot of those great moments become hazy. Same goes for the feelings of success and joy attached to those memories.

Remind them. Create a memory book for your employee and remind them of all the valuable moments you’ve shared.

If you’re already using Kudos, then you have an advantage here. Pop over to your employee’s Kudos profile and look for any “Impressive” and “Exceptional” Kudos message received by the employee – those make for great memories. Next, hop into Albums and find any photos from company events with your all-star employee in them. You’ve now established a treasure trove of content for a meaningful book of memories.

Once you’ve designed your book, deliver it virtually via PDF or ship it directly from the printer to your employee’s home. For extra credit, have your employee pose with it during your next virtual team party.

Celebrate Your Team in Meaningful Ways

Work anniversaries are important milestones and should be celebrated. We encourage you to get creative and really make this moment special for your team members. Whether you celebrate them publicly or offer to support their favourite charity, the sentiment will be appreciated.