How to celebrate your employee's anniversary

Did you know that @principal.preferredName is celebrating their anniversary next week? This is an important milestone worth celebrating! Here’s how. 

First, set norms and expectations for how your team celebrates 

Step 1: Leverage Pyn to remember anniversaries

Pyn will notify you of every anniversary (including 5 and 10 year) one week in advance. Feel free to also add these dates to your calendar or your team’s calendar for an extra heads up. 

Step 2: Decide how and when you will celebrate

As your team grows, it’s important to maintain consistency in how you celebrate anniversaries. This is to avoid unintentionally hurting anyone’s feelings by celebrating people at different times or in different ways.

Give personal recognition

Learn how each of your employees wants to be recognized and appreciated on their special day. 

If you don’t know, ask (or check their User Manual)! You can also get to know your employee’s preferences during their onboarding. Some want public attention like shoutouts and others prefer a private conversation where you share your appreciation 1-1. 

Here are some options for in-person and remote celebrations:

• Take them out for coffee or lunch on that day or book a virtual get-together
• Buy a cake or dessert or have one delivered
• Send a thoughtful Slack message to the team
• Give a shout out during a team meeting (even if it's a few days before or after)
• Ask for a few volunteers to share words of appreciation at your next team meeting
• Give or send a handwritten card signed by you and the team 
• Send them a gift card to order a special lunch or meal.
• Create a video message from the team.
• Have your team create homemade signs that they can hold up during a meeting.
• Ask the team to use virtual party backgrounds on a video meeting.
• Slack messages from the team (you can even schedule it in advance to ensure it’s the first thing the team member sees in the morning).

Give the employee the opportunity to have a choice where possible (they could hold the power over the day’s lunch selection; a new piece of art at the office; the design for team swag; etc) 

Communicate specific appreciation that highlights their unique value and contribution

Whether in person, in a card, or over video conference, share specific examples of your employee’s positive impact on your team, the company, its values or its mission. 

Employees are extra motivated when they know how their work has impacted the team and the company’s success. This positive feedback also helps instill a sense of pride and gratitude. Pro-tip: Share examples of this employee’s contributions with the team. It’s a great way to highlight and show the kind of behavior you want to see from everyone! 

Here’s an example:

I’m so happy that [name] has been with us for another year. I’ve always been amazed by their [enter key strength]. Their contribution to the team and to projects like [enter team project] has been so important. [Name], thank you so much for all your hard work and your contributions to our team!  

Schedule a career-planning session 

Work anniversaries are what are known as ‘epiphany moments’: an occasion where employees assess their goals and whether they are happy in their role. CEB, a best-practice insight company, identified signals that indicated employees were looking for new employment. They found correlations between certain dates and job-hunting activities and noticed a 6% increase on the hire-date anniversary.

Schedule a career-planning session during your employee’s anniversary week. This shows that you and the company are invested in their future and success. Happy celebrating!