How Do You Plan An Employee Appreciation Day?
You can plan an Employee Appreciation Day that will really be a celebration of what your employees mean to you and your company. First of all, start with a core group of the management team members and pick your date and time for the Employee Appreciation Day.
Then, decide on a theme and set your budget. For instance, pick "A Night at the Movies" and center all of the activities around movie or television themed games. Ask everyone to come in costume, and have a "best costume" award during the celebration.
Assign the following jobs: decorations, food, games, movie theater set up and popcorn.
For decorations, get movie posters, black and gold balloons, a red carpet and stars that resemble the Walk of Fame stars in Hollywood. Post your employees names on the stars.
For food, have things that you’d regularly find at the movies: hot dogs, pizza, movie theatre type candies, and soda. Buy or rent a popcorn machine and serve popcorn with butter flavored toppings, or additional shake ins like seasoning salt and Tobasco sauces.
For your games, set up a movie bingo game, with names of old movie stars on cards in lieu of numbers. Have a bean bag toss with the bags going into holes that have been decorated with classic stars like Lucy and Ricky from I Love Lucy, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator.
Set up a room to show a work related movie (something like "Who Moved My Cheese?" is a classic) or a short cartoon classic if you want to steer away from work at the celebration. When the lights go down, have someone popping fresh popcorn and passing it around as everyone watches the offered snippet!
Have an on-going raffle during the 8 hours of work time; put all the employees name in a jar and pull their names each half hour. Have envelopes ready with cash, movie tickets, certificates for movie rentals or purchases and gift cards. As the randomly chosen winner comes up for their prize, use the ‘Price is Right’ line, "John Doe, it’s your lucky day, come on down!" and then let them choose an envelope.
You can have an all office vote for employees that meet categories like "Mr Approachable", "Best Trainer Ever" or "Always Says What Everyone Else is Thinking". Have about 10-15 categories that are fun and lighthearted, but nothing that could potentially hurt someone’s feelings. You don’t want anything to mar your Appreciation festivities.
You will also need to have picked out employees that deserve special recognition for their production, attendance or attitude. At the "official" envelope ceremony, have their name in the appropriate envelope and do an Oscar like presentation "the envelope please…and the winner is…..!" It will be a big hit for sure!
You can use these ideas and still go with a different theme; 50’s would be a "Grease" party, the 70s would be a Saturday Night Llive disco or you could have a Pirate themed party with plenty of Johnny Depp lookalikes!
When you take the time to show your appreciation to those who work so hard to make your company successful, any theme you choose, and how you decide to show your appreciation, will surely be a big hit with all of your employees.
Your employees are an integral part of your business running smoothly and efficiently. Sure you pay them for their work, but the truth is that many employees do more for your business than their job description requires. Planning an employee appreciation day is one way to say “thank you” on large scale. Pick a day that will work for the majority of your employees. You can give them a day off of work to allow everyone to attend or you can schedule a day when the business is closed. One way to pick a day is to choose 2 or 3 dates and let your employees sign up for which day works best. The day with the majority of employees is the one you should use for your appreciation day. Include your employees. This day is about your employees and they should be allowed to give you ideas of things they would enjoy. Your employees may want to contribute to the appreciation day by bringing food, choosing the location or helping plan the event. Choose a location. The location for the employee appreciat
