Employee Appreciation Day is March 2, 2012, so you have one month to plan a celebration for your team. If you’re looking for theme ideas, register for our upcoming Recognition TV webisode. Lindsay, Baudville Product Manager, will share her favorite Employee Appreciation Day themes in a video broadcast on Wednesday, February 15. She’ll probably share her picks for Employee Appreciation Day gifts this year, too. Don’t miss it!

Employee Appreciation Day is all about your employees. Celebrating the value they bring to your organization as individuals is a great way to increase employee engagement, commitment, and motivation.

Tomorrow is National Compliment Day, and the day serves as a reminder of the power of positive words. When you give someone a compliment, you express appreciation for something that’s unique about them or something they did. Compliments can create a more positive work culture, improve relationships, and make your organization more successful.

This 2005 article from USA Today reminds us that compliments at work are not just about making us feel good, but it’s also “about company performance. Employees function better when their positive efforts are noticed and valued.” 

The truth is negative comments are much more prevalent in our world today, and they’re more powerful, too. Psychologists have found that it takes 10 positive comments to offset one negative comment. That means you’re going to need a lot of compliments in your workplace!

Make it a priority today to give five compliments to the people around you: your coworkers, boss, family, even the cashier at the grocery store. Here are five unique ways to give compliments and make someone’s day:

1. Send an ePraise. Browse our ePraise card collection and choose the ecard that is the best fit for your recipient. Add your compliment in the space available for a note and send. It’s a free, quick, and easy way to give a compliment. 

If you’re a fan of Baudville’s free downloads and eBooks, get excited! We’ve just released Team Up! It’s an eBook of activity ideas that will energize employees and teams. Longtime Baudville friends will remember that we once sold a book by the same title. Since that book is no longer for sale, we decided to share the 60+ team activity ideas with all of you, for free! 

The original Team Up! book was composed of six chapters covering activities for recognition, teams, customer service, milestones, ice breakers, and energizers. There are great ideas in every chapter! Because there was so much in this book, we decided to make it available for download by chapter. That way, you can download just the activities you’re interested in. Right now, you can download the chapters on recognition, teams, and customer service. The remaining three chapters will be available in early February. 

Valentine’s Day may be over a month away, but in my opinion it’s never too early to start planning! Although the holiday is typically celebrated between couples, I think it’s a great opportunity to have a fun day with your team. After all, we used to have Valentine’s Day parties in school. Why not bring them to the office?! 

Your celebration should be focused on fun, boosting team morale, and employee appreciation, which is a great thing to do in mid-February. By then, the holidays are long behind us and most people (like those of us in Michigan!) are in the middle of a long winter. The good news is you don’t need to spend a lot. These low cost Valentine’s Day ideas will give you plenty to do on February 14th without breaking the bank!

First, an absolutely free Valentine’s Day idea: send an ePraise card. Choose a card to send to the entire team and say “Love your work” or “Way to put your heart into it.” Using ePraise, you can make Valentine’s Day a day for employee appreciation!

 

It’s estimated that more than 58 million pounds of chocolate will be purchased during the week of Valentine’s Day. Bring some chocolate goodness to the office on Valentine’s Day with a dessert potluck. Invite the entire team to bring in their favorite dessert to share. Elect judges to taste the different dishes and hand out awards, like the Stole My Heart with One Bite Award, and present certificates to the winners. What other awards would you give out?

Everyone loves food in the office, so give each of your team members a small treat on Valentine’s Day. Whether it’s a small bag of Tootsie Rolls or Sweet Treats full of jelly beans, your employees will love that you remembered them. Add a personal note to each piece of candy to make this an effective employee appreciation gift.

One of my favorite Valentine’s Day ideas is having an old fashioned card exchange. Create mailboxes for your employees out of paper bags or shoe boxes, and ask everyone to bring a Valentine’s Day card for each of their teammates. I think this would be a blast at Baudville. We’d have some really creative cards floating around!

Finally, I love the creative Valentine’s Day ideas on Mud Pie Studio blog. They posted 101 Valentine’s Ideas for under $5, and a lot of them would be perfect to give in the office. The valentine using the Pop Rocks is one of my favorite because it has an employee appreciation message. 

This week, we’re privileged to have Jennifer V. Miller return to the Recognition at Work blog to reflect on the gift of giving!  Please make Jennifer feel welcome with your kind comments! 

The act of giving someone recognition is a gift that’s in season all year long. And, it’s the gift that truly keeps on giving. Consider this: according to researchers from University of California, San Diego and Harvard, positive behaviors like giving someone praise is a sort of social “contagion”—it’s scientifically proven that one person’s act of kindness creates a cascading effect, prompting others to “pay it forward” and also do good.