Should companies celebrate work anniversaries?
The short answer is yes!
Why? Because your employee’s work anniversary is a reason to celebrate because employees are the backbone of every organization.
Our top 5 reasons to create a work culture of appreciation and community:
Celebrating a Work Anniversary is Important
Work anniversary is a special and important event in an employee’s life. Celebrating work anniversaries is a sign of telling your employees they’re important. In addition, giving them a long-service award lets them know that you care about the time and effort they give to the company during their years of service.
However, neglecting employee’s work anniversaries can turn out to be a costly cultural error. That’s because celebrating work anniversaries isn’t just a nice gesture for your employees or coworkers. There’s a strong business case to be made for making work anniversaries a priority at your company.
When it comes to celebrating their achievements and their years of service, even the smallest act could have significant impacts.
Since gratitude and optimism are the biggest affectors of performance, companies who proactively foster these positive emotions by having a workplace culture of recognition and community will have an automatic leg-up on those companies who don’t.
The fact is that celebrating work anniversaries with a long-service award has a relatively high ROI — you get an outsized return for little time and money. Plus, a recent study found out that there is a direct relationship between good company culture and its revenue, where having happier employees can lead to up to 4x more revenue.
All of this may sound nice or too good to be true. But it only works if you do it right, which isn’t too difficult because all it takes is a little planning, some creativity, and genuine appreciation.
Reasons to Create a Work Culture of Appreciation
Helps to Create a Positive Work Environment
Work anniversary is an excellent opportunity to thank your employees for being an essential asset to the company, choosing to stay at your company, contributing to the company’s growth. Therefore, it’s necessary to recognize your employees during their work anniversaries with rewards. They are an important asset and should be rewarded to foster a positive work environment.
Improves Employee Retention Rate
A compliment — not compensation — makes all the difference to feeling valued at work for many employees. Most employees will leave a company if they are feeling undervalued and unappreciated. Conversely, when employees feel like they are being appreciated and recognized by their company and feel like their work matters, they’ll stick to an organization and feel more motivated to complete their daily tasks — in turn, being more productive.
Encourages Other Employees
Every single one of your employees remembers their work anniversary. It’s something that every employee remembers, and now they have social media sites like LinkedIn that remind them of their work anniversaries. When you celebrate an employee’s work anniversary, you’re telling your entire staff that your organization appreciates and celebrates employees’ milestones. It increases employee motivation, and it inspires them to strive and achieve the same milestones.
Helps to Attract Top Talent
Work Anniversary awards don’t just help you retain your current employees — they also help you attract top talent. Share your employees’ success and celebration videos and images across social media. It sends a powerful message to prospective hires that you value and recognize your employees! Plus, word of mouth from your current and former employees will let others in the talent pool know how great your company is.
Gain Peace of Mind
When you recognize your employees and celebrate their milestones, it gives you peace of mind. You’re able to sleep well because you know that your employees feel secure in their position and will have higher productivity rates, which will lead to a higher ROI on your investments in the rewards themselves. So appreciating their service and enhance their experience will go a long way.
Video Greetings for Milestones & Work Anniversaries
The day you hired your employees is a fantastic day because it’s the day they became part of the work-family. It’s the day both parties committed to working together to benefit both sides. It’s a day that should be celebrated. Maybe you don’t celebrate with a big party, but a video greeting.
VidDay is a peer-to-peer recognition platform or a management-to-peer recognition platform.
Using the VidDay platform, you can make their long-service award as personalized as you see fit. Plus, using the video platform is easy. It’s one of the easiest ways to create a video tribute for your employee recognitions. This is why VidDay Group Videos for business are a valuable tool for companies to boost their company culture.
You can create a peer-to-peer video with all of their coworkers, giving them a big congratulations on their work anniversary along with messages of appreciation from the entire team! Then have one slide where you mention the employee’s name and the number of years of service. You can make it memorable with music and beautiful themes. Get as creative as you’d like.
You can also record personalized videos with the hiring manager wishing the employee a happy anniversary. Or have the entire management team give their best wishes to that employee.
Or better yet, have everyone in the office join in on making an extra special day even more special for that employee.
It’s that simple to make every employee feel valued.