Forget Holiday Celebrations! 7 Keys to Create Your Own Inclusive Company Holiday

Planning work holiday celebrations is difficult, especially with employees who have various backgrounds, cultures, or beliefs. How do you plan something that’s inclusive and festive for everyone?

One route I suggest is to create your own holiday celebration. Instead of relying on Christmas cheer or Halloween candy to brighten employees’ day, HR teams can plan and implement a custom holiday that’s completely tailored to their employees and culture.

One example: Awardco’s clients have had great success with Employee Gratitude Week.

The Impact of Employee Appreciation

If you’re wondering why you should bother going through the effort of planning your own custom holiday celebration, this section will clear that up.

Employees crave appreciation for their time and their work, especially the younger generations that are taking over the workforce. One study found that while Gen Z and Millennial employees are more likely to feel dissatisfied at work, recognizing them increases retention, boosts their sense of fulfillment and increases their sense of loyalty by 79%.

Genuine praise and acknowledgement isn’t just for younger generations – it builds feelings of trust and purpose at work, while also increasing work quality for everyone. Employees are also five times more connected to their company culture when they’re recognized.

The reality is, that only 27% of employees feel recognized, and nearly 50% of them feel undervalued.

Traditional holiday celebrations just don’t cut it in the modern workplace. By creating a custom celebration for your people, you’ll ensure that everyone can feel recognized, appreciated, and supported.

Employee Gratitude Week: What You Need to Know

An Employee Gratitude Week is a week dedicated to showing employees appreciation and recognition. This can come in many forms: after-work dinners, activities in the office, virtual games for remote employees, prize giveaways, raffles, etc. What you do is important, but how you make employees feel is even more important.

For example, if you host an after-work dinner, but you host it on a day when many employees can’t make it, you don’t plan for dietary restrictions, and you only serve alcohol for drinks, your good intentions may actually alienate a good portion of your employees.

To that end, remember that meaningful, employee-centered activities are more important than extravagant activities or expensive gifts.

Knowing that, here are some strategies for planning and implementing the specifics of your custom holiday program:

• Survey employees. To plan employee-centered activities, you have to understand what employees want. Send out a survey asking employees which holiday traditions they love, what kind of gifts they prefer, what local activities they’d enjoy, etc. This feedback can provide the baseline for your plans.
• Form a planning committee. Don’t try to do everything yourself. A planning committee, made up of a diverse group of employees who are committed to improving company culture, can help make planning, communicating, and implementing the party much easier. Use the committee to brainstorm ideas and spread out responsibilities.
• Set a budget. Set a budget that’s right for you and your company’s situation. If you have the money to provide gifts to everyone, great! Survey employees about their interests and then give them personalized gifts. However, if your budget is smaller, consider simpler activities with maybe a prize raffle.
• Communicate and get excited! Communicate your party early and often so that everyone knows about it. Good ideas include placing flyers around the office, handing out personal invitations to each employee, sending regular emails and announcing it in meetings.

Examples of an Employee Gratitude Week

Here are some examples to use as inspiration for your own Gratitude Week:

• Spirit Week: Each day of the week, employees are encouraged to partake in fun games and company-centric activities to show off their company spirit. Invite everyone to wear company swag, answer company trivia, enjoy free lunch on the company or wear pajamas on Friday.
• Wellness Week: Support employee wellness by devoting an entire week to their well-being. Bring in a massage therapist for one day, a financial expert for another, and a personal fitness coach for another. Provide healthy meals or set up a challenge with fun prizes for participants.
• Gratitude Week: Devote a week to giving and receiving gratitude. Set up thank you note stations in the office (or virtually) and let employees write messages of appreciation to their friends in the office. Empower each team to give out team awards, ensuring each employee is included.

A Real-World Example of an Employee Gratitude Week

One Awardco client had an amazingly successful experience with a custom Gratitude Week, which they called their Season of Gratitude Campaign.

After this client launched the Awardco platform, they wanted to increase adoption by planning something exciting and meaningful. They created the Season of Gratitude Campaign, and here’s how it worked:

Each week of November before Thanksgiving, the client sent out prompts to help their employees think about recognition:

• Week one: Recognize an unsung hero at work
• Week two: Recognize your work bestie
• Week three: Recognize an inspiring leader

Because they didn’t have the biggest budget, this client wasn’t able to give points or cash to everyone. However, every employee who recognized (or was recognized) was entered into a drawing for 15 points on the platform. And for those who recognized all three weeks, they had a chance to win 100 points.

Even with a small budget, this client’s creativity and communication helped them see over 400 recognitions through the platform in just three weeks. They told us that this program helped spread appreciation and good feelings around to everyone in their workplace in a way never experienced before.

Spread Gratitude to Everyone This Year

The holiday season is the perfect time to spread a little gratitude and appreciation to employees. Instead of relying on traditional holidays that may leave people feeling left out or unnoticed, design your own Gratitude Week to fully include everyone. Recognition platforms can make this easier, but the only limit to your program’s potential is your creativity.