How do you show appreciation for your colleagues?

How do you show appreciation for your colleagues during the holidays and throughout the year?

Here at Asana we often send each other tasks to show appreciation and give thanks, and many teams have a dedicated gratitude portion of their team meetings and status updates. This week, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, my team held an appreciation activity! Each teammate had a dedicated piece of construction paper with their name on it and the words, “[Name], we appreciate you for…”. Then, we wrote words of appreciation on tiny post it notes, dedicating 3 minutes to appreciating each teammate. Each post it had a different expression of appreciation. We wanted to make sure to honor our remote employees, so we mailed them a letter with loads of appreciation post its, as well.

Tell us how you show appreciation on your team!

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Asana sounds like a supportive place to work, Alexis.

We have a recognition and reward scheme. We can spend up to £2.50 for a ‘recognition’ gift, which is about saying thanks for the day-to-day achievements, and we can spend up to £10 for a ‘reward’, which is to highlight when a colleague has gone above and beyond. We just buy the gift, keep the receipt and claim the money back. So, if you wanted to buy someone a box of chocolates, bottle of fancy beer or a book to say thanks, it’s a nice way of doing that.

We also have a team reward, which is a certain amount of money allocated to teams throughout the business when they achieve their objectives in the overall team operational plan. In the past we’ve used this money for all kinds of things - afternoon tea, cocktails and canapes, outdoor activities, go-karting, etc. It’s a good motivator and it’s a lovely way to spend time outside of work, celebrating what we’ve achieved. Although I have to admit, I only tend to turn up to the food-related events. :yum:

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In my office, every Friday we write “Kudos” card to show each other appreciation and I must say it is one of my favorite things to do! I enjoy writing these cards as much as I enjoye receiving them! :slight_smile:

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I love all these ideas.

I personally use Awesome Citations for my colleagues to tell them thank-you or just make them smile. They love when these appear on their desks.

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We have a bi-weekly meeting where at the end there’s a ‘culture’ section. People can submit via form (that creates a task in the agenda project yay!!) shout outs that align with our company’s core attributes (care, collaboration, drive, creativity) - so stuff like:

“Alexis showed great care the other day by tidying up the workspace for a colleague returning from paternity leave.” or whatever, then the boss reads that - they can be anonymous as well.

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Huge fans of bonus.ly here as a tool. I really love it when people reward each other based on our Core Values, which is the design of the tool. We have a monthly allowance for each member of the crew, and it’s “use it or lose it”. This keeps the momentum going, although sometimes the last week of the month gets a bit frenetic with rewards and thankfulness!

This is the third organization I have worked in where regular appreciation/reward has been an integral part of the culture, and I will do everything I can to make sure we never lose it - golden.

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I want to point out here. We motivate our employees to work at such an extent that when they come back from a weekend gap, they say, it was better than we were working at least 8 hr. We have nothing to do at home. How does this happen?

This story start from the hiring journey itself when we shortlist only passionate candidates. These people can sit long hours without getting demotivated and hence the motivation in the workplace is always in energetic conditions. Let me share some tips here: How to boost motivation in the workplace.

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For those using Slack or Microsoft Teams, you might want to check out Disco. (I haven’t used it myself but it comes out of the awesome All Turtles Studio that funds and supports innovative startups.)

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