Employee Birthdays

Employees are your business’s most valuable asset. One of the most effective ways of showing appreciation for your workers is by celebrating their birthdays.

The Benefits of Celebrating Employee Birthdays

Besides just being a fun thing to do, here are some other reasons to celebrate your employees’ birthdays: 

Employee recognition

By celebrating your employees’ birthdays, you can show them that you value them as individuals and want to help them celebrate their special day. This helps improve the overall employee experience.

Build a sense of camaraderie

Relatively informal events such as birthday celebrations allow employees to get to know one another better and form personal bonds. As a result, your employees are more likely to experience an increased sense of community in the workplace, which can boost morale, increase productivity, and create a positive team culture.

Increased retention

Did you know that people are more likely to quit their jobs around birthdays because it’s an annual opportunity to reflect on one’s life? Therefore, make sure to celebrate your employees and let them know they’re valued and appreciated at work.

How To Celebrate Employee Birthdays

Here are some fun ways to recognize your workers on their birthdays:

Food

One of the more traditional ways to celebrate an employee’s birthday is, of course, with cake and candles. Alternatively, you could consider sweet treats such as cookies or doughnuts if you’d like to put a different spin on the tradition.

Remember to take any special dietary requirements into account when you’re organizing your event. If your employees work remotely and won’t all be together on the day, consider using a delivery service to have birthday treats sent to their home.

Buy a gift

Finding a gift that reflects your employee’s personal tastes is a great way of demonstrating that you value them as an individual. First decide whether the company will be paying or if you will organize a money collection among other team members. Then, come up with a list of gift ideas in your budget. 

One thing to bear in mind: if your gift is bulky, you should consider how your employee will transport it home. For many people, taking a large bouquet of flowers or balloons on public transport could be a headache rather than a treat.

Throw a virtual party

If your employee works remotely, you could throw a virtual birthday party. You could gather your team on a call and sing happy birthday and go around and have everyone say one thing they like about the birthday person.

Give your employee the day off

Giving employees a paid day off on their birthday. This demonstrates that you value their work-life balance. However, check the cost of doing so and make sure your business can afford the gesture.

Things to Consider 

While the main purpose of these celebrations should be for everyone to enjoy themselves, keep the following in mind:

Be fair and consistent

When it comes to birthdays, you need to place equal importance on all employees’ birthdays. If your goal is to increase morale, you are likely to have the opposite effect if you throw a lavish party for one employee and a smaller celebration for someone else. The last thing you want is to be accused of favoring certain employees.

Draw up a birthday calendar

One of the easiest ways to ensure that you include everyone is by creating a calendar. 

Entering all birthdays on a spreadsheet is one of the most common solutions for creating a birthday calendar. Equally, you could create events in an email calendar, which would have the added bonus of providing advanced notice of upcoming birthdays.

You could also take advantage of an employee recognition app, like Connecteam, to send you automatic birthday reminders. With employee timelines and a company newsfeed that automatically wishes employees happy birthday, you’ll always know when someone’s birthday is coming up. 

Decide who will organize the celebrations

Designate a small team of volunteers to organize employee birthday events. You may also want to rotate this team so no one gets stuck with the responsibility for too long.

Draw up a budget

Make sure not to overspend on birthdays by creating a budget. Remember, it is essential that the same amount is spent all on birthdays to avoid hurt feelings or sense of favoritism.

Respect people’s wishes

While you may feel that birthday celebrations are a useful way to boost morale, these events are not to everyone’s taste. If you have an employee who feels very strongly that they would not like to celebrate their birthday, you should respect their feelings. There may be unpleasant memories or previous trauma associated with these days, and you would not want to cause your employees any distress.

If you would like to gauge your team’s feelings on birthday celebrations, use employee engagement surveys. With Connecteam, for example, you can create your own customized polls and surveys and send them out to your entire team at the same time. Then, they can respond directly from their mobile devices and you get results in real time.

Also, remember that some people have sensitivities about their age, so you may not want to openly display banners announcing this information.

Conclusion

As well as making an individual feel valued, birthday celebrations are a useful way to boost employee morale, which can increase productivity and aid retention. And, while organizing the celebrations can take a little work, following the steps outlined in this guide should help the process run smoothly.