How managers can eliminate the #1 work anniversary complaint

by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries.

By far, employees’ biggest complaint about their work anniversary is always that it was completely forgotten.

As a manager, you can make sure that never happens to your employees!

The two best times to acknowledge an employee’s work anniversary are (1) first thing in the day; and (2) towards the end of the day.

If you’re all in and your situation allows, then there’s also (3) team lunch.

For tips on great team lunches, check out the work anniversaries team lunches blog post.

One-on-one reachout first thing in the day

In person is best

If you work in-person and can get there physically, that will be appreciated. That then becomes a great opportunity for you to give them something off of their preferences list. Candy or a bagged snack is simple. If you’re authorized to give them their favorite gift card, then that works, too.

Virtual is good, too

If you’re reaching out electronically, start with a message that says “Happy work anniversary!” and then asks if they have a few minutes for a call.

The main objective of the call should be to thank them (not to ask for status updates!).

Talking about the thankful paragraph about them that you just posted on Slack (or wherever you posted it) can be a really meaningful use of the time.

You did write a thankful paragraph about them, right?
If not, check out the heartwarming work anniversary paragraph of appreciation blog post.

Another winner is to ask them if there’s anything you can do to make their day go better.

Check in at the end of the day

This is especially important if your organization has a standard way of acknowledging work anniversaries.

Make sure everything went well

You should check to make sure that it happened and happened as expected.

While empowering employees and delegating the solving of their problems to them is generally always the right call, a forgotten work anniversary is an exception. You should not ask an employee to follow up with HR about their forgotten work anniversary. That’s just too awkward for most people and destroys all the value.

Straightening things out with HR is your job in this case. And, the good news is that while the employee will initially feel slighted that the organization forgot them, you’ll be able to more than make up for that by jumping in and making it very clear that they’re important to you and you’ll do whatever it takes to fix the mistake.

Make sure they can leave on time (or even a little early!)

And last, check in to make sure that they can leave on time.

If anything is in the way of that, do whatever you can to clear it out of the way so they can leave on time. If you can’t, thank them and apologize a lot and do what you can to make it less bad. Can you buy them lunch? Can you stay with them and help it get done faster?

In the better case where nothing is in the way, and assuming they’re salaried, see if you can get them out earlier than usual. That will be a great story for them to tell when they get home!