Physical bulletin boards and work anniversaries

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

If your team doesn’t communicate electronically — and instead uses a physical bulletin board to post notices in a well-trafficked area like near the time clock or in the break room, then you can use that space to improve how your organization acknowledges work anniversaries.

List upcoming work anniversaries

If you already post a list of upcoming events for the week or month, then why not include work anniversaries?

Or, if you don’t have that, then what about each month posting a congratulatory sheet of paper listing the upcoming work anniversaries for that month?

If your organization has no budget to do anything for work anniversaries, this is a free way to help employees (and supervisors) to self-organize and figure out something on their own.

We’ve said it before, and we’l say it again… if no one knows when the work anniversaries are, then nothing can happen!

Post celebratory messages

Interested in going to the next level?

The message will be even more memorable if you post paragraphs about the employee’s past year and add a photo or two.

#todo add link to thankful paragraphs blog post

The group poster

If you’re up for going further, put all those things on a poster and make it a tradition that the employee’s coworkers all sign the poster. Then, at the end of the day, present the employee with the poster and can either put it in their workspace or take it home. This may seem cheesy and cheap, but with the right team it can be amazing!

Whoever you are, you can do something

No one is going to stop you from doing something kind on the bulletin board. Whether you’re in HR, or a manager, or a member of the fun committee, or just a work-anniversary-aware friend: you can put one of the ideas in this blog post into action!