The work anniversary paragraph of appreciation

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

As the manager of an employee celebrating a work anniversary, you may or may not choose to give a small thoughtful gift, and you may or may not choose to celebrate the employee’s work anniversary with a meal.

But you should definitely write a thoughtful paragraph about the employee’s past year.

It doesn’t cost anything, and thoughtfully appreciating your direct reports is something you should be doing more of anyway.

If your organization doesn’t do anything for work anniversaries, then this is the best way to help your employees not begrudge that. And if your organization does celebrate work anniversaries, then this is likely to be the most memorable highlight.

Set up a place to capture “good news” notes

One of the things you’ll want to consider doing for each of your employee’s work anniversaries is write them a thoughtful, heart-warming note about how you appreciate them and recapping their many contributions over the past year.

It can be really hard to do this at the last minute, and you will have something the organizational psychologists call “recency bias” if you do.

A really great practice is to capture successes, wins, and anything else positive about your employees throughout the year. For each role, it will be different. Maybe it’s quotes from customers, or big sales, or project completions. The idea is to have a place where you keep a list for each of your employees.

Take notes regularly

You also need a system for making sure you update it regularly.

Some managers will like to begin every day reflecting on whether they have something to add. Another approach is to do this either before or after every scheduled one-on-one for the employee you’re meeting with. Other managers have some sort of task management system and will add a recurring task.

Again, the details of how you do it don’t matter, as long you find something that works for you.

And, this is valuable well beyond work anniversaries.

As humans, we’re more naturally wired to look for threats or mistakes, but that can be really demotivating to those who work for us.

By regularly looking for the good in your employees, you will subtly become a more liked and motivational manager.

What if you didn’t take notes?

While taking notes throughout the year helps, there are other options for material to write about:

• You can scroll through your calendar or through your emails or texts with that employee to remind yourself what happened in the past year.

• If you have a peer appreciation system, you can look through there for quotes.

• If they’re customer-facing and you have a customer feedback system, you can look through there for quotes.

Writing the paragraph

In the paragraph, you share the highlights of the employee’s key contributions, accomplishments, and learnings. Then close by thanking them.

To make it really special, get a little personal and share something about the two of you from the past year.

And if your audience is wide enough that some folks won’t know them that well (like a company-wide Slack channel), consider including some “ice-breaker” facts about their personal life that could potentially support employees to connect over what they have in common.

If you have relevant photographs, they’re really fun to share along with the paragraph.

In general, the more personalized the paragraph is, the better. That will convey the message that you put some time and thought into it and truly care about the employee.

Announce it on Slack (or whatever group messaging you use)

If your company uses Slack or other group messaging software, then post your thankful paragraph about the employee on Slack.

Post on the largest channel that has active participation from employees.

For many organizations, that will be the organization’s #general channel. Some organizations choose to keep #general more one-way, and may start a #celebrations channel where work anniversaries share the limelight with birthdays, engagements, marriages, and births.

For very large organizations, a division or department Slack channel may make sense. But if you can, don’t post it for just your team. Your employee likely works with a number of people outside your team, and you want them to be able to encourage the employee, too.

After you’ve posted, direct message any key executives that you think would be especially meaningful to the employee and request that they jump into your thread with something congratulatory to say. These executives are likely not watching Slack closely and will otherwise miss it, but often are willing to respond to a specific request.

If your organization doesn’t have an active group messaging application, then email can work, but you need to navigate getting the distribution list right and the risk of awkward reply-alls.

Announce it on the bulletin board

If your team doesn’t communicate electronically and instead uses a bulletin board to post notices near the timeclock or in the breakroom, then use that space to post a happy work anniversary message. You can make a really fun decorated sign and swap out the name. This can also be a great place to post the paragraph about the employee’s past year. And, pictures make it special, too. (Learn more in our Bulletin boards and work anniversaries blog post.)

Announce it at the daily stand up

If your team does a daily stand-up, then the first item of the meeting should be congratulating anyone having a work anniversary that day. Sharing your thankful paragraph comes across really well here. Also, if you have a small item from their preferences list, tossing it to them goes well, because everyone learning that they like that kind of candy bar or potato chips or gift card helps build team camaraderie.

A variation of this is that maybe your direct reports don’t have a stand-up together, but they are on a cross-functional project team where they do the bulk of their work. This requires a little more planning, but it is really well received if you reach out to the person who runs the stand-up (scrum master, product manager, etc.) and ask if you can crash the beginning of the meeting to congratulate your employee on their work anniversary.