Employee Appreciation Day - £5 per head

[justlikebuses]

I need some ideas. I have a budget of £5 per head to show appreciation for our employees.
In the workforce we have:
Multiple sites
Workers who will be off shift
Workers who will be on night shift
Day workers
Management against vouchers for costa etc.

I'm coming up with cake. That's all. Please could you sling some ideas my way.

Nothing like food centered events or gifts to make a subset of employees to feel unappreciated. It just highlights that the company doesn’t know anything about people and medical restrictions .

what about reusable water bottles.
travel coffee mugs

A mug with your name on it, again, is a proper insult!

Unless you want people to think that management are taking them for mugs, by accepting this measly £5 then maybe.

I can't believe someone suggested Prosecco... not everyone wants to drink! Also the biscuits/cakes idea, again not everyone wants to stuff their face with unhealthy food full of sugar.

I dont think you can win here OP, too many people to try and please.

Personally I would be most happy with leaving an hour earlier.

How about a raffle per site? Everyone gets 5 tickets and chance to win a (bigger than £5) prize!

You've got £1000?
Don't spread it equally as it makes it worthless.
Enter everyone who wants into a raffle so one person wins the £1000.
Or a few smaller amounts so someone wins £500, and five people win £100.
People will actually engage with it, it's a bit of fun and people will actually get something significant.

Our work does random stuff like this a lot. As a one off it's a bit pointless but when it happens regularly it's OK.

You have three options, buy a gift for everyone, give out free food at an event with speeches or organise an activity that people can take part in. Over the years we've had the following:

The kind of low value logoed crap that gets given out at conferences
Insulated cups (these actualy get used)
T-shirts
Facemasks (during the pandemic)
Notebooks (parents with daughters love these)
Pencils and pens
Puzzles
Fleece Blankets
Baseball caps

Food and drink
Pizza
Cake
Mocktails
Sweets
Icecreams
Chocolate advent calendars
Free lunch vouchers for the canteen or for food vans that are invited into the car park.

Activities
These sometimes have an additional charge for the participants with a charity donation as well.
Yoga sessions
Volunteering days
Crafting sessions during the working day. We've had baking, flower arranging, Christmas decorations.
Sporting competitions between depts during work time and with a trophy.

Not all of these are suitable for all sizes of organisations but hopefully give you some ideas.

Hire stocks for the day, stick management in them, purchase loads of aponges and buckets. All employees get to throw wet sponges at management in retaliation of being patronised with a £5 gift.

WRT a raffle, we have a scheme where managers electronically register if people go the extra mile to get the job done. It's on the intranet site but every year everyone that has been recognised n the previos year is entered into a draw and the winner gets £1000.

Let staff choose a charity to make a £5 donation to perhaps?

Yuk.
We had this once. Line manager ordered about 6 pizzas. Hardly any was eaten - I don’t want to spend my lunch hour at work, I want to go out & get some fresh air. One woman took 3 of the pizzas home and ate them over the rest of the week, nobody else wanted cold pizza at home

That's not showing appreciation to the individual.

£5 is a shit budget. You'll never please everyone unless you give out fivers. I'd rather nothing than a mug with my name on or some bottled water and an apple

Costa would be offensive to many women after their trans mastectomy images
I would expect HR complaints and/or letters to the board about values if you sent to Costa Cards

@GiantHornets but you’ll never please everyone. I’d also assume the food/gathering/well-being event would be in work time rather than a lunch break (although I’m nhs so they are rare anyway) but all our junior docs have domino’s ordered every weekend and many night shifts at my hospital. Totally fine for it not to be your thing but you don’t need to be so rude about it.

Be aware of this:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hospital-staff-insulted-after-receiving-kit-kit-bar-as-thank-you-for-helping-to-win-national-award-7807725.html

@idontlikealdi - it is if the individual gets to choose the charity and get the feel good factor of making a donation without spending their own money.

It's called "giver's glow"

Boxes of pizza, doughnuts and coke. They'd love that.

This might be your best bet. You're between a rock and a hard place with the stingy budget and the moany employees, but doing this you could get a range of decent and small prizes. A hamper, a voucher for a facial at a local place, a £10 supermarket gift card, a drill or whatever Aldi's special buys are that week.... Anything like that.

You could even ask for suggestions as to what people might like ... Or just go for a variety of things, especially if they're transferable so they could give away if they hated it.

(cue moaning about 'we don't like facials and hampers', I'm sure, but I'd be quite excited by it).

Do you have a staffroom? You could make a lot of improvements to a staffroom with £1000 - microwave, toaster, cushions, pot plants, maybe some regular magazine subscriptions.

(I haven't said coffee machine, as I am guessing you would not then have the coffee to go in it)

Sorry but a FIVER?!!

Sounds like a sure-fire way to make staff feel utterly UNappreciated, really. And not even a voucher!

I'd rather bosses not bother than do pointless crap like that.

A £5 scratch card

This is a great idea

Sounds like a Tony Blair initiative where he gave all schools money to renovate staff rooms

Hundreds of school staffroom dishwashers affectionately called Tony/Tone

The idea that it's £5 a head is silly.

We would often have cake & treats, working out less than that per head, as a way to mark a milestone or celebrate something.

It doesn't equate to individually celebrating staff, nor is it meant to. It's about collectively marking our achievements & coming together.

The idea that £5 can show any kind of individual appreciation is ridiculous.

This is the truth of the matter.

It sounds like the staff don’t feel appreciated because they’re just not appreciated. And doing something like this will probably just highlight the lack of appreciation.

I read something the other day about a company who did employ of the week for people who had been praising others. Your company needs to start coming up with better ideas.

We had a drinks van brought into the car park. Staff could go out at a time that suited them and get a speciality tea/coffee and tray bake. It was well received.