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.

Maybe... I work in a school with a lovely staffroom and I think it really lifts morale - more so than a £5 bar of chocolate / coffee voucher would.

Even if the staffroom is the wrong idea, I feel the point stands that £1000 could possibly have more impact than 200 x £5.

Being given an hour to use whenever ie come in hour later one day or go home early one day would be much more appreciated, however possibly a logistical nightmare as you mention shifts.

My workplace does food based ones in little individual boxes or bags bought from local businesses. We've had scones, pic n mix, chocolates, Easter egg, nice brownie etc. probably hard to do on £5 budget though.

Prize draw with £50 prizes?

When our department won £1000 we spent it on a new sound system so we could have music in the warehouse and offices. It made the job a lot more bare able having some music on

Oh and we've been given branded plastic lidded cups, but that's because we're not allowed to use mugs anymore for h&s

People are saying it's only a fiver but when you look at 200 employees it's £1000 and something like a group order of Dominoes / Papa John's could work well.
It won't be everyone's cup of tea but you can't win everyone OP.
Other things we've done in my office are ordering sandwiches from M&S and cakes from a local bakers and doing our own afternoon tea.
Arranged an ice cream van to come on site and paid a set amount for staff to order ice cream / lollies / treat of their choice.
Staff won't see that it's 'only a fiver' and as someone else said, these types of activities done semi regularly can boost morale and make staff feel appreciated.

I immediately thought of the kind of thing people do at weddings and milestone birthdays to show how much the celebrants are cared for. Like compiling a photo gallery or video, etc.

How about trying to provide something like that, that would last longer than a slice of cake, and that employees can participate in and have a bit of a laugh with?

I think you could afford a photographer or videographer to come and immortalise you all and produce something. Pics or a short film or a yearbook type thing.

Get employees to dress up and plan poses or captions etc. This is the kind of thing that would have generated immense excitement in some of my previous workplaces, but your lot do sound fairly cynical and hard to please!

Frankly £5 is insulting.

Nobody is going to feel 'appreciated' if they get a piece of cake, a bag of crips or a glass of something or other once a year....

You should really have fed back to senior management that although it is a great idea to do something for staff this budget is simply not adequate.

A voucher for each staff member would be best and you need to be able to offer £10-£20 as a bare minimum for it to be seen like a thoughtful gesture.

my work one year organised a volunteer day gardening at a community garden.
anyone who went got an extra day annual leave to take at their chosing.
we could chose to go in a group or a day of our choice.

Our workplace does something every month. It varies so if a particular month someone doesn’t like it, chances are the next they will. It’s little things but it really does make it a nicer place to work. Some of the things include a weekly lunchtime yoga session, chocolate brownies and ice cream, hot chocolate in winter, bbq in summer.

"We appreciate you to the total of £5 per person". I can't imagine why they aren't infinitely grateful. They should be more humble. Or find an employer that really appreciates them.

"We appreciate you to the total of £5 per person". I can't imagine why they aren't infinitely grateful. They should be more humble. Or find an employer that really appreciates them

£ 5 a head isn't actually screaming employee appreciation to me as much as it is 'what's the least we can get away with spending.' They're rather contradicting their own message by being that parsimonious.

"Dress up and plan a pose" so that you can be photographed and management can feel good about themselves and pretend that they "appreciate" employees? I'd hit the fucking roof if I were one of the employees! How goddamn insulting. Nobody likes forced fun or to be made to parade around like a loon on demand. Nobody is going to care or feel appreciated or give a rat's arse about Barry who left six months' later being dressed like a sunflower. Who's going to sit down and look at photos anyway. Utterly bonkers.

For my staff at Christmas I did a token thing of large bag nice crisps, fancy pack of biscuits and a can of pop per person, all in a brown paper bag with handles tbh I wasn't sure if it was crap, but I was a bit out of ideas but it went down so well!
A different manager did box of mince pies, festive crisps and a choc santa. This was equally well received.

Senior management going to each location to do a shift/ couple of shifts and talk to the staff about what would make their everyday lives better. One place it might be a new microwave, another it might be a contribution to a sound system. Most importantly though being listened to. Make it clear that it is working alongside the most junior staff not checking up on them but learning from them.

Does it have to be something for £5 each? Or could you do something collective with the £1,000?

Redecorate staff rooms.

Free access to an online service that usually costs (eg free movie).

Pay a speaker to deliver a useful talk (wellbeing, tackling addiction, dealing with difficult bosses 😊 etc).

Take everyone out for the day to a cool venue - vip tour of the local stadium.

Or ask the staff for their ideas on how to spend the money with the option of 'a mug each, a donation to a charity chosen by ballot, or a collective activity which you need for suggest'.

If people still complain when given this level of agency, then just make a donation to a local charity!

£5 per person is a lot less than an hours work at minimum wage. Doesn't sound much like they're appreciated. A half day of extra holiday or something with a higher budget makes sense. £5 each is just insulting and unlikely to show any sort of appreciation.

A fiver is insulting. Just had it back to senior leadership and tell them they are being awful.

New coffee machine in the office

Reminds me a bit of a previous employer of mine - on the Tuesday we were all told that there would be mass redundancies where about 20% of the staff would lose their jobs, and on the Wednesday when we arrived at work there was a lovely new "Investors in People" placque on the wall in Reception.

A fiver pp to show appreciation is a bit of a "boot in the baws" as my dad would have said!

You've had some good suggestions on here though @justlikebuses so I hope you can find something that works.

Those bars of crisps on dragon Den last night get my vote!

https://www.chocolate-moments.co.uk/product-page/bar-of-crisps-100g

Everyone lost their heads and refused to open the links as I'd "sold their data"

They quite possibly had a point....

Seriously a fiver is such a paltry amount it's really not worth it. It doesn't say 'we appreciate your work', it says 'you're not even worth 25 minutes at minimum wage'.

Have a prize draw of 20 x £50 vouchers.

Or give everyone an extra days annual leave.

What about a breakfast?

Croissants,granola pots,nice pastries,bacon and sausages,baps etc. Nice tea and coffee,pure orange?

£5 per head is a pathetic amount for employee appreciation - it will achieve the opposite to its actual intent because most employees will experience such a derisory amount as a slap in the face. It's like leaving a 2p tip at a restaurant - such a low amount that it's worse than zero.

You can’t give vouchers there are tax implications