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.

I sympathise, @justlikebuses the budget is not within your control and you are getting a lot of pushback on this. I hope you can find something that suits most people.

A fiver or something like an Amazon voucher would be fine with me as these are transferable and I could do what I wanted with the money / voucher when I wanted to, unlike food.

I'd love a book 😊

Pizzas (including vegan, gluten free etc) and a few salads to go with it.

Surely you just sent a voucher to their email?

I would be insulted by a fiver in a card.

Hire in a sweetie cart/diy one and give everyone a pick n mix bag and either let them go at it or have managers serve it.

Similar for getting in a takeaway of some sort but you need to arrange this for break times and also ensure you allow additional time on the break. When you are on shifts you don't want to eat at the same time as a day shift worker.

Or, it's a complete PITA to arrange, but you could offer everyone something to the value of £5 OR the option to skip the gift and enter a prize draw for a much bigger prize. Chances are lots of people would prefer the chance of an airfryer or whatever....but could be seen as gambling so has religious elements. Giving people some sort of choice usually ends up in less moans.

Although I agree with others that this could actually have a more negative effect if presented as some big gesture.

@EmmaEmerald It was sent to their email. Our industry doesn't require people to have work email addresses so I used personal email addresses that they receive their payslips on.

I've had some good suggestions to take on board.
They're a difficult bunch for sure, something food related would work I think.

This screams not appreciating your workforce at all.

Why doesn't your bosses fund something from which everyone would benefit, like a beano somewhere or a drinks machine for each staff room?

A £5 / head treat is pretty shit at the best of times, bit for employee appreciation day it's taking the fucking piss! As other have said I'd rather a company did nothing that tell me it appreciates me to the amount of my pocket money in the 90s.
The 'treats' - used very loosely here - never mean anything when a company clearly doesn't appreciate its workforce and that budget shows they don't.
I'm freelance and am currently at a company I know cares. They do do treats but the way I feel appreciated is if my line manager literally tells me she appreciates me, when they keep in touch to find out when I might next be free to work with them, when they keep track of my end date to see if there is another project I could move on to etc

A voucher for a coffee place local to each office (supports a local business rather than costa)

Oh I see...but you didn't hand over their emails to anyone else, yet they accused you of that? Just confused.

Tbh with a fiver, a voucher is the best option.

Bacon sandwiches for all one morning? Try to come up with alternatives to include non-bacon eaters - veggie sausage bap etc.

My old boss used to do this every now and then. A local cafeteria type place used to supply them. The head at my children's school does it too for all the staff on the last day of each term. She pays for it out of her own pocket and a local farm shop does the supplying.

This is just the way people are I'm afraid. You'll never please everyone, so just ignore the moaners.

In the summer, we used to have early finish Friday. I can't remember the exact time but might have been 3pm. So even though it was only 2 hours, everyone loved it. Could you do something like that?

Can't believe the amount people annoyed and upset at what they perceive is a miserable £5 treat. Dh works for a massize multinational over a few local sites and includes shift workers. A few times a year there would be little treat days. Ya of course some people complain but you can never ever please everyone. The only thing that really annoys them all is when shift workers get forgotten about and their treat is often forgotten to be hand out on time or all the cake/pizza whatever is taken and none ordered for the shift workers. Chocolate bars, mini biscuit packs or even Easter eggs always go down well at his work place - the kids love when dh brings home these treats. Less well thought of are pens, coffee mugs, hats, notebooks.

Did the people saying staff room renovations or vouchers actually read the post ?🤔

Could you hire a coffee van at different times of the day so everyone can access it? Our work did that once and it went down well. Will always be some people not happy or moan they have been left out!

I used to work in the US and small employee appreciation events were common. We did something monthly which was paid for.
The things which went down well were
Onsite popcorn machines ; baristas ; cakes ; pizza slice; ice cream & milk shakes; slushies; chilli bowls. We were in Texas so I get that not everything translates. But the point was , it was a regular event; people were encouraged to go and take a minute to mingle with their colleagues; it varied each month and was seasonally appropriate.
We also had logo gifts - lunch boxes; travel mugs; golf shirts . Things that were cost effective when bulk purchased. And they did pot luck lunches.

It was an extra; staff were already well paid with good benefits. I thought it cheesy to start with but people enjoyed the opportunity to do something social. It fit with the local culture.

We had branches in the UK, who preferred that the budget be spent in the pub. Which fit local industry culture at the time.

It very much depends on what your office looks like. Lots of commuters - do something in the office.

It's really a poor budget if you divide it by everyone.

The purpose is to improve moral.

If I was tasked with this near impossible mission, I would set up an email address and ask everyone to email their improvement suggestions with an opportunity to win one of a price.

You could have 10 prices worth £50 and 20 worth £25. At least then you can give people something a bit more decent then £5 and you can gather a bit of feedback for management in terms of suggestions.

A bit of cake isn't going to gave any impact.

Have you had a look at https://www.huggg.me/ (sorry if someone's already suggested it). A previous employer sent us all brownies in the post via hugg for a similar thing and they went down so well they did them a few more times the following year. We used the hugg site to select the type of brownie we wanted once they'd been gifted so everyone could get something they liked/that suited any dietary needs.

I like Candy Kittens jars for things like this. They're eye-catching, fit most dietary requirements and look more 'special' than a random bag or bar. The Love edition is particularly spring-like and fun, DD took lots into school to show some appreciation for staff following a difficult week.

Most supermarkets have them for a fiver or under but as you need bulk you could apply the newsletter welcome code to get 15% off the website price to bring them in under budget and just order direct. Although for that quantity they'd undoubtedly do you a deal: Candy Kittens

Forget that day and use the money for Easter? £5 on chocolate seems an ok amount - assuming you know who needs a vegan egg or who would prefer normal chocolate

If you think this is bad, we got a single biscuit each- well they sent some to each location and plenty didn’t have enough for everyone 🤦‍♀️

When I worked in Canberra, I was told my Christmas gift (a bottle of wine) was waiting for me at the Sydney office. Just three hours drive away, then.

I hope it was a bottle of vintage Chateau Lafite 😃

At my work we get food vans to come in so on pancake day we had a crepe food van. Could you do something like this? It may be a bit more than a fiver though. I think £5 per head is a bit stingy tbh

Does the employer actually appreciate employees? Like, they offer benefits, flexibility, morale is good, people treated as individuals, fair pay etc.? If not then anything costing £5 will feel like a fuck you. Especially if it is framed as "happy employee appreciation day". Only thing I can think of is buying lunch, getting breakfast, cake and treats, time off frkm work.I'm also not a big fan of celebrating men's and women's day in this context.