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.

@justlikebuses so you have £1000 to spend across how many sites?

I had a look on the site and they don't do £5 gifts but the £3 gits are a Gregs sausage roll, Greggs breakfast roll and drink or a coffee from another cafe, not really going to make someone feel appreciated!

I spent my Friday fiver on sushi for lunch 😉 Honestly I’d just spend it on upgraded tea/ coffee/ biscuits / fruit/ bottled water fizzy/ still. Tout the idea of a daily 15 minute mind ful ness session. Every day for a week /month. You can’t work miracles no one is ever going to be excited about a fiver (over the age of about 10)

I'm probably being dense but I work in education and can't see where £5 for each employee would come from in the first place?

This happened with my company, across the whole company we all recieved a wooden scrabble type tile on a keyring with our first name on alongside a sachet of hot chocolate/ coffee/ individual teabag of our choosing and a pack of haribo or mini malteasers.

Tbh I think we all appreciated them though, the keyring came in handy for locker keys

Travel mug each with a pen and chocolates inside. All can be found very cheap making it up to £5 per person. Mug and pen can be used at work if they’d like.

Food/drink in the staff room is hard when people are working different shifts. With a gift each it ensures everyone gets something, and they can regift if they don’t want it themselves.

Before the change of management and me coming on board (I'm not management), no. Part of my role is to improve employee morale but it's tough. Years of broken promises and no benefits whatsoever. Lots of mistrust. It's a male industry that's non tech. Also, prior management screwed the budget with the parent company which is why it's so tight now. We're trying to do what we can but are limited for now. One of the first things I did was bring in Birthday Leave.

Get a coffee cart or ice cream van to visit the office twice (day shift and. Night shift) and give free coffee and cake or ice cream to everyone? The stall aspect is more fun than just giving everyone an ice cream!

Four sites all over the country.

Put all money together and a bar tab?

Give everyone a half day extra annual leave or home two hours early on a Friday etc

A nice bubble bath each for everyone ?

Can you take the £1000 to upgrade things like make sure there is a decent well stocked coffee machine or two and anything else that is getting grotty is fixed?

Do they get tea/coffee/biscuits etc in social areas? Or bring your own?

One of the best things work did (in my eyes and those of my colleagues) was to ensure that there was always good (not cheap, but not super expensive) drinks and biscuits available. So tea/coffee/squash drinks and a box of those 1 person biscuit packs!

Best idea so far

At that budget, you're going to be quite limited, and realistically can't afford lease everyone.
I'd probably go with an Easter / spring theme.
Easter eggs / vegan alternatives
Bunches of daffodils/tulips.
Hot cross buns.
Could you do an egg hunt / games?

assuming the sites are all roughly the same size, £250 on a hamper for the staff room/kitchen - tea/ coffee/ hot chocolates, biscuits, tin of sweets etc.

adjust accordingly is some sites are bigger

I agree with this or letting them come in an hour later one day.
However it needs yo be made clear to the management yhat staff font have to work extra hard to make up for 'lost' time.

Or see if you can find a independent Baker that can give a decent discount if you dpend x amount and ask them to do a mix of vegan , vegi, colic , mini cup cakes / cookies .

Or can the money be used to get a game of some sort that people can play if they want.
Dart board ( v popular where I work )
Jenga
Mini Air hockey/ foosball table
If you have multiple sites each game could be swaped every month do the different teams could compete with each other.

Our sites have a on going darts and air hockey league

Don't get anything with to many bits , they will get lost

@Wagechange

Quite like the idea of the game

You keep complaining that the employees are a difficult bunch but really it's management that are being difficult with their paltry attempts at "appreciation". And you sound like you share management's attitude towards employees. No wonder staff are so unhappy and complain.

Spot on!

@Wagechange I like the idea of a dartboard. I'd need to get it past health and safety as we don't have a large staff room for head office - it's a portacabin.

£250 per site isn't bad. Tell people you've got £250 to spend per site on enhancing the workplace for employee recognition day. Ask people to submit ideas for what to spend it on, then do a vote to decide what to get. Give some ideas to start them off. People get to ask for what they want, vote for what they want most and actually have a say in what happens.

If you're limited by only being able to spend a fiver I'd prefer to receive it as the option to leave an hour or 2 early or come in later, at a time of my choosing. Could add needs to be redeemed by X date. Would be really useful to have "in the bank" for something specific, or just because I felt like it. You could have a spreadsheet to track when people have taken it to ensure everyone gets to.

I use Amazon a lot so wouldn't mind an Amazon voucher, or a one for all voucher which can be spent in multiple shops, however £5 is very paltry it would need to be £10 plus to be worthwhile

The idea of a hamper or 2 for the staffroom is a good one, could fill with all sorts of different goodies so there's something for everyone

I wouldn't consider alcohol a gift as I don't like wine or prosecco or beer which tend to fall into this category

Don't get a dartboard. It's all fine until someone mucks around and someone gets stabbed.

Tbh it sounds like morale is rock bottom. £5 isn't going to cut it. But maybe some brownies?