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Calendar Appreciation Days & Employee Recognition Gift Ideas

Employee Recognition Holidays by Month

Employee Recognition Holidays throughout the year are great opportunities to show your employees that they are appreciated. These dates to celebrate increase employee engagement and productivity when recognized. Some of the most important and popular workplace holidays are Employee Appreciation Day, Admin Appreciation Day, High-Five Day, Customer Service Appreciation Week and Bosses Day. But there are always reasons to celebrate to keep the team engaged and motivated.

January Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar February Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar March Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar April Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar May Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar June Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar July Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar August Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar September Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar October Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar November Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar December Fun Workplace Holiday Calendar

Find Reasons to Engage, Motivate and Appreciate

Many workplaces celebrate most or all of the standard holidays that come up over the course of the year, but what decision-makers and executives may not know is that there are plenty of lesser-known Holidays they can use to engage and motivate their employees on an ongoing basis.

In fact, there are dozens of these special days sprinkled throughout the year, and choosing just a few of them to really highlight strong work and help employees feel a little more appreciated can go a long way toward boosting workplace morale and, as a result, efficiency.

Employee Appreciation Gifts

Showing employees you care shouldn't just be for Employee Appreciation Day - recognizing employees year-round helps improve employee satisfaction and retention for your business. Research shows a top reason employees leave their jobs is because they do not feel appreciated. By giving gifts as awards for the effort employees put in, and offering meaningful employee presents for special occasions, employees feel the business cares about them. In 2024, it is just as important as ever to express your appreciation for employees, whether they are essential workers or working from home due to social distancing. When working apart, gestures of appreciation go a long way to improve morale. Recognition can be done when employees have been working hard or demonstrating outstanding performance. However, any forms of recognition or appreciation need to be immediate, positive, and certain. The value you instill in employees increases productivity and improves sentiment throughout the company.

Employee Recognition Gifts Make a Difference

The competitive nature of businesses today means increasing competition to attract and obtain employees for an organization. If a business does not take any time to recognize the achievements of employees, that can result in a depressing workplace. One of the main aspects to keep in mind is the need for proper employee engagement and recognition. Proper preparation is needed to show a business has taken the time to effectively recognize all the employee within the organization.

Fun Workplace Holidays to Celebrate in 2024

Everyone's familiar with those post-holiday blues, but they can be overcome! By looking toward the excitement and possibility of the future and finding fun reasons to continue the celebrations throughout the year, you can keep the spirits up and the cheer going. Successories has everything you need to help spirits stay high, from inexpensive employee awards and candy to fun motivational gifts – shop now at Successories.com.

While you may not celebrate national public lands day at work, especially since it falls on a Saturday this year, there are so many appreciation days you can celebrate during the work day to add a bit of flair to your shift, and a slight break in your routine.

As kids, we dreaded the last day of winter vacation before we had to return to school, but we loved birthday celebrations. And as adults, not much has changed since then - except now we dread going back to work, and maybe we slowly want to forget about how much older we get. Still, after a season of paid time off, parties and other festivities, it's no wonder that employees can have a hard time getting back into the work mindset, and that they're not looking forward to trading eggnog for Excel and pumpkin pie for pie charts.

Luckily, you're not doomed to face several months of gray winter gloom at your office – you can pep up spirits and add some pride and cheer back into the atmosphere. Feeling sad or unmotivated returning to work is not an uncommon feeling, and the first step to easing the pain and getting engagement back up is acknowledging that you're all facing the blues together.

"For many, the holiday season is like a dream world and hopefully people have had a good dream, but it is like a dream that ceases literally overnight," said Angelo Halaris, a psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences professor at Loyola Medicine, in an interview with CNN. "There is a real sense of loss that comes with this transition period that makes us all a little sad."

Next, you should add some fun to your office culture and give employees some more festive occasions to celebrate, even if the winter holidays are behind them. With this approach, you can boost engagement and help employees feel excited about work again.

If you are looking for some of the best holiday gifts for employees, look no further than Successories.

Celebrate and Appreciate Year Round

Boosting employee happiness levels after the holidays means understanding the psychology of that post-holiday slump. There are two main strategies to employ that will help revive engagement during this period:

Keep the celebrations going

There's no reason why we should be stuck with celebrating only the small handful of official holidays throughout the year. Finding other fun reasons to celebrate and keeping that festive feeling going all year – especially in January and February – can have a big impact on keeping employee happiness levels up after the winter break. Designating other festive occasions and hosting office parties and fun days gives employees something to look forward to and emphasizes that working should be fun. As Matt Straz, founder of HR software platform Namely, noted in a post for Entrepreneur magazine: "Creating something for employees to look forward to helps to build a positive work environment that motivates employees to perform at their best."

Look to the year ahead

January may feel like the cold, dusty doldrums of the year when nothing happens, but it does have one thing going for it: It's the start of a new year, the time for renewal, self-improvement and change. Embrace this spirit as a positive force in your office to help your employees lift their spirits and get back on track. Harvard Business School recommended creating team resolutions for the new year, since committing to and working toward a goal together can help employees feel like they are not facing the post-vacation blues alone. Managers can also encourage their employees to set personal work-related goals for the new year, which can be broken down into more easily manageable steps. Just be sure not to overload your employees with all this New Year's business right when they get back - give them a little time to adjust to being back and catch up on their workload.

Fun Holidays to Add to Your Office Calendar

To get employees excited about work after winter break, celebrate these fun holidays at your office in January:

Trivia Day – January 4

Your employees are experts in their fields, but give them a chance to share their nonprofessional knowledge by celebrating Trivia Day at your office. Dedicate a block of time or extended lunch break to a game-show style trivia contest - pick questions in categories like pop culture, entertainment, music, film, world cultures, etc. For another twist, you could make your own trivia questions based on company related knowledge and have different departments or teams compete against one another. Be sure to dole out fun prizes like bendy pens, candy and stress relievers.

National Day to Show and Tell at Work – January 8

Show and tell shouldn't just be for schoolchildren! Give your employees a chance to show off interesting mementos or talents at work on this quirky holiday. You'll learn more about your co-workers and create a positive, uplifting atmosphere of support. This is an especially good day to celebrate after the winter holidays, since employees can show off the unique gifts they received and have the chance to reflect on memories that make them happy. Don't limit the show and tell to items, though – talents count, too!

Clean Off Your Desk Day – January 9

This day goes with the theme of looking forward to the new year to motivate employees after the Holidays. Tell them a clear desk is a clear mind, but show them the research to back it up! In a study conducted by Princeton University psychology professor Sabine Kastner, researchers asked subjects to focus on just one object while they placed another in their visual field while they ran brain scans. They found that there was a "fuzzy" version of the second object that showed up in the brain scans, leading them to conclude that the "more objects in the visual field, the harder the brain has to work to filter them out, causing it to tire over time and reducing its ability to function." This is a silly holiday, however, so make sure you treat it that way! Turn on some tunes, bring in coffee and donuts and get cleaning. Set up a table with budget-friendly, inexpensive motivational items and desk accessories, like pen cups, staplers and desk games, that employees can take to decorate their shiny new workspaces.

International Day of Fun at Work – Last Friday of January

The name says it all – Fun at Work Day is dedicated to making work fun! Employees around the world are encouraged to let loose, smile, defy convention and not play by the rules for a day. Stock up on budget-friendly prizes, candy and motivational items to hand out to employees, and get creative with what your office can do to celebrate the holiday. The sky's the limit for ways you can get festive: Encourage your employees to wear costumes to work, hold an impromptu dance party, rent a chocolate fountain, play games, have karaoke hour, hang up a disco ball, set up video games in a conference room, stock the break room with ice cream and candy, hold office versions of popular game shows, order lunch from a nearby favorite restaurant, and cap off the day with an after-work happy hour or party.

Important Workplace Recognition Holidays This Year

Employers can start March off right by celebrating World Compliment Day on the first day of the month, providing employees with some nice perks as March comes in like a lion. And for businesses whose employees are unerring in their efforts to get the job done correctly every day, what better way to celebrate them than on the first Friday of March is Employee Appreciation Day.

Likewise, Administrative Professionals Day is always the Wednesday of the last full week of the month, helping companies close out April right.

For companies that want to reward their decision-makers, Bosses Day comes every October 16.

While not all of these holidays will be observed by any one business, executives who choose just a few of them to celebrate their workers throughout the year - particularly at times when there hasn't been a federal holiday to provide a long weekend in a while - will often find greater business success going forward with a happier workforce overall. Employees that receive extra recognition are more likely to feel as though all their efforts have been appreciated and want to work harder for their companies.

That, in turn, means the return on investment for any celebrations or gifts they provide can be significant, providing an extra dollar value for companies that already want to do nice things for their employees to begin with.

The great thing about celebrating is that there are no national day rules when it comes to workplace holidays. For example, employee appreciation day can be any day your management team decides it wants to recognize the professionals in its employ. Your employees know that every day cannot be a day to celebrate, but it feels nice to have appreciation days every once in a while.

At Successories, you can fully customize and personalize your holiday gifts.