One sure-fire way to let one of you employees know that you recognize their value to your company is to celebrate their birthday. Employee birthday celebrations can be extravagant or small-scale. You can take them out to a three-hour lunch or just gather everyone for fifteen minutes of cookies and birthday greetings. But supervisors and managers have a lot of employees to keep straight, and a lot of potential ways to let everyone know when it’s a birthday girl or boy’s big day. Here are ten suggestions for a thoughtful celebration of your employee turning one year older while in your employ.
1) Group birthdays for once-a-month celebrations– If you manage for a big enough company, there’s a good chance that stopping to celebrate each employee birthday on the day that it occurs is going to be impractical. Most large companies like to group monthly birthdays together, which is also a good way to have an employee birthday boy or girl get to know some other coworkers who share the same big day.
2) Donate to a charity they support –Donating to charity is still one of the classiest ways to memorialize someone’s birthday, as its almost impossible to go wrong. Find out what the employee’s favorite charity is and organize a small donation on their part. You can also ask other employees and well-wishers to kick in a bit towards the charity donation if they want to celebrate.
3) Decorate their desk –An oldie but a goodie, especially if you want to put a smile on your employee’s face first thing in the morning. Balloons, banners, ribbons, fun printouts, photos of past good times together at work – just make sure the employee is someone who won’t mind having their desk played with or confetti all over the place for the next few weeks.
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4) Give the employee a free day off on their birthday –If you can afford it, and if the employee isn’t under the gun for some major project, the ultimate gift you can give your employee is a day entirely off of work. It’s a precedent setter, though, so make sure it’s the kind of birthday bonus you’re prepared to extend to every employee.
5) Don’t forget, remote workers have birthdays every year, too –Don’t forget those lonely remote workers. They won’t be coming to the office on their bday, most likely, so try to arrange a Skype session with the employee to remind them they may be out of sight but are not out of mind.
6) Make it personal –If you’re going to the trouble of arranging to celebrate an employee’s birthday during the workday, make sure there’s a personal touch. A generic half-measure of a celebration will be seen as such, and may make the employee wonder if you ever know who they are to begin with. So make sure the get-together, even if it’s just fifteen minutes for cupcakes, feels designed with the specific employee in mind on some level. (To help with that, see entry #7.)
7) Get their closest work friends to help –You may have the best intention of making your birthday employee feel special, but that doesn’t mean you know if they prefer chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla. To remedy this, enlist some of their closest work friends to help with the set-up. They’ll have fun keeping it a secret from their friend, too.
8) Sing a different birthday song than boring old “Happy Birthday to You” –Most people will tell you they’ve sung 1893’s “Happy Birthday to You” enough for ten lifetimes. So switch it up and pick a more modern tune to celebrate with: There’s The Beatles’ “Birthday,” Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” The Smiths’ “Unhappy Birthday,” or 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.” As a bonus, none of the songs require singers to awkwardly insert the birthday boy or girl’s name into the lyrics.
9) Get as many coworkers as possible to sign the birthday card –You know the drill. Someone walks up to you like they’re on a mission from the CIA and hands you a birthday card that many of your coworkers have already signed. Now the card is yours to deal with, and you have to figure out who hasn’t signed it yet without tipping off whoever it is with the special day. But you’re a grown-up and you can do it, especially knowing how happy the Birthday One will be when they see how everyone took a moment to write their well-wishes. (Just make sure nobody writes, “Have a great summer!”)
10) Get someone from the C-Suite to send greetings –The coup de grace of the workplace birthday celebration is when someone arranges for a executive or higher-up of impressive power to send well wishes to the party. This will make the celebrated employee really feel like the whole company cares about them and is thankful for the work they do in their position. And that’s the whole point of getting together to celebrate at work.
