Celebrating people the way they want to be celebrated
On our small team, we’ve celebrated some really big tenure milestones in recent years. Three of us have worked together for more than 10 years, and one person just celebrated five years last September.
We’ve been thinking a lot about the best way to celebrate moments like this. Because they should be celebrated: It’s a big deal for someone to choose to spend such large portions of their life working with your organization. Celebrating how long a person has been with our team means recognizing their loyalty, time, energy, and the investment that they have given to the organization. For all of that, we can definitely do better than a plaque that says how long they’ve been with our company. (They already know how long it’s been!)
What can often happen in organizations (and what used to happen in ours) is that we adopt this one-size-fits-all approach and celebrate everyone in the same way. And while you can have the best intentions in doing that, it doesn’t mean that your gift or celebration will have the kind of impact that you want it to have.
Instead, it’s important to recognize people in ways that are uniquely meaningful. Most recently, we’ve started to celebrate tenure by connecting it to helping people achieve dreams and goals. This is inspired by a book I read early on in my leadership journey called The Dream Manager: It's a fable about a cleaning company that has a “dream manager” who helps people in the company achieve the things that really matter to them. That’s what I want to do with our tenure celebrations. We have a budget for it, and the budget for each person increases in relation to how long they’ve been with the company. Our goal is to use that budget to help our people achieve life goals, cross off bucket list items, or do other things that are really meaningful to them.
The way I think about it is that these people have given so much to the organization to help us achieve our goals, so how can we help them achieve theirs? We had the chance to do this for the first time just last year for Cheyenne, who celebrated five years with us. She had always wanted to go on a silent retreat, so for her anniversary, we helped her find the perfect retreat in Bali and make that trip a reality. It really inspired us and got us thinking about how we could do something like this for everyone on our team. How do we really get to the heart of what people want to do in their lives? So, we asked: What are the things that you really want to achieve? What’s on your bucket list, and how can we align our tenure bonus to help you achieve those things and make them possible?
Celebrating tenure milestones is directly connected to how we value our people. It’s also related to the things I mentioned in this post that I think are important as we look to the future. If we want to create a better world at work, we have to make sure our people feel valued and appreciated for all that they give to us.
What could you do to celebrate your people in a more impactful and meaningful way, even if it means starting small? At Student Maid, we used to ask our team members what their favorite snacks were. On special days, they might find their favorite snacks waiting for them at work.
The more we get to know people and what matters to them, the more we will touch their hearts and let them know how much they mean to us.
Big hugs,
