Celebrating Valentine’s Day in the Workplace

On Valentine’s Day most people express their love and appreciation for family and friends. Yet so often those individuals who we spend the majority of our time with, our coworkers and employees, go unrecognized on this “intimate” holiday. My personal belief is that Valentine’s Day also provides an opportunity to express your appreciation, support and care for the people you work with. With this in mind, I wanted to share with you a list of things that I have done and/or plan to do to show appreciation for the people that I work with.

1) Treat your employees with respect.
Ongoing business success stories can only be achieved with certain cornerstones in place. One of these critical foundations is feeling and showing respect for your employees. RESPECT is 24/7 – you appreciate, value and genuinely respect employees at all times. Even the smallest showing of disrespect negatively affects everyone’s morale, productivity and work quality.

2) Send your employees a hand-written note to show your appreciation, or pick up the phone to check in with them.
With social media today, people have forgotten the lost art of a handwritten note – send a handwritten thank you to clients and colleagues. On Valentine’s Day, I plan to send a note to all of our staff individually expressing my appreciation for all that they do for Strategic Partners.

3) Send out cards! Birthdays, thank-you, congratulations, condolences.
This added touch does a lot to lift morale and let your employees and special clients know you genuinely care about them.

4) Advocate for your employees when they can’t advocate for themselves.
Your employees that have very high expectations for themselves sometimes have a hard time saying “no.” For example, I decided to no bid an RFP that I would like for us to bid, but I think it would have made us crazy to do so.

5) Help your employee maintain work/life balance.
An employee may lose sight of their personal life due to their dedication to their job. Even though the work builds up, help keep your employees in balance with their work life vs. their personal life by trying to help them manage the number of hours they work each week.

6) Invest in people’s personal development; listen to your employees’ concerns and address them appropriately – show your employees you value their input and get their opinion.
Soon I will ask staff to identify one thing that they are looking to improve on this year that might require some investment of time and money, and I plan on responding to help support our staff’s professional development. In addition, I welcome dialogue around employees’ concerns and ask their opinion on how we might rectify the situation.

7) Send out “It’s good to be us” emails to keep people updated on what’s going on in the organization.
We provide an update on work that we’re doing with clients and publicly recognize efforts that our consultants, coaches, trainers, project managers and staff have exercised during the past month.

8) Have a positive attitude with employees. Having a positive attitude can increase employee morale.
Included in that is welcoming new employees with open arms. As a way to practice this, we’re looking at our on-boarding process and conducting two training sessions this week to help some of our new employees perform some of the critical jobs that they do on an on-going basis.

9) Provide employees with incentives when they do provide the company with extraordinary work, and when the company reaches certain goals, reward your employees.
This year as part of our annual meeting, we held an Annual Meeting Recognition Program where gifts were given to people who were recognized at the Annual Meeting, as well as to anyone who participated in moving forward with SPI’s main objectives.

10) Make sure each of your employees is doing the work that they enjoy.
Find the strengths in your employees and help guide them to their perfect job. Again, a happy employee is a productive employee!

Follow these tips and your employees will be the best that they can be for you!

Ken