15 employee appreciation ideas to celebrate your people all year

Employee Appreciation Day is cute. It’s a good reminder. But if you’re celebrating your people only one day a year, you’re missing the point. 

Recognition isn’t a line item on a to-do list. It’s a heartbeat. A habit. A choice you make over and over again to pay attention to the people powering your organization. To notice.

Employee appreciation can be simple. And it can be complex. But can’t everything? You have to start somewhere.

Do it every month. Not just the “official day.” Year-round validation drives connection. When done right, it doesn’t just say “good job.” It says, “I see you. I value what you bring to the table.” 

And that kind of message? It lands. And when it does, employees stick around. 

Think about it. Have you ever had a colleague or an executive recognize your effort? Or acknowledge your impact? Admit it — you felt something. Is that morale improving? Trust building? When things are hard or uncertain (read: always), that’s when you need it most.

Why year-round employee appreciation matters

Employee recognition isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s strategic. A culture of appreciation has a ripple effect on how employees feel, how they show up every day, and how long they stick around. 

Building a positive work environment

When recognition is part of how a team operates, it changes the air in the room. People are more willing to help each other, to speak up, to take on the thing nobody asked them to do. When people feel safe enough to bring their full effort, they do. 

Teams where appreciation flows freely tend to communicate better and collaborate more naturally. Another huge plus, these teams recover faster when things go wrong.

Boosting employee morale and motivation

There’s a difference between knowing your work matters and hearing someone say it. That’s the gap recognition closes. When people feel seen, motivation stops being something you have to manufacture. It shows up on its own. And it compounds. One genuine acknowledgment can shift someone’s entire week.

Reducing turnover and increasing retention

People don’t leave companies where they feel valued. They leave the ones where they don’t. And replacing someone costs far more than noticing them ever would. 

Companies whose managers recognized their employees saw a 20% to 60% increase in engagement. And well-recognized employees are 45% more likely to stay for at least two years, according to Gallup.

Recognition isn’t fluff. It’s revenue and retention. But you don’t need research to know it’s true. Think about the best people manager you ever had. Chances are they made you feel seen. That’s what kept you there. And they probably did it in more ways than one.

Five types of employee appreciation

Your recognition program doesn’t have to break the bank. If you have room to tie monetary gain to a program, do it. Think about ways to connect those rewards to your values or the behaviors your organization celebrates. 

At Simpplr, we have a simple “Galactic Gratitude” award. This, along with our value awards, brings lots of options.

But sometimes it’s the consistent, creative, small acknowledgments that make the biggest impact. Your role is to make it easy for your people to effortlessly acknowledge each other. Technology helps (oh hey, Simpplr), but it absolutely includes a human in the loop.

Recognition doesn’t have to come with a price tag. Emotional currency is real. So is time. 

Here are five types of employee appreciation gifts:

• Tangible: Swag, gift cards, lunch, a flower delivery
• Experiential: A day off, a learning stipend, a surprise break
• Visible: Public shoutouts, badges, a spotlight in your newsletter
• Words: Handwritten notes, values-based kudos, a kind Slack message
• Access: Mentoring time, high-visibility projects, face time with execs

You don’t need to give a Yeti or throw a pizza party. But every act of appreciation should feel thoughtful. It should be intentional.

15 year-round employee appreciation ideas

Pick a few. Run a campaign. Keep it simple. Make it stick.

Start with weekly habits

1. Ask “Who made your week better?” every Friday. Post it in Slack or Teams (or wherever your PPL chat). Add it to your intranet feed. Make it a ritual, not a request. 

When people know the question is coming, they start paying attention to each other differently throughout the week. That’s the point — recognition becomes observation, and observation becomes culture.

2. Start every team meeting with a shoutout. One person. One moment. Every week. It takes 90 seconds and it changes the energy in the room. 

The key is specificity — not “great job this week” but “the way you handled that client call on Tuesday saved us a week of back-and-forth.” When people hear what good looks like, they mirror it.

3. Send a handwritten note. Yes, pen and paper. In a world of pings and email threads, a physical note from a manager or exec lands differently. It doesn’t need to be long. Two or three sentences about a specific contribution. 

People keep these. They pin them to their desks. That’s not something you can say about a Teams message.

Build monthly rhythms

4. Share a kudos roundup. Use your newsletter, blog, or intranet to collect the month’s recognition moments into one visible place. 

This does two things: It gives the original shoutouts a longer shelf life, and it shows people who haven’t been recognized yet what the bar looks like. Visibility drives participation.

5. Spotlight the givers, not just the receivers. Most programs celebrate the people being recognized. Flip it. Call out the managers and peers who consistently notice others. 

Recognition is a skill, and the people who practice it deserve acknowledgment too. When you celebrate the givers, you signal that paying attention to your colleagues is valued behavior.

6. Run a manager dashboard check-in. Who on your team hasn’t been recognized this month? Who has? Tools like Simpplr’s My Team Dashboard surface these signals so managers don’t have to guess. 

When recognition gaps become visible, they get closed. Make it part of your monthly management rhythm — not a guilt trip but a habit.

7. Refresh your recognition homepage. If your intranet has a recognition wall or feed, keep it alive. Stale content signals that appreciation was a moment, not a practice.

Rotate featured shoutouts. Highlight different departments. Keep the wall moving so people have a reason to check it.

Build seasonal campaigns

8. Run a “Season of Gratitude.” Pick a few weeks. Maybe in the fall, maybe spring. Share prompts: Who helped you grow this quarter? Who made a hard day easier? Who taught you something new? 

The structure gives people permission to say things they might not say unprompted. And a campaign with a start and end date creates urgency without pressure.

9. Kick off the month with a “Fresh Start Shoutout.” January is heavy. New goals, new budgets, leftover stress from Q4. Counter that weight by celebrating courage, new beginnings and bold moves. Need a push of gratitude, do it in April. 

Acknowledge the people who took risks last year, even the ones that didn’t pan out. That kind of recognition tells your workforce it’s safe to try.

10. Let people rename the badges. “Excellence” is fine. So is “Above and Beyond.” But letting teams create their own badge names? It makes recognition feel like theirs, not HR’s. 

A little fun goes a long way. One Simpplr customer let departments vote on badge names, and participation in their recognition program jumped almost immediately.

11. Run a most-creative-recognition contest. Challenge teams to find the most inventive way to recognize a colleague. Maybe it’s a video. Maybe it’s a playlist. Maybe it’s a poem read aloud at a standup meeting.

The contest itself becomes an act of recognition — people paying close attention to each other in order to celebrate each other well.

Make it stick

12. Set up auto-prompts that catch gratitude in motion. Configure Slack or Teams to notice when someone says “thank you” or “great work.” Then nudge them toward a formal shoutout. 

The moment of appreciation is already happening — you’re just giving it a place to land where others can see it. That’s the difference between a private thank-you and a culture of recognition.

13. Share a menu of moments worth appreciating. Not everyone knows what counts. Give people examples: finishing a tough project, helping a new hire get up to speed, volunteering for the thing nobody wanted to do, staying calm when things went sideways. 

When you make it obvious, you remove the friction that stops people from recognizing each other.

14. Build a culture crew. Pick a few influencers across departments. Give them a prompt. Give them a small budget if you have one. Watch what happens. 

These aren’t official recognition ambassadors with lanyards. They’re the people who already notice others. You’re just giving them a nudge and some structure. Culture doesn’t scale from one team. It scales from a few people in every team.

15. Be a recognition concierge for 30 days. Pick one team. Embed yourself. Help the manager write and send appreciation for a full month. Track what shifts — in engagement scores, in survey responses, in how people talk about their work. 

This is the hardest idea on the list because it requires your time, not a tool. But it could also be the most powerful. When you show a manager what consistent recognition looks like in practice, you change their habits permanently.

Recognition isn’t a program. It’s a practice. It flows from the top, the bottom, and side to side. That’s how you build a culture where people want to stay.

You don’t need to overthink it. You just need to commit. When people feel seen, they show up. They give more. Stay longer. Build trust. And when work is good, life is better.

Employee appreciation ideas in action

Every organization does recognition differently. The ones that work have one thing in common: they made it visible, easy and part of the daily experience. Here’s what that looks like for these Simpplr customers.

Agero

Agero had two business units — corporate and contact center — recognizing each other in separate messaging systems. The appreciation was happening, but nobody could see it across teams. 

They centralized recognition on their Simpplr intranet, used internal influencers to drive adoption, and gave managers badges tied to company values.

• 22x increase in posted content within the launch month
• 100+ unique recognition posts at launch
• 61% platform adoption sustained after launch
• 17% increase in communications content views

Kitsap Mental Health Services

Kitsap built a peer kudos program with four categories — Congratulations, Inspiration, Kindness and Superstar — alongside employee spotlights and homepage celebrations for birthdays and work anniversaries. 

For Employee Appreciation Day, they added daily leadership messages, a CEO video and brand store coupons.

• 420 recognition posts since launching in October 2024
• 44% of users have received recognition
• 66% of staff viewed their Employee Appreciation Day page, becoming their most popular nonmandatory content

Workiva

Workiva put employee appreciation at the center of their intranet. They had multiple programs running at once: MVP awards for living company values, Innovate Everywhere Awards for creativity and quarterly Platinum MVP winners. 

Winners are featured on dedicated intranet pages, highlighted in the all-company newsletter and showcased on digital signage across global offices.

• 700+ MVP pages published in two and a half years
• Recognition site is one of the most visited on their platform

Different industries. Different budgets. Different programs. Same result: When you make recognition easy to give and impossible to miss, people show up for each other.

How Simpplr brings employee appreciation ideas to life

What makes employee appreciation work is a combination of tools, habits, and intention. At Simpplr, Recognition and Rewards are baked into how our customers connect with employees. The strongest programs are easy to use. They’re visible. They tie back to what matters most: your culture, your values, your people.

Too often, recognition becomes another task buried in managers’ to-do lists. Simpplr puts it where work actually happens. Instead of another platform for employees to check, recognition and rewards live directly in your digital workplace. 

Employees can spotlight colleagues during their normal workflow — no extra steps, no separate logins. Recognition that happens in the moment, not weeks later when the impact has faded.

Public recognition feeds turn individual acknowledgments into celebrations the whole company can see. Simpplr’s My Team Dashboard gives managers a real look at how their team is doing — who’s showing up, who’s engaging, who’s being recognized and who’s slipping through the cracks. So they don’t have to guess. They can act.

That’s how you make work good.

Ready to learn how Simpplr can power your employee appreciation program? Request a demo today.