Employee Motivation Calendar

2016

What You Can Learn?Employee Engagement Ideas are curated from innovative events & large enterprises that are really worth implementing.

For ease of use, we have divided the ideas across the year as an employee motivation calendar for HR Professionals. Few examples are cited from TED Talks, Google, Deloitte, LinkedIn and similar companies.

JanuaryCareer Investment Discussions : Start your year with a career consultation with your employees. Help them plan their career. Speak about individual or team needs. Discuss training and development needs. For example, Talent+, a management consulting firm has replaced appraisals for Career Investment discussions.

CEO/OWNER Speak: Discuss annual plans and objectives with your employees. Talk about last year’s achievements. Applaud the gains. Discuss how to curtail the weakness. You can do this at a Town Hall Meet at the beginning of the year.

FebruaryKaraoke with colleagues: Plan an evening of karaoke with everyone at office. Let your hair down. Literally or otherwise. If taking a weekend is not an option, assign one employee or more based on company size to sing for the day. The time can be random. Getting a notification or email can mean the employee has to sing. Helps to lighten the mood and you can find a star talent.

Valentine's day: Theme the office on valentine's day. Let your employees know that they are loved for their contribution towards the company’s growth.

MarchTED Talks: Watch a chosen TED talk together over food and drinks. Learn and be inspired. Take a poll on the most popular TED talk theme like Leadership. You can see the snapshot of Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why.

Sports: Have an inter-departmental sporting event. Increase teamwork and communication. After all a company that plays together, stays together. It also includes a little exercise for the otherwise desk workers. Invite their family to come and support.

AprilFlip day: Interchange roles for a day. Let the managers take a backseat and watch the junior members take charge for a day. This is also known as reverse mentoring. This will give them an initiative to get into their mentor’s shoes and develop leadership skills.

The managers will understand the viewpoints and difficulties faced by the juniors and this will help in improving interpersonal relationships within the office. Companies like LinkedIn, Hewlett Packard, Ogilvy and Mather, Cisco and Hartford Financial Services, sing the praises of reverse mentoring

MayCelebrate mother’s day: Bring your mother to work. Make her feel proud about your achievements. Let them understand what you do. We have LinkedIn to thank for starting this trend.

Indulge in potluck lunch: In between hard work let the employees share an elaborate meal for a feel good factor.

JuneFather’s day: Men don't usually have important “days” assigned for them. Celebrate them anyway. This time bring the fathers to work. Or a father figure. Or the boyfriend/husband if you have a child. You can also bring your child if none of the above applies. Your employees are fathers too.

Celebrate fatherhood amidst work. Share work stories with them. Let your loves ones see how hard you work. Google is a champion when it comes to getting parents to work and making them proud.

Google’s third official “Take Your parents to Work” Day On a hot Thursday morning in Mountain View, California, an enormous amphitheater usually crammed with rowdy concert-goers is packed with a very different kind of crowd. Inside, thousands of Google employees squeeze in next to their parents, who are munching the remains of their free breakfasts, sipping from new logo-emblazoned water bottles, and listening to some of Google's top brass thank them for raising such a great group of people.

Read more here

July

Quarterly Employee Reviews: Conduct quarterly reviews for employee performance appraisals. Applaud the achievers. Sit down with the non-performers and try to find out where they need help. Instead of going hard on the employees, help them come to par with the company requirements and expectations.

VYO (Voice your opinion): Following, fourth of July spread the sense of independence among your employees. Let them know they are free to voice their opinions. Welcome initiatives and ideas. Listen to complaints and try to work on them. It eradicates the concept of having corporate “slaves”.

AugustDouble benefit:

Encourage employees to bring in new interns to office for summer internship programs and training. This can include family members and friends. If the candidate gets absorbed, the employees receives a bonus & a badge. Google is known to have an excellent Buddy referral program

SeptemberTraining and development: Let your employees choose their own training and development needs from among what you have to offer.

Book Clubs: Conduct a book club and discuss the recent publications concerning their industry. Increase knowledge and upgrade to recent findings. This can also be extended to include business associates as done by Pinnacle Financial Partners.

OctoberHalloween workday: Let your employees come to work in halloween costumes. Take pictures together and post this on the social media. Trick or treat contest with random trick or treating via event app. Kahler Slater believes in friday the 13th parties as part of their tradition.

Back at ya: Have employees take picture or videos where they can showcase what they enjoy best about the company. This is a way of receiving feedback from the employees.

NovemberThanksgiving: Surprise your employees with surprise gifts on or around thanksgiving. It does not have to be elaborate or monetary. Thank them for their efforts and contribution. This is how Salesforce celebrates Thanksgiving.

Remember your veterans: In the spirit of veteran’s day, if your office has veterans, make them feel special around the 11th.

DecemberSecret Santa: Have a secret Santa party at the workplace where employees can secretly give each other gifts. It may be a small gesture from the management as well to show their appreciation for the year round hard work put in by the employees. Office depot celebrates Secret Santa by gifting employees office supplies.

Annual christmas party/new years party are other alternatives you can plan.

Secret Santa with a TwistTalking about Secret Santa, two years back, the employees at the Deloitte office in Birmingham raised money and used it to buy toys for the Children’s unit at Heartlands Hospital. Instead of doing their regular secret santa, they decided to add a new twist and has planned to repeat it then on every year. You can read the full story here.