7 Employee Birthday Ideas

Rec­og­niz­ing birth­days is one easy way com­pa­nies can show their employ­ees they care about them. How­ev­er, cel­e­brat­ing employ­ee birth­days requires a bit of prepa­ra­tion. So low-thought, last-minute ideas won’t do.

Instead, com­pa­nies need to have some go-to ideas for cel­e­brat­ing employ­ee birth­days. The ideas need to be sim­ple enough to incor­po­rate but impact­ful enough to make the employ­ee feel val­ued on their spe­cial day.

These sev­en employ­ee birth­day recog­ni­tion ideas are some of the best ways com­pa­nies can rec­og­nize employ­ee birthdays.

1. Deliver Snacks and Treats

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Illus­tra­tor, writer, and blog­ger Maria Kalman once said, ​“Every­one I know is look­ing for solace, hope, and a tasty snack.” So, it’s no sur­prise that deliv­er­ing snacks and treats is always a top employ­ee birth­day idea.

If employ­ees are in the office, birth­days are an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to throw a small par­ty in the break room with some deli­cious treats. If the team is remote, com­pa­nies can sim­ply order a treat to be deliv­ered to the employee’s home.

The only caveat here is food aller­gies, sen­si­tiv­i­ties and diets. Com­pa­nies will need to be aware of their employ­ees’ spe­cif­ic food require­ments before deliv­er­ing or order­ing any surprises.

2. Have a Virtual Birthday Happy Hour

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Hav­ing a remote team isn’t an excuse to not cel­e­brate — in fact, it’s quite the con­trary. Remote employ­ees often bat­tle feel­ings of iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness, and no one wants to feel alone on their birthday.

If com­pa­nies have remote teams, they should con­sid­er hold­ing vir­tu­al hap­py hours to hon­or their employ­ee birth­days. The hap­py hour can be BYOB, or it can be catered via deliv­ery services.

Alter­na­tive­ly, com­pa­nies can opt for vir­tu­al par­ties instead. These can include quick games, vir­tu­al lunch par­ties, or any­thing in between. A vir­tu­al get-togeth­er presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty for every­one on the team to give a quick birth­day shout-out.

3. Leave Personalized Birthday Messages

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One way to make a per­son feel val­ued is via a per­son­al­ized birth­day mes­sage from their lead­ers. It isn’t just pass­ing around a birth­day card and hav­ing every­one sign it. Instead, it’s about leav­ing mean­ing­ful birth­day mes­sages for the employee.

Com­pa­nies can do this via hand­writ­ten notes, thought­ful emails or per­son­al­ized mes­sages on the com­pa­ny Slack chan­nel. Lead­ers can even get the entire team involved, so employ­ees get mes­sages from their super­vi­sors and peers.

Mes­sages should be deliv­ered or sched­uled so the employ­ee receives them as soon as they start the work­day. That way, they feel spe­cial and val­ued through­out the entire day.

4. Arrange a Team Lunch to Celebrate

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Whether it’s a potluck-style lunch in the lunch­room, a catered lunch, or a meal at a local restau­rant, arrang­ing a team lunch is a mean­ing­ful way to cel­e­brate an employee’s spe­cial day.

Team lunch­es do require some leg­work, but they do an excel­lent job of mak­ing the per­son feel spe­cial and boost­ing morale and cama­raderie for the whole team. This option works espe­cial­ly well for small­er teams or departments.

Vir­tu­al teams aren’t exclud­ed from this option either. Team lunch­es can be vir­tu­al where every­one meets on Zoom, or if the team is all in the same geo­graph­ic area, it could be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet up in per­son to celebrate.

5. Give Them a Day Off

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With burnout rates reach­ing new heights and an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple demand­ing more work-life bal­ance, some­thing as sim­ple as a paid day off for their birth­day can make a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in over­all morale and help pre­vent employ­ee dissatisfaction.

Com­pa­nies should allow the employ­ee to choose when they want to take the day off, so they can cel­e­brate it at a time that makes the most sense for their lives.

6. Give Them a Shout-out On Social Media

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Anoth­er great way to show your employ­ee they mat­ter on their birth­day is with a pub­lic shout-out on the company’s social media accounts. From a LinkedIn post to an Insta­gram sto­ry, com­pa­nies can high­light the employ­ee in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways.

The post can include things like their role, years of ser­vice, accom­plish­ments and oth­er achieve­ments, as well as oth­er fun, light-heart­ed facts about the per­son. It can also include a heart­felt mes­sage thank­ing them for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. Of course, the most cru­cial point of a pub­lic shout-out or any employ­ee birth­day idea is that the per­son feels special.

7. Award Them Extra Points

How it Works

One great way to hon­or an employee’s birth­day is with extra points on the Fringe lifestyle ben­e­fits plat­form. Fringe’s plat­form allows employ­ers to award employ­ees points to use toward over one hun­dred dif­fer­ent options.

By award­ing points, employ­ees get to choose a gift that’s valu­able to them, and man­agers don’t have to wor­ry about giv­ing gener­ic or imper­son­al gifts. Instead, award­ing extra points helps the employ­ees choose the gift they most want.

Com­pa­nies can set a stan­dard point amount and auto­mate the date of gift­ing for birth­days so that it’s vir­tu­al­ly hands free for lead­ers man­ag­ing the service.

Using a plat­form like Fringe can dra­mat­i­cal­ly aid in han­dling employ­ee ben­e­fits and main­tain­ing a healthy, ful­filled work­force. Talk to our team to get start­ed today!

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