The workforce is always evolving—and your recognition and retention efforts should evolve with it. And as younger generations enter the workforce, it’s crucial to find ways to motivate and engage this new audience. As we near Employee Appreciation Day, now is the perfect time to revise your strategy.

According to the 2025 Trend Report by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), younger workers place a high value on frequent, authentic recognition—and Incentive programs that utilize technology platforms can help amplify the speed of feedback and congratulatory messages. The IRF also suggests that incentive and recognition programs are considered a key to culture building and are instrumental in unifying a more dispersed workforce.

With Employee Appreciation Day fast approaching, here are our nine easy tips to incorporate into your annual recognition strategy. 

Enable daily recognition of individuals and teams

Create a platform for daily peer-to-peer and manager recognition.

Your employee engagement program centralizes all things recognition, and allows actions to be recognized when it matters most – in the moment. Managers can easily send gift cards, gifts, and even points, while employees can thank teammates for achievements. Additionally, celebrate your team for completing a project or meeting a goal, and the collaboration it required.

Reward holidays and milestones

Deliver recognition for holidays, company milestones, and work and personal anniversaries.

Employee Appreciation Day, and important company milestones, are a great starting point for your employee recognition and retention efforts. Begin an annual tradition of sending recognition on these holidays, then build your program from there.

Reward employees for their loyalty by celebrating annual milestones. Five-year increments are the standard—but with most turnover occurring before the five-year mark, many employers are introducing one-, two-, and even three-year Milestones to ensure employees know early on how valued their contributions are to the organization.

Deliver annual awards

Leverage nominations to recognize and reward high achievers. 

Recognize exceptional contributions through quarterly or annual award ceremonies. While ongoing employee appreciation is essential for fostering loyalty, this approach allows us to formally acknowledge those who have exceeded expectations. 

Reward behaviors that embody your values, such as volunteering, green initiatives, or focusing on wellbeing. Recognize employees for activities like these, beyond just performance.

Bring teams together

Connect in a hybrid world with virtual gatherings.

Creating moments of connection in a dispersed workforce is important. Hybrid or virtual team and company meetings can help bridge the gap for inclusion.

Company-wide events also provide leadership with an opportunity to publicly acknowledge individual, team, and company achievements, as well as important milestones. This ensures that the celebration of accomplishments expands past just the sender and recipient, manager and direct report, or individual departments and teams.

Promote with communications 

Encourage participation in recognition programs through internal communications. 

An effective communications campaign can significantly enhance the value of your employee appreciation program. Promote your Recognition efforts through other employee communications, such as scheduled company updates, monthly point statements, and current promotions in the Rewards Mall. 

Develop communications tailored to your program or integrate messages into your ongoing monthly communications. Craft content around current promotions, recent achievements, team successes, or quarterly and annual employee awards.

Recognize on social channels

Celebrate teammates and accomplishments on public-facing social channels. 

Internal recognition is important—but external recognition can make a huge impact. Setup a social media strategy that boasts winners of quarterly and annual awards or call out someone that has been recognized often on your recognition program. 

When it comes to a younger audience and dispersed workforce—a sustained recognition and retention strategy can provide stronger engagement, and company loyalty. 

Offer the freedom of choice 

Rewards are a personal choice – provide a variety to appeal to everyone. 

To ensure your recognition program appeals to a diverse workforce, it is essential to offer a wide range of rewards. A comprehensive Rewards Mall is crucial to ensuring that every participant finds the thing that motivates them personally. Providing a variety of reward categories, such as brand-name merchandise, gift cards for restaurants and retailers, individual travel rewards, and experiential rewards, you give each teammate the freedom to choose the reward that genuinely excites them.

Support it from the top 

Provider leadership tools and dashboards to support recognition. 

Successful programs start with leadership participation. Entice managers and directors to get comfortable with the program to easily recognize their employees for individual and/or team accomplishments, as well as during important milestones.

Use your recognition platform to memorialize educational materials to educate and onboard your audience. Management coaching tips also keep recognition top-of-mind and align company values. These communications act as a reminder and spur continued program participation.

Measure success through reporting 

Reporting provides managers and leadership with a view into program engagement and more. 

In addition to actively participating in the program, managers play a crucial role in encouraging engagement from direct reports. Reporting tools help track participant activity, including recognitions sent and received, and company values exhibited. These tools can also be used beyond the program in annual reviews. 

Managers can use reporting to prepare for important upcoming professional and personal events, such as service anniversaries, milestones, or birthdays, and provides an opportunity to create meaningful recognition.

These are just a few thoughts to inspire you as you continue on your journey to creating a culture of appreciation. For a discussion with one of our experts, please contact us today.

Updated in January 2025