How to celebrate big work anniversaries at your company holiday party this year
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by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries. |
It’s planning season for company holiday parties, which are great opportunities to celebrate “big” work anniversaries! 🎉
The wonderful thing about the annual company holiday party is that it’s the biggest audience of the year. That makes it the most impactful place for short speeches that reflect on long-serving employees’ time with the organization and gratitude for those employees’ contributions.
Done well, these speeches can be the highlight of the event, not only for the employees being honored, but also for the other employees who get to learn interesting details about their colleagues, which contributes to everyone feeling like a closer knit team.
At the event
Here’s how to sequence the work anniversary section of the event:
The CEO (or whatever you call the highest ranking leader) emcees this part of the event and starts by sharing the company’s purpose, mission, and/or goals and how long tenured employees are a really important part of achieving those things.
If the organization has core values and they can be related to long-tenure, then that connection is made, too. For example, if one of the organization’s core values is “customer focus”, then the CEO can explain how long tenured employees have a special role to play in the core value of “customer focus” by using their deep experience to better serve customers.
The CEO then shares that some special colleagues are going to come up and share a little about each of the big milestone work anniversaries that happened in the past year.
The CEO them welcomes the first speaker by saying something like “I’d like to welcome John Smith up to the stage.” Note that the CEO shouldn’t steal the thunder of who “John Smith” is going to speak about.
The speaker then gives a 5-minute or so speech about the employee celebrating the big milestone work anniversary and at the end welcomes the employee up to the stage to receive a certificate and/or gift from the CEO.
The process is then repeated for each of the recipients going in order from shortest tenure to longest.
After everyone goes, the CEO makes a brief remark about how inspiring it was to recognize so many great people and asks for another round of applause for them all.
Note that there’s no expectation for the long-tenured employee to speak. Most employees will be very grateful for that.
Before the event
The event organizer will need to figure out which anniversaries are being celebrated and who is going to speak for each long-serving employee. Ideally, the speakers will get lots of notice, ideally before the event starts accepting RSVPs, so that the speaker can make plans to attend (or let you know they won’t be able to be the speaker). This also gives them time to source photos for the speech.
Who should give each speech? The employee’s direct manager is the first candidate, but don’t feel limited to that. Maybe the manager is new. Maybe the manager isn’t a great speaker. Or maybe even the manager doesn’t like the employee that much. Other candidates are leaders in the management chain above the direct manager as well as other long-tenured employees who have worked with the employee for a very long time. The employee’s best friend at work should also be considered, even if they are not long-tenured, as they will enjoy doing the research to fill in the gaps from before their time.
The speakers should be given instructions on writing and delivering the speech, which can be as simple as sending them a link to this blog post.
Of course, as you’ve figured out by now, doing this all well does require some planning.
Here are the steps for planning the work anniversary section of the event:
Six weeks before the event, make a list of who will be celebrated at the event. Check it twice! Missing someone is really awkward 😱. Decide how long each speaker will have to speak based on the number of people being celebrated and how much time is available.
Five weeks before the event, decide who you’d like to speak on behalf of each employee and reach out to them asking them if they’ll do it. Let them know they’re on the hook for recommending someone else if they’re going to say no.
Four weeks before the event, send out speech-giving guidelines (either link to this blog post or use an editable Google Doc or Word Document) and aggressively work on getting answers from anyone who hasn’t responded with a yes, yet.
Three weeks before the event, offer to let each of the speakers practice their speech with you. Consider even scheduling brief meetings with each of them to practice.
Two weeks before the event, remind everyone.
One week before the event, remind everyone.
One day before the event, remind everyone.
The impact
Done well, many employees will view this as their favorite and the most meaningful part of the company party. ✨ They’ll get to know their colleagues better, and they’ll think about what will be said about them when it’s their turn. They’ll have been reminded of the organization’s purpose, mission, and/or goals, and they’ll have been reminded of the organization’s values. They’ll also have seen top leadership expressing that they care about employees.
Short work anniversary speeches at your holiday party will likely be the most powerful 30 minutes all year for reinforcing the best parts of your organization’s culture.