The EA guide to being a work anniversary champion
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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. |
As an executive assistant, you’re in a unique position to consider being a work anniversary champion!
Work anniversaries provide a lot of opportunity for an executive assistant to have a huge impact on an organization.
Here are just a few examples:
With the simple act of you repeatedly just-in-time reminding your executive about the work anniversaries of people they’ll be meeting with you can shift the organization’s perception of the executive from that of being cold, aloof, and distant to that of being caring and appreciative, and the indirect impact of that on performance and the executive’s career can be immense.
By simply figuring out how to set up automatic Slack announcements, which then leads to a small number of caring managers thoughtfully appreciating their direct reports, which then leads to pressure on other managers to do the same, which then leads to all managers doing it and competing to do it best, you can shift your organization’s culture from being thanklessly transaction to being warmly appreciative with manager’s seeing the best in their employees, which they wouldn’t be otherwise if they hadn’t been taught they needed to see that to write good work anniversary acknowledgements.
By figuring out a plan for work anniversary skip-level one-on-ones and breakfasts, you are setting up conversations that lead to shared understanding which both improves working conditions and also leads to better executive decisions that meaningfully impact the level of success of the organization.
This isn’t for every executive assistant, but at many organizations, there is an opportunity for a so-inclined executive assistant to take informal ownership of making their organization one of the best at acknowledging work anniversaries.
For this to work, of course, you can’t be in a position where you’re being micromanaged. You’ll need autonomy over discretionary time where you’re just expected to make good use of it. One of the great things about championing work anniversaries is that it’s very visible work that leads to a lot of positive emotions, and thus will reflect well on you.
If this is sounding like this might be for you, here are some further ideas to explore:
Take on looking after your executive’s direct reports’ handling of work anniversaries, too. Remind them of their team’s work anniversaries and make sure they’re doing what’s expected of managers as well.
Become your organization’s “photo historian” and make those photos available for acknowledgement of work anniversaries. In the present, you can take fun photos of employees at work to be used in Slack or social media posts. You can also go further in asking around for photos from back when an employee started that their colleagues might have. Then-and-now comparisons can be a lot of fun.
Check in with employees at the end of the day on their work anniversaries to make sure everything went smoothly. If something didn’t, like the gift that typically comes from HR didn’t show up, then you can speak up on their behalf
Go beyond this blog post and check out the blog posts linked to below!
👉 Check out more work anniversary blog posts for executive assistants! 👈
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