The EA guide to helping your executive with their direct reports’ work anniversaries
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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. |
Your executive is an example to the managers under them. What your executive does sends a message about what they value and don’t value.
If your executive is bad at celebrating their direct reports’ work anniversaries, then the executive’s direct reports will be more likely to be bad at celebrating their direct reports’ work anniversaries, and it will keep cascading down to the front line.
Set up a reliable process
To support your executive with their direct reports, you’ll want to find out what your organization expects of managers on their work anniversaries. Some organizations will have documented expectations. Others will have unwritten traditions. For still others, it will be every manager for themselves and a patchwork of completely different approaches. If your organization falls in that last category, as many do, you’ll want to consider reading the various manager-focused blog posts.
Once you have figured out what your executive should do for their direct reports, figure out how much of it you can do without them. Usually, you’ll be able to do quite a bit of it, and sometimes all of it. From there, you just need to set up a repeatable system for making sure everything gets done on time and nothing gets forgotten, which will likely be similar to a number of other areas of your job.
Look for customization opportunities
It’s not all about repetition, though. You’ll want to be open to opportunities where a small amount of thoughtful customization will make a difference.
For example, if you typically craft emails to be scheduled to be sent out from the executive, but someone comes up who the executive has a really special relationship with, then you may want to ask the executive to put the effort into adding a personal touch to that email.
As another example, suppose your team celebrates work anniversaries by going out to lunch or dinner and getting dessert. Then, suppose you know the person being celebrated follows a keto diet. In this case, arranging specially for a nearby baker that makes keto cheesecakes to deliver a keto cheesecake to the restaurant to be served instead of the standard dessert will make the employee feel very cared about.
And as a last example, if decorating desks for work anniversaries is one of your responsibilities, then knowing people’s favorite colors and decorating accordingly can make it more special.
Avoid favoritism
Note that minor customizations are great, but you won’t want to make one employee’s work anniversary “better” than other employees, because you’ll risk invoking negative feelings of favoritism. You should only make a work anniversary nicer because it’s a bigger milestone, and then you should treat that milestone the same way when other employees reach it.
In other words, do things that are consistent and fair. Don’t do a big party for one and a cupcake for another. It is okay to do a little something extra for people in the office, but don’t make the sole experience be a party in the office. Try to be equitable, except the group with less good circumstances can get a little more. In a hybrid work situation where working from home is preferred, giving a special cupcake to employees in the office is fine, because it would be weird to ignore them, but that shouldn’t be the main way employees are celebrated.
👉 Check out more work anniversary blog posts for executive assistants! 👈
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