Why great work anniversaries are so hard

by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries.

Throughout much of the working world, work anniversaries are not a priority.

Some organizations don’t do anything.

Some organizations do something minimal.

Other organizations put money into their work anniversaries, but end up with many employees shaking their heads wondering why their organization thought what they did was worth it.

Still other organizations start out putting effort into work anniversaries, but over time it becomes a chore, and employees increasingly feel like their work anniversaries are just another item on a checklist.

Why are work anniversaries so mediocre at best?

The three forces of work anniversary mediocrity

Every good story needs a villain.

The nemesis of great work anniversaries is definitely mediocrity.

Specifically, it’s the three forces of work anniversary mediocrity.

We think the primary reason that work anniversaries have such a bad reputation is because they are so often so very, very mediocre. They’re not meaningful. They’re not memorable. Instead of feeling special, employees feel like their work anniversary is just another task.

Generally what happens is someone decides their organization should do something, they put a little effort into something that seems reasonable, but it ends up being mediocre. Despite the great intentions, the result is lackluster. And then, because there are so many other things to do, the organization moves on, and work anniversaries remain mediocre.

We think the reason for the mediocrity is that on the surface, work anniversaries seem like they should be simple. No one who has been asked to be in charge of a work anniversary program has ever said, “sorry, no, I’m not qualified to do that.” Most people just wing it based on instinct. Or, some will look to advice from vendors who have conflicted motives.

Admittedly, work anniversaries aren’t rocket surgery, but there are a few non-obvious concepts that anyone who wants to succeed should know about the three forces of mediocrity, which we’ll discuss one-by-one in the next three sections.

Force #1: Avoiding favoritism

The first force of work anniversary mediocrity is the need to avoid showing favoritism in the celebration of work anniversaries. You can do more for 10-year anniversaries than you do for 5-year anniversaries, but you need to do the same thing for each milestone. That is, all 10-year anniversaries should be celebrated the same and all 5-year anniversaries should be celebrated the same.

Otherwise, you’ll do a lot more harm than good.

Let’s look at how this works. Let’s imagine you have a star employee that you really love and want to really do something amazing for their 5-year work anniversary. They get a trip to the Caribbean and the CEO delivers a really heartfelt congratulatory speech at a company-wide meeting.

That employee will appreciate what you did, but they probably already knew you really loved them, and you’ll at best only make them feel slightly better than they already did.

However, lots of people will know what happened, and when their fifth anniversaries come around and they don’t receive the same treatment, they will be hurt far more than you made the star employee feel better. And, there are far more of them, so the hurt gets multiplied.

HR folks either understand this intuitively, or they learn the hard way. But either way, they learned that everyone’s work anniversary needs to be treated the same.

And one last thing, note that avoiding favoritism is especially important by level of the organization or salary. One of the best ways to make a lot of people really mad is to do nicer things for work anniversaries of higher up employees. 

This force of mediocrity is why you’ll often see very generic work anniversary gifts that have nothing to do with the employee’s specific interests. Everyone gets a coffee mug. Or they all get a gift card to the same place. It’s really hard to get something thoughtful and of the identical monetary value for everyone. While it’s definitely very important to avoid favoritism, later in the book, we’ll share ideas that avoid favoritism more skillfully.

Force #2: Limiting spending

At most organizations, spending on work anniversaries is relatively limited.

There are two really sensible reasons for this.

Spending no more than you’re willing to on your worst employee

Once you’ve come to the realization that all employees need to be treated the same on their matching work anniversaries, you quickly arrive at the second force of mediocrity, which is that whatever you choose to do, you need to do it for your worst employee. You can’t get to an employee and say, no, not them, we’re about to put them on a performance improvement plan.

Are you considering two weeks off and a $2000 travel voucher for employees’ 10-year work anniversary? Look at the next dozen people who will be reaching their 10-year anniversary. Are you okay with doing that for all of them? 

Some organizations don’t struggle as much with this because they’re disciplined about parting ways with employees who aren’t great matches for the organization, but that’s often not the case. 

Spending no more than you’ll be able to during tough times

Does your business have a cyclicality to it? Are there booms and busts?

Employees who hit their 25-year anniversary in what happens to be a tough time are going to be very hurt about the work anniversary program getting cut just as they got to their big day. And this is understandable when you consider that they know that they’ll never have another 25-year work anniversary.

This force of mediocrity is sometimes understood intuitively, but also sometimes happens naturally and painfully where the program gets cut in the first tough time to come along. It can be damaging to the workplace culture, as employees will start to refer to the “old days” back when the company cared.

When things get better, reinstating the work anniversary program to its previous level can get awkward, too. If you don’t retroactively adjust those who went through in more austere times, they’ll be grumpy. But, retroactively adjusting can be weird and a lot to figure out, too. And it just won’t feel special, like was originally intended.

Paper certificates for 25-year work anniversaries

This is the force of mediocrity that leads to work anniversary gifts that are low cost and sometimes so low cost that they’re just a paper certificate for a 25th anniversary. And while that might be better than nothing for some people, it is a story ripe for cynicism. Later in the book, we’ll share how to navigate limited budgets with more skill, including lots of meaningful and memorable ideas that require no money or very little money.

Force #3: Limiting effort

For some organizations, the cyclicality isn’t so much about finances as it is about workload.

Think it’s a good idea to circulate a physical card to be signed, get helium balloons and have a cupcake get-together in the afternoon for work anniversaries? Well, if you do tax accounting, will you be able to maintain that in March and April?

Or, sometimes it’s not predictable cyclicality. Is the person responsible for work anniversaries sometimes pulled into special projects like migrating to a new payroll or HRIS system? When this happens, how much of this person’s time can remain focused on work anniversaries?

Like the other two forces of mediocrity, the force of limiting effort can’t be ignored. You can’t put lots of effort into some work anniversaries and not into others just because of the changing schedule of the person who handles work anniversaries.

But at the same time, putting no effort in at all will have negative consequences. Impersonally outsourced work anniversaries often aren’t worth the cost, and they can even do more harm than good. The most extreme example of this is that you get an impersonal email from a vendor that asks you to pick your own gift and put in your own shipping address, and no one you work with ever acknowledges this happened or even mentions your work anniversary to you.

The best path with this force of mediocrity is the middle path. You don’t want to do anything that really requires a lot of manual effort. But at the same time, you’ll want to keep the benefits discussed in the previous chapter front-of-mind so that the organization remains motivated to put some effort into work anniversaries on a consistent basis. The ideas later in the book keep this in mind.

The three forces of mediocrity together

These three forces are pushing work anniversaries to be generic, low-cost, and low-effort.

Generic, low-cost, and low-effort.

That pretty much describes the opposite of an amazing experience.

The difficult thing is, the concerns underlying those three forces do make sense.

Employees will be more hurt by favoritism or dashed expectations than you’ll do good with an inconsistent work anniversary program.

And, putting all three of them together really makes it hard.

Is there any hope?

Yes! That’s why The Workiversary Group was founded. There is lots of help in our blog. We will be putting out a helpful book this summer. And ultimately, our software product is being specifically designed to overcome the forces of mediocrity.

Join us on the journey!