The Importance of Celebrating Employee Milestones

Picture Roman roads stretching across vast landscapes. Along these well-trodden paths stood milestones – sturdy markers that reassured weary travellers they were on the right track.

They served a dual purpose: reassurance and measurement. They highlighted both the distance travelled and the remaining journey ahead.

Fast-forward to the present, and the essence of milestones remains unchanged. They signify progress, achievement, and direction. Beyond physical roads, milestones now mark the journey of individuals and organisations.

A milestone is an important event in the history or development of something or someone. Think of it as a beacon – a moment to pause, reflect, and celebrate.

In this article, we’ll delve deeper into what constitutes an employee milestone. More importantly, we’ll explore the positive impact these celebrations can have on organisational success.

What is an employee milestone?

Employee milestones can range from a regular traditional tenure celebration, right through to both professional and personal events such as birthdays, weddings, births, deaths, training achievements, promotions, and performance achievements experienced from day one in an organisation through to the day they move on.

There are company milestones too. These, of course, aren’t personal to the employee but can act as a good source of reassurance to how far a company may have come, the strong relationships with both customers and employees, and their evolutionary journey along the way…new products, growth, steering through difficulties etc.

Why is it important to celebrate employee milestones?

Recognising and celebrating employee and company milestones is crucial. It serves as a powerful way to acknowledge achievements, provide reassurance, and signal progress toward growth. When we celebrate these milestones together, we foster resilience, strengthen team bonds, and enhance engagement. Think of it like a financial deposit account: regular celebrations add to our emotional reserves, allowing us to weather challenges when they arise.

Here are some key points about the importance of celebrating employee milestones:

The benefits of celebrating employee milestones

Employee engagement

Celebrating employee milestones plays a vital role in personalising working experiences and work engagement, providing a supportive culture, creating opportunities, and recognising success.

While the dynamics of the workplace may continue to shift, the mantra “recognise them when they do it well” remains a constant in the engagement equation.

Simply put, what gets recognised gets repeated. Formally acknowledging and sharing contributions and accomplishments ensures behaviours will be multiplied.

Why it matters:

When employees are recognised for their accomplishments, not only do they feel a deeper sense of pride in their work, but they’re also more connected to the mission and more ready to shine with their next project.

When recognition occurs systematically and is engrained in the culture and the performance management process, employees will not only perform better, but will also be more likely to stay and report a stronger connection with the organisation.

Magnifying success also involves social and public recognition. Providing visibility into accomplishments to senior leaders and to others in the workplace community reinforces the employee’s sense of belonging and their value to the organisation

Types of employee milestone celebration ideas

So, what should we celebrate? There could be many appropriate milestones to celebrate- these will depend on the employee and company culture. Here’s a few typical and not so typical ideas to get you started:

Five Best practices for celebrating employee milestones

So, we have a good idea of the types of milestones we can and should endeavour to celebrate. There are, however, a few best practice considerations when looking to effectively integrate milestone celebrations in an organisation. Here are the five main areas to think about:

1. Maintain employee privacy

Not everyone wants to have a public celebration online or in person. This can vary from country to country and from role to role. Some may still be reassured by and want to receive the acknowledgement and recognition but wouldn’t enjoy a public broadcast.

This can be down to simple personal preference or an important cultural principle. Therefore, milestone programme design requires including a means to set privacy preferences with reminder prompts to employees on a regular basis to check and update their choices.

2. Respect cultural differences

As we touched on above over global privacy preferences, there will be additional cultural differences to explore and observe too. These can include:

Number and frequency of years celebrated:

Did you know that in the Netherlands they can celebrate 12.5 years’ service as this is halfway to 25? This happy tradition stems from another, which is to celebrate the Copper 12.5 years’ marriage celebration.

Types of celebration: 

There are lots of different ways to show appreciation for employees. For example, whether to include partnership or very personal celebrations. In-depth research should be carried out by surveying each region and all employees to make sure there are no faux pas or offense caused.

Celebration method:

Online / offline or a blend of the two? There’s the choice now to only continue with a very personal ‘in person’ reward or celebration. Or to include an online ‘celebration wall’ where every colleague wherever they are can contribute to a celebration. Today, employees work across teams and countries and, since the pandemic, the hybrid / remote revolution means we may be far away from others, but still want to celebrate with and for our colleagues.

Type of reward that may accompany a milestone:

When a reward is attached to a recognition it amplifies its impact. Where it’s deemed a reward should accompany a milestone celebration, establishing the right choice is critical for its impact.

As much as the item itself is important, there can be negative impact if the perceived value is either too much or too little also. Asia, for example, has a very long and continued tradition to always give a gift of gold (gold bullion, gold medals and coins) for major anniversaries.

Increasingly, the gift of choice is the more popular reward – allowing employees to choose an exclusive merchandise gift for major milestones or the gift of reward points that can be exchanged for many gift options from holidays and hotels, high value items for the home, right through to personal luxury items like expensive perfume.

3. Diversity and Inclusion

Following on from more obvious cultural considerations it’s important to highlight that adequate focus should be applied to diversity and inclusion throughout the global workplace. It’s imperative then that we celebrate every colleague’s strengths, alongside their uniqueness.  The seven different types of diversity in the workplace are:

• Cultural diversity
• Racial diversity
• Religious diversity
• Age diversity
• Sex / Gender diversity
• Sexual orientation
• Disability

Inclusion means everyone in the mix above is part of your culture – they’re involved, respected, valued, and treated fairly with kindness.

BI WORLDWIDE’s recognition solution includes a number of communication and reporting tools such as the Recognition Advisor and the Equity and Inclusion Advisor, specially designed to support managers and help employees celebrate to the max.

To simply celebrate basic milestones would in essence be ignoring every individual on some level. Take the time to establish ways to celebrate that include all colleagues in a way they would want and will be relevant to them. Read more from BI WORLDWIDE about the True Value of DEI.

4. Timely

‘Belated’ shouldn’t be a word that gets used in the workplace, especially around milestone celebrations. No-one wants to feel their service anniversary, birthday or retirement is an afterthought. So, good planning in the design stage of any celebration programme requires working through the right advance timeline. Pre-defined manager alerts can help with this and helps keeps managers in the know not to miss a date and start the relevant preparation. Crucially, having sufficient time to invite colleagues for their contributions (on or offline) makes the difference between just a tick box exercise and a genuine expression of respect and inclusion.

5. Keepsakes and shareability

There are plenty of upsides to employee engagement, recognition, and celebration being online. It can be everything, everywhere all at once across a corporate intranet… but maybe at times the card or certificate is missing. So, the final best practice tip here is to make sure there’s the ability to download the messages from a celebration wall or an anniversary certificate. And better still, make it shareable. Being social has fast become an ingrained habit, and while not everyone will wish to share their celebrations of any kind, a significant proportion of employees will be more than happy to upload the multitude of affirming messages to their corporate and personal media accounts.

Just like the ancient Romans, let’s pave the way to success – one milestone at a time!

At BI WORLDWIDE, we believe in celebrating every step of the journey. Whether it’s a work anniversary, a promotion, or a significant achievement, employee milestones deserve recognition.

Why? Because they provide employees with reassurance that they and the business are stepping forward together, creating a positive work environment, boosting morale, and driving productivity. 

Our team at BI WORLDWIDE is passionate about helping clients create recognition rich cultures and making every moment count.