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If you're an HR manager at a growing company, you're likely working with a lean budget, a stretched team, and leadership that wants to see results before it opens the purse strings further. The pressure to improve engagement is real, and so are the limitations.

The good news is that meaningful engagement rarely requires a massive budget or a sweeping initiative.

More often, it's a consistency problem. Small, well-timed gestures tend to move the needle more than big programs that launch once and quietly fade. Think of it less as a sprint and more as practice: short-term wins build trust, medium-term habits build culture, and long-term investments make it stick.

The 8 Drivers Behind Every Employee Engagement Idea

Before getting into specific initiatives, it's worth zooming out.

Every engagement idea is really just an attempt to strengthen one or more of the underlying conditions that make employees feel connected, valued, and motivated at work.

When you understand those conditions, you stop guessing and start making deliberate choices.

Research consistently points to eight core engagement drivers. Taken together, they give HR leaders something more useful than a list of initiatives: a map.

You can use it to audit where your organization is strongest and where the gaps are, to prioritize the areas that need the most attention right now, and to build a more compelling case to leadership — because each driver is backed by research you can put in front of a CFO or CEO.

You don't have to tackle all eight at once. But understanding the full picture changes how you build and how you sell internally.

• Meaningful work: Employees need to feel that what they do matters, that their contributions connect to something larger than their task list.
• Recognition & appreciation: Employees who feel genuinely seen and recognized are far more engaged than those who don't. Generic praise doesn't cut it; specificity is what makes recognition land.
• Growth & development: Most employees want to be challenged and developed. When that need goes unmet, disengagement follows. Growth doesn't have to mean a promotion; it can mean a stretch project, a new skill, or a mentorship relationship.
• Manager relationships: The single biggest driver of day-to-day engagement is the relationship between an employee and their direct manager. Competent, caring management is not a nice-to-have; it's the infrastructure everything else runs on.
• Belonging & connection: Employees who feel they belong contribute more and stay longer. This matters especially for hybrid and remote teams, where connection doesn't form organically.
• Flexibility & autonomy: Employees who have meaningful control over how and when they work are more intrinsically motivated. Autonomy signals trust, and trust drives engagement.
• Transparency & trust: Employees increasingly ask not just "Can I grow here?" but also "Can I trust this organization to navigate uncertainty with me?" Clear, honest communication from leadership has become one of the most important drivers of engagement over the last few years.
• Compensation & stability: Pay isn't everything, but it's a baseline. When employees feel fairly compensated and financially secure, they can bring their full attention to their work.

Approaching engagement from this holistic perspective allows you to move beyond one-off initiatives and start building something that actually sticks. And it applies across industries. Whether you're managing a team of nurses, a factory floor, or a hybrid tech workforce, the underlying conditions that make people feel valued and motivated are the same. The drivers don't change. The way you activate them does.

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Budget-Friendly Employee Engagement Ideas for Small Businesses

Tier 1: Quick & Budget Friendly

Most of the day-to-day work of employee engagement is manager-led. Recognition moments, meaningful check-ins, and the culture of visibility. All these initiatives live and die at the team level, not in HR's inbox. HR's role at this tier is to equip managers with the right tools, prompts, and structures so those moments happen consistently rather than by accident. The ideas below are things HR can own, set up, or directly enable without relying on individual managers' initiative to carry them out.

Celebrate tenure milestones out loud

HR owns the system; managers deliver the moment. Set up a simple process to flag upcoming work anniversaries and prompt the relevant manager or senior leader to acknowledge them publicly, a team shoutout, a personal message from the CEO, or a small recognition tied to the milestone. The structure is HR's; the human touch is the manager's.

Ask for input before rolling out new initiatives

Before launching a new process, policy, or tool, build in a structured moment to gather employee input, whether that's a short survey, a focus group, or a standing agenda item in a team meeting. HR can own this as a standard step in any initiative rollout. Employees who are asked for their perspective before a decision is made are more invested in the outcome.

Start a "wins" thread in your team channel

Create a dedicated weekly thread in your company's messaging platform (i.e., Teams, Slack, whatever your team lives in) where anyone can share a win, big or small. HR can set it up, seed it in the first few weeks, and encourage managers to engage with it. Once the habit forms, it runs on its own, giving remote and hybrid employees a visible place in the team's shared narrative.

Tier 2:  Light Structure & High Return

These ideas require a bit of setup, maybe an hour or two of HR time, but once they're in place, they largely run themselves. This is where HR starts building habits and systems, not just moments. Some of these ideas are fully HR-owned; others are collaborative, with HR designing the structure and managers or leadership bringing it to life.

Launch a peer recognition channel

Create a dedicated channel in Teams or Slack where employees can publicly recognize one another. Keep the guidelines simple: be specific, keep it positive, and make it visible to the whole team. Once the habit forms, it sustains itself with almost no ongoing maintenance, and it builds a culture of appreciation that doesn't depend on any single manager to drive it.

Run a monthly pulse survey

Five questions or fewer, sent consistently, signal to employees that their input matters. Focus on what you can actually act on: manager effectiveness, workload, and sense of connection. The survey isn't the intervention; the follow-up is. Share what you heard, name what's changing, and be honest about what isn't.

Build a recognition cue into your one-on-one template

Recognition at most small businesses lives or dies by the manager's habit, and habits need prompts. Adding "Who on your team deserves a shoutout this week?" as a standing item at the top of every manager's one-on-one template is a small design change with a disproportionate impact on recognition consistency across the company.

Create a monthly impact moment

Build a standing slot into the all-hands or team meeting for a brief story: a customer outcome, a project result, a team win that shows the why behind the work. Two minutes of genuine connection between daily tasks and real-world impact does more for meaningful work than most formal programs, and it costs nothing to run once the format is in place.

Start a structured onboarding buddy program

Pair every new hire with a peer buddy for their first 60–90 days. It costs almost nothing beyond coordination, and it dramatically reduces the isolation that kills early engagement. Employees who feel genuinely connected in their first weeks ramp faster, stay longer, and are far more likely to become culture contributors themselves.

Host a monthly lunch-and-learn

Invite someone on the team to teach something they know well, whether that's a hard skill, a side project, or an industry topic. It builds cross-functional connections, gives employees low-stakes visibility among their peers, and signals that expertise is valued beyond job titles. The coordination lift is minimal once it becomes a standing program.

Create a simple employee referral program

Employees who refer candidates become more invested in those hires' success and the company's overall growth. A modest referral bonus, even $250–$500, signals that employees are partners in building the team rather than just occupants of a seat. It's also one of the few engagement initiatives with a direct, measurable ROI that's easy to bring to a skeptical CFO.

Recognize work anniversaries with a personal touch

Work anniversaries are one of the easiest recognition moments to systematize. Track upcoming milestones, coordinate a small reward, and prompt the right person to deliver a public acknowledgment. The gesture itself doesn't need to be elaborate; what matters is that it happens reliably and feels personal, not automated*.*

Set up a non-work channel for social connection

A dedicated space in your messaging platform for hobbies, pets, weekend plans, or team banter gives employees a place to connect as people, not just colleagues. It's especially valuable for remote and hybrid teams where the informal hallway conversations that build relationships don't happen naturally.

Build a simple individual development plan template

A one-page IDP template, covering current strengths, growth goals, and two or three actions for the next quarter, gives managers a concrete tool for career conversations that might otherwise never happen. The document matters less than the conversation it creates; employees who feel their development is being actively discussed are significantly more engaged than those who aren't.

Create an upward feedback channel

Giving employees a structured and safe way to share feedback on their manager's effectiveness, whether through anonymous survey questions, a quarterly form, or skip-level conversations, surfaces problems that would otherwise stay invisible until someone resigns. Managers who receive regular, constructive upward feedback improve faster than those who don't.

Run a quarterly town hall with open Q&A

Giving employees direct access to senior leadership on a predictable schedule builds organizational trust more than almost any other single initiative. Even a 45-minute all-hands with 20 minutes of genuine, unfiltered Q&A outperforms a month of polished internal newsletters. The format matters less than the authenticity of the answers.

Tier 3:  Building the Foundation

This is where the real leverage lives. The ideas in this tier require more planning and some organizational buy-in, but they compound over time. They don't just produce engagement moments; they create the conditions where all the smaller efforts in Tier 1 and Tier 2 start to stick. Most of these are HR-owned by design, though several require leadership approval or manager execution to fully land.

Build a formal recognition program

A simple monthly peer-nomination process with a gift card reward and a public celebration is enough to start. The point isn't complexity; it's consistency. When recognition has a structure behind it, it stops depending on any individual manager's memory or enthusiasm and becomes something employees can genuinely count on.

Launch a structured career development conversation

Once per quarter, each manager meets with each direct report to discuss where they want to go and which skills they want to build. It doesn't require a formal L&D program; it requires a template and a calendar invite. Employees who feel their development is being actively tracked and supported stay longer and contribute more.

Offer a small learning and development stipend

Even $200–$500 per employee per year for books, courses, or conferences sends a meaningful signal: we're invested in you as a person, not just a role. It's one of the most cost-effective retention tools available to small businesses, and it's one of the first things employees notice is absent when they start comparing employers.

Create a mentorship pairing program

Match senior employees with junior ones for a structured three- to six-month pairing. A loose framework, monthly check-ins, a shared goal, and a defined end date are enough structure to make the relationship productive without making it feel like a compliance exercise. It accelerates development and builds cross-functional relationships that wouldn't otherwise form.

Audit your recognition for consistency across teams

If some teams feel constantly celebrated while others feel invisible, that gap is an engagement problem hiding in plain sight. Tracking how often each team or department is publicly recognized over a given period makes the inequity visible and gives you a concrete, data-backed conversation with managers about where attention needs to shift.

Build a years-of-service program

Formal tenure recognition signals that loyalty is noticed and valued at an organizational level, not just by individual managers. Structure milestones at 1, 3, 5, and 10 years, with escalating rewards and a public visibility moment. It doesn't need to be expensive; it just needs to be consistent and feel genuinely personal, not automated.

Embed values into your performance review process

Values that show up in how people are assessed and rewarded are the ones that actually shape behavior. Building explicit, observable behaviors tied to company values into your review criteria makes culture operational rather than decorative, and it gives managers a concrete framework for feedback that goes beyond hitting targets.

Run biannual stay interviews

Don't wait for the exit interview to find out what's not working. A short, structured conversation with employees asking what keeps them engaged and what would make them leave provides actionable intelligence while there's still time to act on it. Most employees are more candid than HR leaders expect, and the conversations often surface fixable problems that have been quietly driving disengagement for months.

Build a stretch assignment program

Giving high-potential employees the opportunity to take on a project outside their current role for a defined period is one of the most effective development tools available, and it costs nothing beyond coordination and planning. It signals organizational investment in that person's growth without requiring a promotion, and it often reveals capabilities that weren't visible in their day-to-day role.

Create a communication protocol for organizational change

When strategy shifts, restructures happen, or leadership changes, employees need more than an announcement. A standard protocol, explaining the why, outlining what's changing and what isn't, creating a channel for questions, and following up, prevents the vacuum that employees fill with worst-case assumptions. Structured change communication is one of the highest-leverage transparency investments a small business can make.

Introduce values-based recognition

When nominations require employees to name the value their colleague demonstrated, recognition becomes a culture reinforcement tool rather than just a morale booster. Someone recognized not just for a result but for how they achieved it internalizes what the organization actually stands for, and the whole team sees the connection between daily behavior and company values made explicit.

Build psychological safety into how meetings run

Assess how meetings currently operate across the company: are remote employees talked over, do the same voices dominate, and do people feel safe raising concerns or disagreeing with leadership? Small structural changes, structured turn-taking, anonymous input options, and a standing "any concerns?" moment can meaningfully shift team dynamics over time without requiring a culture overhaul.

The Truth About Why Employee Engagement Ideas Often Fail in Small Businesses

Here's something most engagement content won't tell you: the reason most small businesses struggle with engagement isn't that they don't care. It's that they try to shoot for consistency before any structred plan is in place.

Think about how large organizations approach engagement. Their programs aren't haphazard — there's a deliberate, systemic order to them. They don't just tell managers to recognize more often; they build a system that makes recognition easy, visible, and repeatable. The initiatives feel consistent because there's infrastructure underneath them. At smaller companies, that infrastructure rarely exists yet, and without it, every engagement effort runs on memory, willpower, and good intentions.

Budget and bandwidth compound the problem. Even with direct access to the CEO, the ask still has to compete with hiring costs, software, and a dozen other line items. And HR teams at small businesses are often a department of one or two, managing everything from onboarding to compliance to culture, which leaves little room to design and sustain engagement programs on top of everything else.

The good news is that all three of these are solvable. Here's how to think about each one:

• Think in systems, not initiatives. Build scalable programs as your company grows. Ones that don't fall apart when a manager leaves or a quarter gets busy. A one-off event isn't an engagement strategy; a repeatable framework is.
• Prioritize your budget against the drivers. Review the eight drivers of engagement and allocate your dollars to the areas with the largest gaps. Spreading the budget thin across everything moves nothing.
• Protect time for engagement work. Even a few dedicated hours per week are enough to make meaningful progress. This is often less a budget problem than a calendar problem.

Start Small and Build From There

It's tempting to look at employee engagement and assume the solution is more money.

You need a bigger budget for events, better perks, and more generous bonuses. And while fair compensation matters (it's one of the eight drivers for a reason), it's rarely the whole story.

Think of it like physical health: you can have access to the best gym equipment in the world, but if you're not getting enough sleep, eating well, or managing stress, you won't feel good.

Engagement works the same way. When employees feel disconnected from their work, invisible to their managers, or uncertain about the company's future, a catered lunch doesn't fix it. Even if it’s from the most high-end place in town.

That's why the drivers framework matters. Building an employee engagement program is a whole-picture problem, and the businesses that get it right aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets; they're the ones that pay attention to all the conditions that make people want to show up and do their best work.

The best place to start is by honestly investigating those drivers in your own organization. Where are the gaps? Where is energy already building? From there, it's about thinking short, medium, and long term and putting the systems in place that make consistent engagement possible, not just in a good quarter, but as your company grows.

What is the one thing that would make most managers better? The ability to provide effective feedback to their employees.

We know employee feedback is important, but there is a proper way to provide feedback that will produce better business results. First, ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. Does the phrase "performance review" put your stomach in knots?
2. Are there particular employees you know will be more difficult to provide feedback to than others?
3. Do you dread offering criticism?

Honestly, if you answered YES to any of the above questions, you’re already in the wrong frame of mind for providing feedback that will actually offer value to your employees. Accurate feedback is the key to engaging people and keeping them on track. Feedback, when done right, with the right intentions, can lead to better business results by helping motivate employees to meet professional goals. Business success is the result of aligning professional goals with the overall goals of the organization.

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‍So, what’s the trick to providing effective feedback? Here are a few tips to consider:

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Remain constructive

Criticism isn’t always easy to take, let alone deliver, but if done appropriately, with enough thought, and the best intentions behind it, the benefit is that it should help to increase the productivity of the worker receiving the feedback. The constructive part of “constructive criticism” is in the plan to do better. It gives an employee an objective to work for. Non-constructive criticism, or griping if you will, will have the immediate and opposite effect. Nobody likes to be criticized but if it leads to growth it’s easier to handle and easier to convey.

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Be specific

Focused attention on particular feedback will have greater results than when combined with other issues. If the feedback you are giving to an employee is negative you may be tempted to start with a compliment, thinking it will help soften the blow of the criticism. This just muddies the waters of your message. If your intention is to provide feedback with the objective of changing a particular behavior or motivating for better performance, then the focus should be placed solely on that topic in your discussion, and on that topic alone. The same goes for a compliment. Praise goes a lot further and provides more value when not combined with any other motives.

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Don't wait

Quarterly and annual reviews are great! They can provide valuable insight as to how an employee is performing and meeting business objectives. They can provide areas to work on moving forward to the next quarter, or year, and offer benchmark data for overall employee performance. However, feedback that provides the best results is offered in the immediate. Issues need to be dealt with as they arise. Wins need to be celebrated as they occur!

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Know your audience

Depending on the type of feedback your managers are offering, and the personality type of the employee, you must be mindful that there’s a time and a place for everything. Never criticize publicly. Studies have suggested that public disapproval, or putting someone on the spot with negative feedback, can alienate and embarrass the employee. This will only lower their ability to process the feedback constructively. Subsequently, caution should be exercised in sharing positive feedback publicly too. Congratulations and acknowledgment for a job well done in a public setting is something to be left to your discretion. Some employees LOVE public acknowledgment when some loathe being the center of attention.

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Stick to performance

This is one of the hardest things to keep in mind when providing feedback to employees. We discussed remaining constructive, but more than that, stick to words that don’t discuss the personality traits of the employee. Focus on discussing “things they do,” rather than, “who they are.” The best way to help an employee acknowledge and be responsible for their habits or behavior is to discuss them, openly and without personal judgment. As soon as you start discussing overall personality you’ll lose their attention and worse, they could become resentful. Example, instead of saying “You’re a lazy team member, you’re always late!” try, “Your being late hurts our team performance.”

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Observe peer recognition

Do you have employees who are loved by their co-workers? Let them know it! Morale and engagement levels in any workplace strongly depend on how well people get along. It’s true that one bad apple can spoil the bunch. Praising positive team spirit can encourage staff to share that behavior and affect your overall company culture.

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Can you think of any other tips to help managers provide better feedback to their employees?

Employee recognition software can be a valuable tool for managers when providing feedback. Using software like Qarrot, employees can recognize one another and be awarded points for meeting or exceeding sales quotas, goals and objectives. These peer-to-peer and manager recognitions are immediate and favorable to the employee. Employees can turn in points as they earn them for gift cards or other prizes set by the company.

More than that though, managers can view, in real-time, as employees engage with each other. In the company feed managers can see as employers reward points, as well as comment on the achievements of others as they are earned in the system.

Managers can also quickly export reports to see who earned, or rewarded, points for a selected time period. The nature, and frequency, of an employee’s engagement with company programs, such as Qarrot, is a strong indicator of the overall engagement an employee has with their team, to their goals, and to their job overall. Nothing can better indicate a need for feedback, and coaching, than disengagement. Just remember to use the tips we provided above!

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Curious how Qarrot can help you provide better feedback for your employees? Book a Demo, we’d be happy to give you a look around our product and show you how it works!

The face of the modern workplace has changed dramatically over the years, primarily where the pursuit of work-life balance is considered. A healthy quality of life is dependent on balancing career, family, health, and wellness. Flexible schedules and the ability to work remotely are 2 ways in which companies are providing these opportunities for their employees.

Recently Gallup published an article that stated, the results of a study they conducted on "benefits and perks" they found that 37% of employees would switch to a job that allows them to work off-site at least part-time.

‍Now before you get the idea that working from home is just a perk that benefits the employee, consider that studies have found financial benefits to the company as well. Global Workplace Analytics released their State of Telecommunicating in the US Employee Workforce findings in 2017 and found that employers saved over $11,000 annually, per employee, who worked remotely part of the time. Savings were found mostly in the areas of real estate, absenteeism, and turnover.

‍Advances in technology have made much of what an employee can do at the office available for them to do anywhere they like; whether it’s at home, at the cottage, or at a local coffee shop. Things like cell phone plans, high-speed availability and cloud-based software have led this revolution, but it's still the desire of the employee that is driving this trend upwards.

Telecommuting amongst full-time employees has increased 140% in a little over a decade! Though this has mostly been the case for companies with more than 500 employees, many small and medium-sized companies are starting to offer this as an option.

‍As if engaging our workforce wasn't difficult enough, engaging a remote, or dispersed, workforce poses its own set of challenges. What we’ve discovered in conversation with business leaders is that they can struggle with employees that may not be as strongly driven by the company's vision, and are more difficult to motivate than others.

If you currently have employees who sometimes work off-site, or are considering offering remote and/or flexi-hours to your workforce, it is critical to think more strategically on how to involve your workforce in engaging activities that make them still feel connected to the organization.

How do we engage our remote workforces? Here are a few suggestions:

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Set up a medium for regular communication

Providing tools in which managers and team members can regularly communicate with each other is key to cultivating a culture of collaboration. We know that a collaborative environment supports employee engagement, and engaged employees provide their best work, no matter where they are located.

Let them create their own schedule

Giving control back to employees to manage their own work schedules lets them fit in the things that matter the most to them. Employees with children, for example, may struggle with pick-up and drop-off schedules for school and sports. Flexible schedules give them the opportunity to balance family and work so they can continue to provide meaningful contributions to the organization.

Recognize their efforts… Publicly!

It's been previously stated that a genuine THANK YOU can go a long way to showing an employee that they are a valued part of the team, but a common problem with employees who aren’t in the office, either regularly, or at all, is their feeling of not “being connected” to their colleagues. This can make recognition difficult or seemingly less effective since there is nobody there to witness it. A modern rewards and recognition program, like Qarrot, can provide the ability to engage and interact with an employee, publicly recognize their efforts, and offer peer-to-peer recognition that is visible in a social feed. This can foster a sense of belonging and create a greater feeling of working together.

Continue to provide learning opportunities

Quite often, simply offering professional training and development can increase an employee’s feeling of importance to a company. When an organization is willing to build the skills and qualifications of their workforce it shows the employee that you truly value their contributions. Modern learning initiatives give management the ability to track what learning content their employees are engaging in, and keeps track of what they accomplish when they are not in the office.

Simplify the process

Qarrot is the all-in-one software solution that makes employee engagement easy, fun and effective with peer-to-peer, milestone, and goal-based recognition. When you use a rewards and recognition program that is visible, transparent, and inclusive, you’ll simplify the process of motivating and engaging your employees, no matter where they are.If you have an established team of telecommuting employees, or are considering offering flexi-schedules, or even if you have a full team of dispersed, remote employees, Qarrot can help eliminate some of the employee engagement challenges.

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Recognize and reward your people on your own terms with Qarrot - book a demo today!

Despite conflicting opinions, employee engagement doesn’t only mean employee happiness. Employee engagement is also the connectedness an employee feels to their job, the understanding of their personal contribution to the process, and the motivation they feel for growth within the company. It all starts with defining your mission, vision and values. For starters, ensure that the “who, what, why” trifecta of your mission statement is answered, your vision statement provides motivation for the future, and your values define your company’s organizational culture and beliefs. Of the three, your company’s values are most connected to employee engagement by being anchored in your company’s culture. This will have a huge effect on productivity and make the most of your mission, vision, and values.

"Your Mission creates FOCUS. Your Vision provides DIRECTION. Your Values define BEHAVIOUR.” ¹

Breaking the Mold with Company Values

Values such as integrity, teamwork, and customer service encompass the top three most common Fortune 100 company values. Nonetheless, they are exactly that, common. These values won’t set your company apart from competitors, nor will they attract and retain top employees. Core company values need to be implemented into everything, especially all processes involving employees. From start to finish, your company values should be the base of every company decision. This can be particularly difficult because strong values are tough and often controversial, but in the end, they will keep the company unified. When implemented properly, strong values will actually cause pain before they do good, as strange as that sounds. This means that some employees will feel cast out or constrained by behavioral boundaries, in fact narrowing the operational freedom of your business. On the bright side, when an employee’s values do align with the company core values, higher employee engagement and productivity will thrive.

Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” answer for this, as every person has a different perspective on values. Creating clear definitions for your company values, whether they’re core values, aspirational values, flexible values, or accidental values, will help clarify the meaning of every term your company stands for. This will avoid confusion and only attract the warrior employees who strongly believe in your company. It’s important to remember that values aren’t about people-pleasing. Rather, they place core beliefs at the forefront of your company. Just as you wouldn’t implement a survey for an overall consensus on financial or strategic issues for your company, the same concept applies to values for them to succeed.

Give Them Culture and Performance Will Follow

A study from 2015 involving automobile sales challenged the question, "Which comes first, organizational culture or performance?" The results strongly proved that if an engaged culture is implemented, more consistent and adaptable performance will result. Categories such as sales and customer satisfaction increased, while absenteeism and employee turnover substantially decreased.

Company culture defines a social order that grounds behavior and clarifies what is accepted or rejected amongst a group of people. Ultimately, it culminates in a shared purpose that energizes a company to help it grow. Depending on your company values, your culture will likely thrive under one of the following eight shared company culture categories:

‍Caring

‍A caring-based culture focuses on helping and supporting one another. Teamwork is highly emphasized, alongside loyalty and positivity.

Authority

‍An authority-based culture emphasizes competition, drive, and personal advantage. Confidence and constructive criticism are highly encouraged.

‍Purpose

‍A purpose-based culture comes together by focusing on global sustainability. They are striving for a greater cause and an ideal world.

Results

‍A results-based culture is goal-oriented and success driven. They strive for accomplishment and winning to get ahead.

‍Learning

‍Creativity, curiosity, and cultivation of new ideas are highly characterized in a learning-based culture. Exploration of new knowledge is made into adventure and open-mindedness is embraced.

Enjoyment‍

Happiness, fun, and excitement are emphasized in an enjoyment-based culture. A sense of humor is welcomed and stimulation is found in play.

‍Order

‍An order-based culture thrives on punctuality, structure, and rules. Employees are cooperative and looking to conform.

‍Safety

‍Planning ahead is a big value for a safety-based culture. Risk-taking is set to a minimum, and thorough preparedness and caution are taken in any business strategies.

A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that the success resulting from a company culture is again not a magic formula. Factors such as region, industry, strategy, leadership, and organizational design all play a part in the calculation of success due to company culture. Therefore, it’s not possible to say that what works for one company will necessarily work for the next, but clarifying which category of company culture your core values align with will help you to make the most of your values. Clear company cultures help employees to feel involved, connected, and supported. Guess what that sounds like? Employee engagement. In fact, it’s a direct domino outcome of clearly defining your company mission, vision, and values.

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Harness the power of appreciation through peer-to-peer recognition - book a demo with Qarrot!

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Sources

• Cmc-canada.ca - Who's on first? Mission or Vision?
• Hbr.org - Make Your Values Mean Something
• Forbes.com - If Culture Comes First Performance Will Follow

Employee Appreciation Day lands on the first Friday of March every year. And every year, a lot of HR teams scramble to pull something together: a catered lunch, a company-wide email from the CEO, maybe a gift card if there's budget. Employees say thank you. Everyone moves on.

If that sounds familiar, you already know the problem. It's not that the effort wasn't genuine. It's that one day of appreciation, dropped into a calendar with no recognition infrastructure around it, can't do what you're hoping it will do. It can't make a disengaged employee feel valued. It can't close the gap between the team that gets celebrated constantly and the team that never hears a word. And it definitely can't make remote employees feel included when the whole celebration is happening in a lunch room they're not in.

This article is about doing the day better. But more than that, it's about using the day as a starting point: a visible, well-timed moment to begin building something your employees will actually feel year-round.

Why Employee Appreciation Day Falls Flat

Most Employee Appreciation Day efforts fail for the same reason as broader recognition initiaves fail: the day is treated as a destination rather than a moment within something larger. When recognition only shows up once a year, the gesture, however well-intentioned, ends up highlighting the absence of appreciation more than it delivers it. Employees aren't cynical by nature. But they notice patterns. And "we care about you" lands very differently when it comes once a year on a designated calendar date versus when it shows up consistently, specifically, and tied to real contributions.

The fix isn't to do more on the day. It's to use the day differently.

The one-day trap

A single appreciation event puts enormous pressure on one gesture to carry a year's worth of goodwill. When that gesture is generic, the same email, the same lunch, the same message sent to everyone, it reads as checkbox recognition. Not because leadership doesn't mean it, but because nothing about it is specific to the individual receiving it. Recognition that doesn't see the person doesn't land, regardless of how much it costs.

The other trap is recency bias. A well-executed Employee Appreciation Day can create a short-term bump in sentiment that fades quickly if nothing changes afterward. Without a structure to sustain appreciation beyond the day, you're back to square one by April.

What it looks like when the day actually works

The companies that get the most out of Employee Appreciation Day tend to treat it as a launch event rather than an annual obligation. The day becomes the moment they introduce a new recognition program, reinforce one that's already running, or make a public commitment to changing how appreciation works going forward. The day itself is still celebrated, but it means something because it's connected to something real.

How to Structure Employee Appreciation Day for a Hybrid Team

For HR leaders managing hybrid workforces, Employee Appreciation Day introduces a specific challenge: any plan that works well in the office and is merely adapted for remote employees will feel exactly like that. Remote employees are perceptive. They can tell when the in-person experience was the real event and the virtual version was an afterthought. Structuring the day well means designing for hybrid from the start, not retrofitting it.

The standard to aim for: every employee, regardless of where they're working that day, should have an equivalent experience. Not identical; equivalent. Meaning the substance, the visibility, and the feeling of being seen should be the same.

Principles for hybrid-friendly appreciation

Design for the remote experience first. If an activity only works in person, it needs a genuine virtual counterpart, not a Zoom version of something that was clearly built for the office. When in doubt, start with what works remotely and build the in-person layer on top.

Make recognition visible across both contexts. One of the things remote employees miss most is the ambient visibility of being recognized in front of peers. A shoutout in a team meeting is great. A shoutout posted in the company Teams channel, where everyone can see it and react to it, reaches the people who weren't in the room.

Give managers a structure to work within. Unstructured appreciation days produce uneven results because manager participation varies. Some managers will go above and beyond. Others will forward the company email and consider it done. If you want consistent participation, give managers a simple framework: a template, a prompt, a channel to post in, and a clear ask.

What to avoid

Avoid appreciation activities that are implicitly location-dependent: office lunches with a gift card "for remote employees" as a consolation prize, team photos that only capture who's in the office, or any experience where the remote version requires significantly more effort from the employee to participate. These gestures, even when well-meant, signal a hierarchy of belonging that undermines the whole point.

Employee Appreciation Day Ideas That Actually Mean Something

The ideas below are organized by type. None of them require a big budget. All of them are designed to work for hybrid teams without modification.

Recognition that's specific and visible

The most meaningful appreciation is specific. It names what someone did, why it mattered, and who's saying it. On Employee Appreciation Day, that specificity is the differentiator between a gesture that lands and one that gets skimmed.

Peer recognition prompts. Give employees a structured prompt to recognize a colleague: something like "Name someone who made your work easier this quarter and tell them why." Collect the responses and share them publicly in your Teams channel or company intranet. The act of writing it is meaningful for the person giving recognition. Seeing it published is meaningful for the person receiving it.

Manager spotlights. Ask every manager to write a specific, individual recognition message for each person on their team. Not a group message; individual. Post them publicly if your culture supports it, or deliver them privately with a small reward attached. The specificity is what makes this feel different from a generic appreciation email.

Company-wide acknowledgment. A personalized message from senior leadership that names specific teams, specific contributions, and specific impact, not a form letter, signals that the people at the top are actually paying attention.

Rewards that feel personal

Choice-based gift cards. A gift card to a retailer someone never shops at is noise. A gift card that lets the employee choose where to spend it is a different thing entirely. Platforms like Qarrot make it easy to send rewards that are genuinely personal: employees redeem toward what they actually want, which is the point.

Recognition tied to a reward. The most effective appreciation combines the acknowledgment with something tangible. Telling someone their work mattered and pairing it with a reward, even a small one, reinforces that the recognition is real, not just words.

Experiences that bring the team together

Virtual team activity. A structured team experience, trivia, a cooking class, a creative challenge, works well when it's optional, time-boxed, and genuinely fun rather than obligatory. The key word is structured: open-ended "virtual hangouts" tend to have low participation because there's no clear reason to show up.

Lunch stipend. Give every employee a lunch budget for the day, remote and in-office, and encourage teams to eat together over video. Simple, low-lift, and it creates a moment without requiring anyone to be in the same place.

Team retrospective with a recognition layer. A short facilitated session where the team reflects on wins from the past quarter, with a dedicated segment for peer recognition, blends appreciation with something that feels purposeful rather than performative.

Low-budget, high-meaning gestures

Handwritten or personalized notes. Time-consuming, but disproportionately impactful. A short, specific note from a manager, even a digital one, that names a real contribution is something employees remember. The specificity is the cost, not the postage.

Extra flexibility. Giving employees an early finish, a no-meeting afternoon, or flexibility to structure their day as they choose signals that you trust them. For many employees, time is the most valued currency.

Public wall of recognition. A dedicated space, a Teams channel, a shared document, a Slack thread, where anyone can post recognition for anyone else. Seed it with a few manager contributions at the start of the day and it tends to build momentum on its own.

Using Employee Appreciation Day to Launch a Recognition Program

Employee Appreciation Day is one of the best natural entry points for introducing a formal recognition program. Leadership attention is already on appreciation. Employees are primed to notice how the day is handled. And the goodwill from a well-executed day can carry real momentum into whatever comes next, if there's a "next" to carry it into.

The day becomes a launching pad when you use it to make a visible commitment: not just "we appreciate you today" but "we're building something that makes this real year-round."

Why this day is a good time to introduce a formal program

The timing is useful precisely because it's expected. Every employee knows Employee Appreciation Day is coming. That means the bar for surprise is low and the bar for meaning is high. If you use the day to announce a new recognition program, with real structure, real rewards, and a clear explanation of how it works, you're converting a calendar obligation into a credibility moment. You're showing employees that appreciation isn't just something that happens once a year; it's something the company is investing in.

It also gives you a concrete milestone to point to in leadership conversations. "We used Employee Appreciation Day to launch our recognition program" is a cleaner story than "we've been working on it."

What a simple recognition program looks like after the day is over

It doesn't need to be complex. A functional recognition program at a 75-200 person company typically includes a few core components: a way for peers to recognize each other, a way for managers to deliver timely spot recognition, a milestone program for service anniversaries, and a rewards mechanism that makes recognition feel tangible. The infrastructure behind all of it, the platform, the workflows, the nudges that keep managers participating, is what turns good intentions into consistent behavior.

That structure is what Qarrot is built to provide. Not a single-use appreciation event, but the ecosystem that makes recognition work the other 364 days.

One Day That is Part of Something Larger

Employee Appreciation Day matters. But it only matters if it's part of something larger. A single day of recognition, however well-executed, can't substitute for a culture where employees feel seen consistently, specifically, and in proportion to their actual contributions.

The gap most HR leaders run into isn't motivation. They want to build that culture. The gap is structure. Without a recognition program that gives managers a clear framework, connects appreciation to rewards, and works equally well for remote and in-office employees, consistency doesn't happen, regardless of how good the intentions are.

Qarrot is built for exactly that: the infrastructure behind a recognition culture that runs all year, not just in March. If you're using Employee Appreciation Day as the moment to build something more durable, we'd love to show you how it works.

Innovation starts, at its very basic level, as a disruption of the old. It can be implemented in processes, services, products, and strategies. Creativity can be a powerful ingredient for better problem-solving and innovation and has become an asset in every field. Once employees begin to think creatively, they can unlock the ability to dramatically improve a product, position, or company for the better. Most employees have interests outside of work and possess varied backgrounds. They may have acquired skills in previous fields that they don’t even realize can be applied to their current position. Bringing those skills to a job that doesn’t explicitly require them can create innovative ways of getting ahead. Take the example of someone with computer programming skills now working in a managerial role. What if she wrote a short program to shorten the amount of time spent analyzing data in order to spend more time on other managerial tasks? This employee’s efficient use of skills saves company funds and resources and allows for employee and company growth.

Unfortunately, not all employees are going to take on such initiatives on their own. Sometimes an incentive or reward can do the trick, but according to a study in a Harvard Business Review article, these incentives are best reserved for a job done well and are not as effective as a general motivational tool. Offering a financial reward only to accepted ideas that were implemented into action motivated fewer, but higher quality proposals that were more likely to succeed. On the same note, some research shows that financial incentives for innovation can actually stifle creativity completely. So what is the real key to incentivizing creativity? Getting your employees to care, feel connected, and challenged, which requires more than simply offering a reward.

How to boost innovation:

Create a strong team

Create a strong team that will help turn their creative ideas into reality. If you want your team to be innovative, start at the beginning: think outside-the-box when you’re hiring. Someone who doesn’t necessarily fit the psychological profile of the office will add different ways of thinking to create fresh ideas. This diversity should be applied to leaders as well, ensuring they have been assigned to the right role. A creative employee’s eccentricities are often what help them to be innovative; they question the norm and push boundaries for results. Involve your employees early, this will help them feel invested and more likely to implement innovative ideas from start to finish. Use techniques for brainstorming such as mind-mapping and lateral thinking, and emphasize the importance of homework vs. teamwork. Brainstorming should be done individually and in a group, this way employees all have innovative ideas to contribute and bounce off of one another to create stronger thought patterns. If your team is lacking in new ideas, work with your existing team by jostling their way of thinking. Prioritize trust and learning by getting to know your employees personally and recognizing their specific skills. This will help you assess what creative assignments to put them forward for, who to ask for ideas, and when. This will also help assign a project outside of their norm, use incentive deadlines, balance tasks with rewards, and raise the stakes just enough to create a challenging and exciting motivation for creativity. This will automatically trigger a new way of thinking and perhaps sprout new innovative solutions.

Implement an innovative culture

Implement an innovative culture by encouraging a growth mindset in the workplace. This requires openness to ideas, change, and failure. Make employees feel comfortable offering any innovative ideas they may have, even if they’re not the right fit. Encourage them to let you know their ideas through an email, a message board, an idea box, or any means that will be regularly checked and acknowledged by management. This way if the employee is enthusiastic about an idea, they know it will be heard either immediately or in a timely fashion. If it is not an opportune moment to acknowledge their efforts, hold back from brushing them off. Assure them you’re interested and will check it out soon. This way, employees from all levels within the company can feel free to implement ideas, because you never know where a fresh change could come from. Additionally, try the simplest perspective trick to encourage positive results. Using the words “Yes, and” rather than “Yes, but” creates an environment of encouragement. It recognizes the obstacles in the idea and promotes the employee to continue digging deeper.

Start solving internally

Start solving internally by encouraging employees to bring forward job or company problems as well as their solutions. This will help the employees air their frustrations and be heard, and in turn, help them feel more in control of their tasks. Keep track of an efficient employee’s shortcuts, even if they were unauthorized. Sometimes these loopholes are created by the employee to get through the mundane and bureaucratic tasks quickly and are actually very innovative ideas that shouldn’t be overlooked. If the ideas ultimately don’t fit, and the merits and downfalls have been considered, let the employee know why they won’t work.

Then get out of the office

Then get out of the office, ‍literally and figuratively. Experiment with open concepts, designated rooms with creative atmosphere, or spending some time with the team outdoors. Look for ideas in other industries to study how they encounter and solve complications, for a different way of thinking. Allot a specific time for employees to work on ideas away from their daily duties, hold creative workshops, or monthly meetings outside of the office. Not only will this change be an incentive, but employees will look forward to this time and be motivated to innovate. The change of environment will change the mindset of your employees to think out-of-the-box, as they will literally be out-of-the-box!

Encourage failure and risk

Encourage failure and risk, and in turn, stifle fear. The enemy of creativity is fear, and failure is one of the main engines of anxiety in creativity. There is an element of vulnerability to creation that if stopped by fear, will be extinguished. Realistically, not every idea will be the best one, but by encouraging employees to take a risk, you will establish trust by allowing an employee to feel that they can fail and try again. Let the employee know where their idea is lacking and encourage them to keep trying. ‍

Execute employee ideas and reward successful innovation

Employees feel motivated and empowered when their creative ideas are chosen and implemented. Initiate a strategy to execute innovative ideas and embrace change. If ideas are never taken to action, employees will view their efforts to be useless and lose motivation to bring ideas forward. Create an idea management system that clarifies where and who started the innovative idea. Keeping track of this will help motivate innovation at any level and keep the company growing. Once a successful idea is chosen, then reward the employee. This can come in the form of financial compensation, flexible work hours, remote assignments; something that suits the specific employee’s needs and keeps them happy and motivated to create more innovative ideas.

Creativity is a tricky thing - you can’t force it. As much as you try to motivate it, it will equally disappear. Creativity and innovation come when there is an environment of trust, patience, freedom, and purpose.

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Crafting the perfect incentive program can be tricky, but we can help - book your free trial with Qarrot today!

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Sources

• ‍HBR - Motivating Your Most Creative Employees
• ‍HBR - Financial Rewards Make People Suggest Fewer but Better Ideas
• ‍Irish Times - 5 Ways to Create a Culture of Innovation in the Workplace
• ‍Forbes - What Can Your Organization Do to Become More Innovative

You already know engagement is a problem. You've seen it in your pulse survey scores, heard it in 1:1s, and felt it in the rooms where nobody speaks up. What's harder  is putting a real number on it.

Because when the CFO asks why you need a budget for a recognition or engagement program, "our culture needs work" isn't going to resonate. They need more concrete evidence than that.

Disengagement isn't a background feeling you push through. It incurs real financial liability that shows up in your numbers — through higher turnover, lower productivity, increased absenteeism, and the slow erosion of team performance.

For HR leaders at scaling companies, where every dollar is scrutinized and every initiative needs to prove its ROI, understanding the real cost of disengagement is the foundation of every people strategy conversation worth having.

Why Disengagement Is a Business Problem, Not Just an HR Problem

The scale of disengagement globally is staggering. According to Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion annually, roughly 9% of global GDP. In the U.S. alone, disengagement resulted in an estimated $1.9 trillion in lost productivity in 2023.

Those are macro numbers. Here's what matters at your scale: in a company of 100 employees with an average salary of $65,000, Gallup's research suggests disengagement is costing you somewhere in the range of $350,000–$700,000 per year.

The methodology behind that figure? Gallup estimates that disengagement costs roughly 34% of a disengaged employee's annual salary in lost productivity alone. When you apply that to even a modest disengagement rate, and only 33% of U.S. employees report being engaged, the numbers add up fast.

Where the Costs Actually Show Up

Disengagement doesn't appear as a single line item. It bleeds across your business in four distinct ways:

Productivity losses

Disengaged employees aren't just less motivated, they're measurably less productive. Gallup's research shows that disengaged employees deliver 18% lower productivity compared to their engaged peers. For knowledge workers and professional services roles, where output is tied directly to the quality of thinking and collaboration, that gap is hard to hide.

On the flip side, highly engaged teams are 23% more profitable than their disengaged counterparts. The spread between your best- and worst-performing teams often reflects engagement, not talent.

Absenteeism

Disengaged employees show 37% higher absenteeism than their engaged peers. In a hybrid environment, this is particularly costly, not just because of the direct cost of missed days, but because of the downstream impact on team reliability, project timelines, and the burden placed on colleagues who have to absorb the gap.

Turnover

This is where disengagement gets truly expensive. According to SHRM, replacing an employee costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, depending on seniority and specialization. The average cost to replace a salaried employee is 6 to 9 months of their salary, before accounting for lost institutional knowledge, the productivity dip from their team during the open role, or the ramp time for their replacement.

Gallup's data puts the link between disengagement and turnover in sharp relief: disengaged employees are 43% more likely to leave than their engaged peers. For an HR leader trying to protect a scaling company from the whiplash of high-growth hiring followed by preventable attrition, that statistic should be front and center in every retention conversation.

The ripple effect on teams

Disengagement is rarely contained to one person. When an employee is visibly checked out, missing deadlines, disengaging in meetings, and doing the bare minimum. It creates drag across the entire team. Colleagues absorb extra work, morale softens, and in the worst cases, disengagement becomes contagious. The employees most likely to leave next are often the ones who were once your strongest contributors, quietly watching and deciding whether this is still a place worth their effort.

How to Calculate the Cost in Your Organization

You don't need a sophisticated model to present a working number to leadership. This framework will get you close enough to make the conversation real:

Step 1: Establish your disengagement rate

If you've run an engagement survey, use your data. If not, Gallup's benchmark is a reasonable proxy: approximately 51% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at any given time. Apply that to your headcount to get a working estimate of how many disengaged employees you're carrying.

Step 2: Calculate the productivity cost

Multiply the number of disengaged employees by their average salary, then apply Gallup's 34% figure:

• Disengaged employees × average salary × 34% = estimated annual productivity loss

Example: A 120-person company, $70,000 average salary, 51% disengagement rate

61 disengaged employees × $70,000 × 34% = ~$1.45M in lost productivity per year

Step 3: Layer in turnover costs

Estimate how many employees you expect to lose this year due to disengagement. Even a conservative 10–15% annual turnover driven by disengagement adds significantly to exposure. Use SHRM's benchmark of 6–9 months of salary as a minimum replacement cost per departure.

• Annual disengagement-driven exits × average salary × 0.5 (minimum) = turnover cost floor

Example: 12 exits × $70,000 × 0.5 = $420,000 minimum in turnover costs

Step 4: Add absenteeism

Calculate your current absenteeism rate and apply the 37% uplift for disengaged employees to estimate what portion is avoidable. Even small improvements here translate to meaningful productivity recovery.

The headline number

Combine productivity loss, turnover cost, and absenteeism impact, and you have a defensible, research-backed estimate of what disengagement is costing your organization every year. For most companies in the 75–200 employee range, that number lands somewhere between $500K and $2M annually. This is often more than the entire program's budget.

That's the number that belongs in your leadership deck.

What's Driving Disengagement at the Root

Understanding the cost is the first step. Understanding the cause is what makes the investment case for fixing it.

Gallup's research consistently points to one variable above all others: managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

The relationship between an employee and their direct manager accounts for more of the variance in engagement than any other factor in your organization.

For HR leaders at growing companies, this is both the problem and the opportunity. You likely have managers who are phenomenal at building engaged teams, and others who don't even realize their teams are quietly disengaging. The difference is not usually a lack of willingness or effort; it's almost always structure. When managers lack a clear framework for recognizing, checking in, and building team connection, they default to their own style.

The other major driver is the absence of quality recognition. According to SHRM, 69% of employees say they would work harder if their efforts were better recognized. Yet Gallup's data shows only 26% of employees strongly agree they receive adequate recognition for their work.

That gap between how much recognition matters and how little employees actually receive — is one of the most addressable drivers of disengagement for HR leaders today.

The ROI of Fixing It

The case for investing in engagement isn't just about reducing costs. It's about unlocking a performance differential.

Gallup's research on highly engaged business units shows they deliver:

• 23% greater profitability
• 51% less turnover
• 41% lower absenteeism
• 10% higher customer ratings

For a 150-person professional services company carrying $1M+ in disengagement costs, moving from low to moderate engagement doesn't require a full organizational transformation. It requires structure, a clear program that gives managers a framework for consistent recognition, defined moments for appreciation throughout the year, and the tools to make it easy to show up for their teams.

Recognition is one of the highest-ROI levers available because it addresses the root cause (employees not feeling seen or valued) in a way that's scalable, low-lift to maintain, and visible to leadership. Companies with effective recognition initiatives report 31% lower turnover than those without, a direct hit on one of the largest disengagement costs on your spreadsheet.

The math works. The question is whether your organization has the structure in place to act on it.

Making the Case to Leadership

If you've made it this far, you likely already know what needs to change. The harder part is often the internal conversation and getting leadership to see engagement as a business investment, not a discretionary HR expense.

Here's the framework that tends to land:

1. Lead with the number. Use the calculation framework above to build your organization's specific estimate. A number tied to your own headcount and salary data is far more persuasive than a global statistic.
2. Name the drivers. Connect the engagement gap to the specific causes you've observed: inconsistency across managers, lack of recognition structure, and remote employees feeling disconnected. Leadership responds to specificity.
3. Quantify the intervention. Employee recognition programs at the SMB level typically cost between $2–6 per employee per month. Stack that against your disengagement cost estimate, and the ROI case becomes straightforward.
4. Point to proof. Use data from Gallup and SHRM alongside internal signals (survey scores, turnover trends, exit interview themes) to show that the problem is documented and the solution is evidence-based.

The CFO conversation isn't about convincing anyone that engagement matters. It's about showing that inaction has a price tag, and that a structured investment in recognition and engagement costs a fraction of what it saves.

Building From Here

Disengagement is expensive. But it's also among the most solvable problems in your organization because its root causes respond directly to structural changes.

The goal isn't a sweeping cultural overhaul. It's identifying the highest-leverage intervention available, building a consistent program around it, and letting the data speak for itself over the next quarter.

For most HR leaders at scaling companies, that starts with recognition: giving managers a clear, simple framework to consistently acknowledge contributions, celebrate milestones, and make employees feel like their work matters. When that structure exists, consistency follows naturally. And when consistency follows, engagement moves.

The past few months have been busy at Qarrot! We've been lucky to sign-up new customers and to get great feedback from existing ones. And we love feedback! When customers request new features or functionality, we take note and put them onto our 'ideas board' for review. If we think an idea makes sense and would improve the experience and usefulness of Qarrot for most customers, chances are we'll add it!

With that in mind, today we're releasing both a new look for Qarrot as well as several new features. Here's the skinny on what you can expect the next time you log in:

A simple, more colourful look

We love the way Qarrot looks (who doesn't, right?!) but wanted to make some features more prominent and add a touch more colour. You'll notice the biggest changes on the Home page:

• The social feed is larger and easier to read
• Colourful section titles improve page navigation
• Our new Get involved section in the top right displays actions you can perform depending on your role and settings. For example, you can now update your campaigns from this section
• Your Profile is now always visible in the top right

Whenever you're recognized or send a recognition, you'll see these new icons.

New features, because you asked for them

Birthday Awards

‍We received so many requests for automated birthday awards, we just couldn't say no. Now, the Super Admin can create a birthday award in Manage > Milestone Awards to automatically celebrate all participating employees' birthdays (as long as employee profiles include their birth date - don't worry, we don't publish how old you are!)

‍International Rewards

‍If your organization has locations outside of the USA or Canada, you will now see the option to select 'Country of redemption' when you redeem for rewards. To start out, we've added rewards for 22 countries. If your company is based in the USA, but some employees are in the UK, they can simply select the United Kingdom right on their My Rewards page to get a list of rewards in Great British Pounds, for example.

Improved features

My Rewards

‍We made this section look better ... WAY BETTER. We hope you like it!‍

My Campaigns

‍Ditto. We've improved the look of this section and made it easier to use.

‍Employee profile

‍You can now see all recognitions you've received and given right from your profile. Admins can see this information too when they go to Manage/Employees and click on your profile.

‍Side menu

‍To make navigation easier for Admins, we've created two sub-sections in the left-hand menu: Manage and Organization. You can expand these sub-sections where you'll find all of the previous options available for Manage, but we've moved Dashboard and Settings under Organization (it's just better that way).

We hope you enjoy these improvements and new features.

Sincerely,

The Qarrot Team

This year, Sky Bet CEO Richard Flint was rated the number one CEO in the UK by the job rating site Glassdoor. Glassdoor’s reviews come from employees, making this award very meaningful and its recipient, a leader businesses around the world ought to take note of.

What is Flint doing that resonates so strongly with his staff? According to him, keeping work culture casual has opened up an invaluable dialogue between all levels of staff.

‍The managerial approach Flint takes to maximize employee engagement is actively creating an informal and collegiate environment.¹

“Be nice, friendly, and approachable […] and you’ll get the best out of your employees every single time...The best way to find out what’s really going on is to talk to people outside of the formal environment. In a formal meeting, people always want to tell you everything is really good.” -Richard Kent

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Operating with a less formal office environment is something more and more businesses are practicing, and it’s not just startups. From open-concept offices to employees working from home, flexible work structures seem to be becoming the new norm.

‍But where should the line be drawn? At what point does a casual work culture impede employee productivity?

‍Here are a couple of guidelines to keep in mind

Constant communication can kill employee productivity

Office chat platforms are incredibly effective tools for keeping staff connected. Different departments and team members can instantly get updates from one another and keep projects moving forward without having to call formal meetings.

The issue is that those message notifications are not always arriving at the ideal time. In the spirit of open communication and in the wake of flexible work hours, employees at all levels are making themselves available much of the time - even outside of regular hours. When chat conversations become relentless, all-day affairs, employee focus and productivity take a hit from repeated interruptions.

Accordingly, management should be aware that employees crave a bit of structure for their chat rooms. A recent survey showed that as much as 81 percent of staff expressed an interest in having guidelines around communication apps. Often, a simple acknowledgment that it is okay to set your status as Do Not Disturb will alleviate any guilt from saying “I’m unavailable” and give your workforce uninterrupted time to focus.

Employee engagement for staff working from home

There are a lot of benefits to working from home - no time or money wasted on transit and a comfortable, quiet work environment to name a few. It’s no surprise that many employees are increasingly negotiating this flexibility into their employment agreements.

With this freedom comes more responsibility. Managers or supervisors need to regularly check in and maintain a connection with those staff working from home in order to prevent employee disengagement.

These meetings don’t have to be formal—you may decide to do check-ins through chat tools, email, or even over coffee—that’s Richard Kent’s preferred approach.

Whatever approach you decide on, these status updates should include general conversation to connect with the employee and most importantly, be done on a weekly basis. By keeping your employees informed on the going-on’s of the office, you reinforce the message that they are still a part of the team and their work matters to the company.²

Concrete boundaries are key

Don’t be afraid to relax your company culture and try out a more informal approach. Trading-in rigid guidelines for a more collaborative, horizontal business structure has proven to work wonders for many organizations.

The employee engagement success of these relaxed atmospheres is dependent on having an awareness of areas where a little can turn into too much. Knowing and managing counterproductive practices that can emerge from an open culture requires an understanding of employee work styles. The more you know about how your staff like to work, the more accurately you can shape a culture that will benefit them.

An “informal and open” work culture is not all about open-space offices. Employees want a work culture that allows them to express their true selves, inspire and be inspired by their teammates, and lets them walk away at the end of the day feeling connected to the success of the business.

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Here at Qarrot, we know that communication is key - learn how we can keep your whole team in the loop!

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Resources

• Britain's 'best CEO' shares his advice for getting the most out of staff
• ‍Peoplematters.in - How HR Can Engage Salespeople To Boost Their Productivity