Employee Motivation
Calendar
2016

What You Can Learn?
Employee Engagement Ideas are curated from innovative events & large enterprises that are really
worth implementing.
For ease of use, we have divided the ideas across the year as an employee motivation calendar for
HR Professionals. Few examples are cited from TED Talks, Google, Deloitte, LinkedIn and similar
companies.

January
Career Investment Discussions : Start your year with a career consultation with your employees. Help
them plan their career. Speak about individual or team needs. Discuss training and development
needs. For example, Talent+, a management consulting firm has replaced appraisals for Career
Investment discussions.
CEO/OWNER Speak: Discuss annual plans and objectives with your employees. Talk about last year’s
achievements. Applaud the gains. Discuss how to curtail the weakness. You can do this at a Town
Hall Meet at the beginning of the year.

February
Karaoke with colleagues: Plan an evening of karaoke with everyone at office. Let your hair down. Literally
or otherwise. If taking a weekend is not an option, assign one employee or more based on company size
to sing for the day. The time can be random. Getting a notification or email can mean the employee has to
sing. Helps to lighten the mood and you can find a star talent.
Valentine's day: Theme the office on valentine's day. Let your employees know that they are loved for
their contribution towards the company’s growth.

March
TED Talks: Watch a chosen TED talk
together over food and drinks. Learn
and be inspired. Take a poll on the most
popular TED talk theme like Leadership.
You can see the snapshot of Simon
Sinek, author of Start with Why.
Sports: Have an inter-departmental
sporting event. Increase teamwork and
communication. After all a company
that plays together, stays together. It
also includes a little exercise for the
otherwise desk workers. Invite their
family to come and support.

April
Flip day: Interchange roles for a day. Let the
managers take a backseat and watch the
junior members take charge for a day. This is
also known as reverse mentoring. This will
give them an initiative to get into their
mentor’s shoes and develop leadership skills.
The managers will understand the viewpoints
and difficulties faced by the juniors and this
will help in improving interpersonal
relationships within the office. Companies like
LinkedIn, Hewlett Packard, Ogilvy and Mather,
Cisco and Hartford Financial Services, sing
the praises of reverse mentoring

May
Celebrate mother’s day: Bring
your mother to work. Make her
feel proud about your
achievements. Let them
understand what you do. We
have LinkedIn to thank for
starting this trend.
Indulge in potluck lunch: In
between hard work let the
employees share an elaborate
meal for a feel good factor.

June
Father’s day: Men don't usually have important
“days” assigned for them. Celebrate them
anyway. This time bring the fathers to work. Or
a father figure. Or the boyfriend/husband if
you have a child. You can also bring your child
if none of the above applies. Your employees
are fathers too.
Celebrate fatherhood amidst work. Share work
stories with them. Let your loves ones see
how hard you work. Google is a champion
when it comes to getting parents to work and
making them proud.

Google’s third official “Take Your parents to Work” Day
On a hot Thursday morning in Mountain View,
California, an enormous amphitheater usually
crammed with rowdy concert-goers is packed with a
very different kind of crowd. Inside, thousands of
Google employees squeeze in next to their parents,
who are munching the remains of their free
breakfasts, sipping from new logo-emblazoned
water bottles, and listening to some of Google's top
brass thank them for raising such a great group of
people.
Read more here

July
Quarterly Employee Reviews: Conduct quarterly reviews for employee performance appraisals. Applaud
the achievers. Sit down with the non-performers and try to find out where they need help. Instead of going
hard on the employees, help them come to par with the company requirements and expectations.
VYO (Voice your opinion): Following, fourth of July spread the sense of independence among your
employees. Let them know they are free to voice their opinions. Welcome initiatives and ideas. Listen to
complaints and try to work on them. It eradicates the concept of having corporate “slaves”.

August
Double benefit:
Encourage employees to bring in new
interns to office for summer internship
programs and training. This can
include family members and friends. If
the candidate gets absorbed, the
employees receives a bonus & a badge.
Google is known to have an excellent
Buddy referral program

September
Training and development: Let your employees choose their own training and development needs from
among what you have to offer.
Book Clubs: Conduct a book club and discuss the recent publications concerning their industry. Increase
knowledge and upgrade to recent findings. This can also be extended to include business associates as
done by Pinnacle Financial Partners.

October
Halloween workday: Let your employees
come to work in halloween costumes.
Take pictures together and post this on
the social media. Trick or treat contest
with random trick or treating via event
app. Kahler Slater believes in friday the
13th parties as part of their tradition.
Back at ya: Have employees take picture
or videos where they can showcase what
they enjoy best about the company. This
is a way of receiving feedback from the
employees.

November
Thanksgiving: Surprise your
employees with surprise gifts on
or around thanksgiving. It does
not have to be elaborate or
monetary. Thank them for their
efforts and contribution. This is
how Salesforce celebrates
Thanksgiving.
Remember your veterans: In the
spirit of veteran’s day, if your
office has veterans, make them
feel special around the 11th.

December
Secret Santa: Have a secret Santa party at the
workplace where employees can secretly give
each other gifts. It may be a small gesture from
the management as well to show their
appreciation for the year round hard work put in by
the employees. Office depot celebrates Secret
Santa by gifting employees office supplies.
Annual christmas party/new years party are other
alternatives you can plan.

Secret Santa with a Twist
Talking about Secret Santa, two years back,
the employees at the Deloitte office in
Birmingham raised money and used it to buy
toys for the Children’s unit at Heartlands
Hospital. Instead of doing their regular secret
santa, they decided to add a new twist and
has planned to repeat it then on every year.
You can read the full story here.