The importance of coffee, cake and saying thank you
It’s a small thing isn’t it? Saying thank you. Good leaders should make it a habit. Great leaders have it ingrained in their DNA. It’s a…
It’s a small thing isn’t it? Saying thank you. Good leaders should make it a habit. Great leaders have it ingrained in their DNA. It’s a small, personal and meaningful gesture that can turn an employee’s day around, or spark their best performance yet in challenging circumstances.
But how do you say “thank you” at scale, and still have it feel personal and meaningful? All-company emails are one way. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that treasures that email or talks about it with colleagues.
I did see one email convention that pulled off the personal and meaningful, from the company Linden Lab (you know, the one that invented that crazy virtual world, Second Life? Disclaimer, I used to do PR for them back in the day.) Linden Lab invented something called the “Love Machine” which was a simple way, built on an internal software messaging platform, to offer appreciation or thanks from colleague to colleague for a job well done or a thoughtful gesture. This was visible to all staff, including upper management, and it encouraged positive feedback in a genuine and staff-led way.
How about a big party for all staff? Well that’s another way. Except it depends on your company or organisation having the financial wherewithal to organise it in the first place, and in this economic environment, it might only be the start-up unicorns that can manage it. (I’ve certainly experienced my share of these parties when I worked with tech start-ups in London and San Francisco!)
But how about in the cash-strapped public sector? How can you say thank you, and have it really mean something, when you have thousands of employees and not a lot of financial means?
Well, one answer is cake. I feel like cake is probably the answer to most things in life. And when paired with coffee or tea, the essential social lubricant of the working day, cake becomes a magical way to break down barriers and share the love.
When I worked for a small NHS trust in Staffordshire, we wanted to celebrate and thank our hardworking staff for leading our well publicised journey from a fairly dark place several years ago, to a rapidly improving organisation that regularly innovates and champions excellent patient care. One of the best things we did was to put cake at the centre of it.
Using our own catering facilities and with amazing support from our catering manager, my team and I worked up a cunning plan with the Chief Exec, as we saw employee recognition as a key part of our internal communications and staff engagement remit.
A letter went out to all staff across the Trust from our Chief Executive and Chair, thanking staff and acknowledging their hard work. Attached to each letter was a voucher for our catering outlets, for a free coffee and cake to say thanks. Before the sugar police descend, I will stress that we focused on a message of “moderation in all things” and that the vouchers were also good for herbal teas and fruit if people wanted a healthier treat.
Over the next few months, we saw a great take-up of the vouchers and lots of appreciative feedback from staff. Is coffee and cake a small thing? A drop in the ocean when set against the challenges of the NHS environment and of patient care? Of course it is. But in our experience, a small gesture, which we could commit to and make real, was an important marker in terms of how we made our appreciation visible and meaningful.
Here are some of the factors you may want to look at when considering staff recognition schemes:
Is it scalable? Saying “thank you” to 20 employees is fairly easy, but thanking more than 3,500 staff and upwards is a different matter. Scalability is key.
Is it inclusive? In our example, we quickly realised that some staff couldn’t or wouldn’t drink coffee or eat cake, so we expanded the vouchers to include other choices, including gluten-free and fruit.
Is everyone equally eligible? Decide the remit of your recognition scheme early on. We decided to treat every employee (and volunteer) the same, regardless of their position or salary banding.
Is it repeatable? We continued this scheme and offered it to staff following the last two hard NHS winters. Decide if you can/want to repeat it and if so, how often. You will want to build in regular reviews to keep the offer fresh and exciting.
Are there intended/unintended benefits or consequences? One of the great benefits for us was that the vouchers encouraged staff to take a short break together to go and redeem them, leading to increased social interaction between colleagues. Of course, you also need to factor in peak times and shift patterns so that the business doesn’t fall over! Plan, review and adjust, taking your tolerance levels for certain behaviours and outcomes into account.
Coffee and cake won’t save the world. But they might just turn your staff engagement programmes from “blah” to “brilliant”.
Mine’s an Americano, just a splash of milk. Victoria Sponge.