Best way to celebrate employee birthdays

We remember employee birthdays by sending them greeting cards signed by their colleagues within their department. However, I find this as overly mechanical and old school. Is there a better way? — Pink Lily.

Every employee program, no matter how it is entrenched in the organization, must be energized or reenergized from time to time to make it meaningful not only for the employees but for management as well. This requires even the sending of birthday cards to celebrants. In that context, the human resources (HR) department must take the lead so that new ideas and opportunities are concretized.

HR must be flexible so all managers are taught how to energize their direct reports. The trouble is that very few HR professionals appear to be conscious of the need to think of new ways of doing things. At times, you may encounter opposition when people talk about how to make things simpler.

If you’re in HR, you should be the first one to wear the change agent hat. You must think of ways to refresh employee policy and at the same time maximize its benefits for the greater good of the company. You can diagnose where you stand with the following questions:

How are you doing with employee communication? What’s their level of motivation? Are they receiving a substantial amount of information about the health of the company’s business, goals and milestones? You may not know it, but employees are equally interested in understanding the company’s plans and programs, its performance against competition, and how it is managing challenges.

BIRTHDAY CLUBKeeping people in the dark makes them feel unimportant to management. When there’s an absence of proactive two-way communication, the rumor-mongers, the malcontents and the agitators will twist tidbits of information to suit their agenda, especially if you don’t have a labor union.

To manage this issue, it’s best to start organizing a monthly birthday club. This is an informal and unstructured (with certain exceptions found below) dialogue over a cup of coffee or soft drinks. To guide you on how to do this, explore the following steps:

One, establish a monthly town hall meeting. If you already have such a program, adjust it so the target participants become the birthday celebrants. Make attendance voluntary. For budget purposes, have them confirm their attendance one month in advance on a “first come, first served” basis. The justification for this is to determine the size of the venue.

Two, request the chief executive officer (CEO) to grace the occasion. If the CEO is not available, delegate the task to the executive vice-president or chief operating officer or any member of the senior management team. It’s also advisable for the town hall meeting to be attended by all senior executives so they can share their insights.

Three, limit the meeting to two hours, more or less. Time management is the biggest challenge. But you can manage everything if you start on time. The schedule may include a 30-minute mass, 10-minute CEO message and 30-minute open forum. The remaining 50 minutes is reserved for a modest snack and fellowship.

Four, allow anonymous employee ideas or questions. You can implement this using free software that’s commonly used in training. One caveat though. Inform the employees beforehand that their comments may be edited for brevity and clarity. More important, all employee issues must be settled first at the department level before they are raised in a birthday club meeting.

Five, summarize the CEO’s message and the exchanges in the Q&A. If the summary is approved by the CEO, the memo can be circularized in bulletin boards found in common areas and published in the company’s intranet. This process may also be enhanced with the inclusion of the event’s photographs and its highlights in the company newsletter.

Last, act with reasonable urgency to settle employee issues. Hearing from all employee ideas and publishing them are not enough. All work-related issues must be acted upon with dispatch by management. If management does not agree with certain issues or cannot approve a request, the reasons for the denial should be explained in plain language to avoid misinterpretation.

LINE MANAGERSEven if HR faithfully organizes the monthly birthday club, establish and maintain proactive, two-way communication with employees with the active help of all line leaders, supervisors and managers. They’re the key to maintaining industrial peace. They’re the first line of defense for management.

They should be effective in dealing with all issues long before they reaches top management. They should enjoy the help of HR in actively monitoring even the most trivial issues between employees and their bosses. HR should be the first to know who among the line leaders might have problems judging from high turnover, transfer requests and absenteeism.

Bring Rey Elbo’s leadership program called “Superior Subordinate Supervision” to your organization. Chat your workplace issues on Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter) or e-mail elbonomics@gmail.com or via https://reyelbo.com