Key Takeaways

Happy employees can transform the dynamics of an organization, driving productivity and reducing turnover.

Employees experience 9x growth in sense of success when they’re satisfied with total rewards. A clear reward system helps them visualize their growth and meet personal goals.

Regular appreciation not only improves employee relations, but also nurtures a cycle of gratitude, building an encouraging workplace environment.

We get it. As a business owner, sometimes you can get so laser-focused on creating a successful business that you can forget your remote employees need attention, too!

Leading virtual teams in dynamic workplaces and connecting with employees virtually is not always easy. But ensuring your remote employees feel appreciated can have lasting benefits. From enhanced productivity to lower turnover rates, happy employees can transform how working in your business feels.

So take a moment and ask yourself. When was the last time you showed appreciation for your virtual employees who put in the work to help your business outshine competitors?

Think it’s time again to connect with your virtual employees?

Want to learn the top tried and tested ways to make your virtual employees feel appreciated?

Take a peek at our favorite virtual employee appreciation ideas that make your precious employees feel seen!

What Is National Employee Appreciation Day?

National Employee Day is celebrated on the first Friday of March every year, as proposed by Dr. Bob Nelson in his book ‘1001 Ways to Reward Employees.’

What started as an unofficial day has now become an important event on the calendar. The day encourages organizations to develop a recognition program for their precious employees. It also enables leaders to nurture connections, strengthen the employee-manager bond, address demotivating processes and build a positive environment.

But the truth is, employee appreciation is not just a single-day celebration. Smart business owners take it as a reminder that successful businesses appreciate their employees regularly and reward their dedication consistently.

It is what encourages your employees to interact in meaningful ways. It also creates a collaborative and productive environment that makes them feel valued.

When employees respect and elevate their colleagues, it creates a culture of excellence. This peer-to-peer recognition is a meaningful way to inspire and motivate a person.

They feel seen and heard and know they are appreciated for all the extra effort put into their job. The positive feedback enhances feelings of value, as workers are publicly and individually recognized for their achievements.

Jack Kelly

Appreciation is an irreplaceable workplace tradition where gratitude is a natural statement in conversations. This is what future job seekers want to see in the workplace. And days like National Employee Day are a great opportunity to show your gratitude and highlight your hardworking employees.

Why Is It Necessary To Recognize Employees Virtually?

The modern workplace, which hires remote talent, requires modern ways to connect with employees and build a positive workplace culture.

Modern employee-centric structures like total rewards strategy are designed to help employees survive and thrive. This strategy works by giving attractive compensation, benefits, recognition and access to learning opportunities that give your employees a sense of growth.

It is important to recognize your employees and facilitate their self-improvement. When your employees feel seen, they work with more dedication and show their loyalty every step of the way.

Statistics show that managers have noted that employee behavior is changing. More employees want to be recognized, appreciated and praised for the hard work they put in.

Showing appreciation is an effective and no-cost method, which is a crucial behavior that builds trust in virtual teams.

This becomes especially important for remote employees who do not get in-person experiences. Distance can cause them to lose connection with their teammates, which reduces the spirit of togetherness.

But why exactly is a positive and connected workplace so important? What does employee appreciation add to your business?

Here are the advantages you can enjoy by building a recognition program and fostering a sense of belonging with your remote teams.

1. Lowers Turnover

When employees can have open and active communication with team leaders, they feel connected and aligned with the company. When you appreciate your remote talent for their vital role in a project or their contribution to the organization, they feel seen.

This discourages them from searching for opportunities in other places. This means your employees don’t leave out of spite and your company retains the talent for a long time.

2. Improves Job Performance

When you give credit where credit is due, you remove self-doubt and boost confidence in your employees. It helps relieve their stress and ultimately boosts job performance.

A clear reward system helps your employees visualize their growth and meet personal goals. It can also improve internal networks, supplement team spirit and enhance productivity.

3. Reduces Loneliness

Working remotely can be isolating. Since your virtual employees don’t see you and your teams every day, they can end up feeling disconnected. This can drive them to a corner, creating an unfriendly work environment.

Therefore, sometimes rewarding them can look like spending time with them, even from a distance. When you facilitate regular team communication, you motivate and inspire remote employees to engage.

By connecting with remote employees, you can reduce loneliness, increase enthusiasm and build a hard-working environment that produces high-quality results.

4. Deepens Team Connections

In a remote work setting, normal conversation starters and watercooler moments or coffee breaks are absent. While some mistake these moments for inefficiency, intuitive business owners know that these are important interactions. These moments create deeper team connections, allowing your employees to regard each other as people.

When you tip your hat to your teams and celebrate together, you drive connectivity, which enables good teamwork.

This strengthens the company culture that retains old employees and attracts new talent.

5. Encourages a Positive Mindset

Bridging the physical separation is crucial to keep the virtual workforce afloat and the business running smoothly. Regular appreciation can not only improve day-to-day productivity but also boost the overall morale of the virtual team in the long term.

A positive mindset can go a long way in fostering a healthy company culture and making your staff feel like you care about them. Moreover, beyond being beneficial for the employees, it also reflects positively on the services of the business and your clients.

6. Builds an Ethos of Appreciation

When you create a habit of singing praises and publicly acknowledging contributions, it creates a dynamic shift in the way the company operates.

It makes your employees feel that showing gratitude is normal and encouraged in your company. Not only does it improve employee relations, but it also builds an encouraging workplace environment that nurtures a cycle of gratitude.

It improves peer-to-peer appreciation and gives your employees a space to interact with each other organically.

When your employees build good relations with each other, it streamlines collaborations and enhances the quality and quantity of their output.

7. Celebrates Cultural Diversity

Virtual teams are an amalgamation of professionals from different time zones and cultures. When you observe important events and festivals of various traditions, you increase awareness and holistically acknowledge your employees.

This helps encourage cross-cultural conversations and creates an inclusive workspace. Respecting cultural diversity helps you leverage the extensive talents of a global virtual team and turn multiplicity into a boon.

The best part? Zenius can help you build dedicated virtual teams with skilled professionals. We help you reach a global talent pool and find the right remote workers who fit your bill. Whatever niche you need support for, we’ve got your back!

How Can I Celebrate Employee Appreciation Day Virtually?

Think of your own journey. Remember when your mentor made you feel like a major part of the business and not just a part of the crowd? Didn’t that make you feel special?

Now, as a team leader and a business owner, it’s time to give back. Now you play the important role of keeping the team connected.

Read more: Discover the Best Leadership Style for Your Virtual Team

You might question why you need to go out of your way to do this when you are compensating your employees properly.

Wanting to receive appreciation and be recognized is a core human need. And when you don’t meet their basic needs, team members can quickly become uninterested and detached from their work.

This is why you need to build a company culture that attracts success.

Events like National Employee Day or team-building activities provide a wonderful opportunity to pull the brakes and focus on sharing achievements.

But how do you create these small opportunities? Are there unique ways to appreciate your remote teams? Don’t worry, we have the answers.

The following are a few remote-friendly employee appreciation ideas you can use to express your gratitude in a better way.

1. Parcel Packages

People love getting things in the mail. Receiving a package makes for a memorable and personal experience, especially for remote employees.

And sending packages is a cost and time-saving way to make a big difference.

You can send customized packages to each employee. Your one-of-a-kind gift can convey your gratitude without you having to say a word. All you have to do is select gifts that you think will stay with the employee for a long time.

These can be practical and functional gifts. Consider sending home office upgrades to your remote workers that boost the quality of life of their home office, like ergonomic chairs, a houseplant or an illustrated mousepad.

Or you can surprise your hardworking team with routine but personalized items that have their names on them. You can also opt to send a seasonal gift with a variety of items, which can be useful to any employee or their family.

The possibilities are endless, but here are a few ideas:

• Deliver care bundles
• Provide free wellness memberships
• Ship company merch
• Give personalized products

But don’t limit yourself to just these options. Remember, what matters is the intention, not the price. So take a few minutes to explore the market to find memorable and budget-friendly products.

At many online sites, you can find corporate gifting packages that fit your business and your budget. Some services can even create and deliver personalized thank-you notes to your remote team members on your behalf.

Good-quality parcels and packages create good impressions, build employee trust and make your business look professional. At the end of the day, you can also ask everyone to hop on a quick call and see everyone’s reaction.

2. Hold Online Events

Planning occasions to recognize the efforts of the virtual employees should be the priority as a team leader.

Online sessions can be a fun and interactive way to bring your virtual team together. It can be a chance for your employees to have a little downtime and participate in organic team-building activities.

Organize the following gatherings to boost the morale of the team:

• Plan virtual team-building events
• Host virtual happy hours
• Organize fun awards
• Invite guest speakers

You can plan entertaining online personality tests using free tools like Zoom or Google Meet. This can give the team members a fun memory and maybe even provide insights into their work and life. It can add humor and fun to the workday, giving your remote employees non-work-related banter to bond over.

You can also host virtual concerts where remote employees can take center stage and show their skills. Or you can invite an artist to provide a creative, guided and soothing exercise for your team.

What kind of meeting best suits your company culture depends on your perspective, but one tried and true method is award ceremonies!

These allow you to recognize your best employees publicly, give them awards and actively create incentives for new employees. This is also a great time to celebrate their contributions, highlighting when the employees go above and beyond to finish projects before the deadline. You can even add fun awards like “mood maker”, “prankster” and more to make the event entertaining.

An unconventional but trendy way to celebrate downtime is to create collective experiences like movie nights, ice cream day, donut day and more.

Whether you prepare an award ceremony or embrace trendy Gen-Z downtime activities, the goal is to appreciate every employee. Company and team events with pep talks and unofficial discussions make remote employees feel heard and increase the overall energy of the team.

3. Send Shout-Outs

Communication is the best way to keep everyone updated with the projects when everyone is not sitting at one table. It is also a great way to bridge the virtual gaps and express stellar employees’ efforts, ensuring them that their work is not going unnoticed.

By sending shout-outs, you take a step ahead in the appreciation game and create happy energy for the rest of the day.

This is a low-risk gesture that costs you nothing but creates a real impact.

All you need to do is simply reflect on recent work and ask yourself, what work needs to be appreciated and by whom?

You can use the tools you generally use for team communication, like Slack or Microsoft Teams and send something as simple as “Hey, you are awesome, (the reason), keep up the good work!”

However, you should be consistent and conscious of your tone and what achievements you recognize. So, consider sending shout-outs on birthdays and work anniversaries too.

If you can, be specific in the shout-out. Highlight which part of their performance had an impact and how it helped shape a project or the culture of the company positively.

The following are a few more ways to recognize them through quick messages:

• Post gratitude on diverse platforms
• Wish on birthdays
• Highlight employees of the month

You can also show your appreciation on LinkedIn, which not only promotes your business but also gives the employee a medal to flaunt in front of their peers. This boosts confidence and pushes everyone to perform their best in the workplace.

You can also tag them on other social media platforms, showing how much you acknowledge the efforts of your employees and care for them. This presents the image of your business in a good light, attracting better talent easily.

To go a step further, you can ask how everyone’s family is doing and have regular check-ins with them to show you respect them as a person and not just an employee.

4. Gift Digital Products

Virtual teams are an integral part of the success of your business. Even if you can’t reach them personally, you can always reach them virtually. So, why not use the same channels you use for work to leave them small gratitude messages?

In this day and age, making sure we recognize the people at work for their hard work and when they hit milestones is more about paying attention. Many companies forget to even say a thank you to their hardest-working employees. They neglect that sometimes giving a sense of accomplishment can be more rewarding than bonuses.

The art of expressing gratitude through a message is timeless. Plus, it helps you create a consistent, positive and responsive workplace environment.

Utilize the following ways to acknowledge your employees whenever they knock it out of the park:

• Send handwritten e-cards
• Email gift coupons
• Offer digital badges
• Pass gratitude emails
• Gift skill development platform subscriptions

You can start a monthly or weekly newsletter. You can also send thank-you emails when they implement your guidance and show improvement in their work.

You can even create a digital card with a custom-made design, which is the perfect way to get your message across.

5. Offer Off Time

Remembering to relax can be challenging for a thriving business and its remote employees. Your remote employees can end up counting every minute spent contributing something productive to the organization.

Put yourself in their position. Don’t you just love to get a break? Doesn’t it help you relax and get back to work with fresh eyes? If your answer was yes, you can bet your remote employees love it too!

Offering a leave is an entirely free exercise, especially when your employees come back with rejuvenated spirits, ready to get back to work.

This makes off-time a high-reward investment activity. And if you plan it right, it doesn’t even disrupt your workflow!

You can offer flexible hours or breaks in any of the following ways to express your gratitude to the team:

• Grant surprise free days
• Provide more half-day breaks
• Give extra-long recess
• Allocate paid birthdays off

When your team powers through a tough time, shower them with appreciation and half-day coupons to use whenever they want to.

You can also show you are grateful by offering Summer Friday breaks or more!

Tips for Recognizing Employees Virtually

Studies show that recognition is impactful only when it’s authentic and personalized.

The key to remote employee appreciation is to acknowledge and connect with them as humans. You need to internalize that they, too, wish to be seen and heard in the workplace.

The truth is, anyone would feel better if they were recognized on a regular basis. This also means you need to ensure that each gift and every word you relay makes your remote employees feel different and special.

Acknowledging the efforts of your employees should not be a one-day thing. You should understand that they are not “just some people” working behind the screens.

When deciding what kind of workplace culture you want to build, first take a closer look at employee milestones and expectations. Helping your employees upskill can be an inexpensive technique to show you care about their growth. By building tailored recognition programs and training, you can facilitate your remote team’s goals and growth.

As a manager who might not have met the employees in person, it can get a little tough to make them feel supported in the way they require.

The following are tips to recognize your employees virtually and give them little moments of huge respect.

1. Break the Ice

You can have casual chats to discuss general topics and daily challenges with the job. You can also share hobbies, favorite books and other non-work chit-chats, which lets the team know more about each other.

Even short ten-minute team calls can do wonders in making each employee feel like they matter to the company and belong with their teammates.

2. Have a Personalized Approach

There is always something to appreciate in a person. A good leadership style helps you discover the gold in every team member.

You need to create meaningful and personalized connections. Remembering small details makes your remote teammates feel like they are not forgotten.

One virtual happy hour a month that explores your teammates’ hobbies can bring the whole team on the same page. It can boost the team’s bond and strengthen their spirits to tackle more difficult projects.

3. Utilize Multiple Channels

Don’t limit yourself to conventional channels.

You must use the right platforms that promote transparent communication for recognizing employees. Emails can be too formal. Bring back fun by learning work-appropriate slang and using creative signoffs. You can also use Slack and other messaging platforms to share quick thoughts and stimulate motivation regularly in the group.

If emails and chats aren’t your teammates’ style, video chats and quick calls can be a relaxing and insightful communication tool to boost enthusiasm in the group.

4. Stay Within Budget

Remember, appreciation comes from the heart, not the pocket.

There are plenty of budget-friendly ways to show appreciation without overspending on unnecessary items. Overspending can put a strain on your team, instead of achieving the desired results.

Gifts can be satisfactory for a while, but public displays of appreciation and close attention to detail are forever. So, make sure to gift free compliments and acknowledgments to deserving employees in front of the group.

This will not only increase confidence but also increase regard in their heart for you.

5. Encourage Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Your leader must ensure everyone succeeds, whether they are working online or in person.

People often measure their success as individuals and as a group. So ensure that when your remote employees achieve milestones, their peers are there to celebrate with them. Such recognition helps remote employees to learn more about each other, increase empathy and create collective achievements.

It also creates an atmosphere of appreciation and support, which makes the lives of your team members easier.

6. Celebrate Small Victories Consistently

Don’t make gratitude only an annual thing. Make it a weekly, monthly or even quarterly event to keep giving employees feedback regularly.

Recognize the proper time to show your appreciation and not when it’s too late.

Giving well-timed rewards and appreciation is the biggest secret to expertly managing your virtual team.

Which Tools Can Be Used for Virtual Employee Appreciation?

Working constantly can feel like running on a hamster wheel. Sending short messages of affirmation with relatable content can make everyone feel included and part of a team.

Employees who feel appreciated will contribute their best work toward the mission of the organization. They will stay where they feel valued and connected, and they will recommend their workplace to others.

It’s been demonstrated again and again in the research—and it has never been truer than in our current employment landscape.

Mark C. Perna

That’s why the quickest way to send shout-outs is to use a common platform. Aside from being quick, these platforms can also foster a sense of community by allowing others to celebrate individual achievements.

The following platforms will help you achieve exactly that:

1. Mo
2. Achievers
3. Motivosity
4. WorkTango
5. Kudoboard
6. Nectar
7. Guusto
8. Empuls
9. Bonusly
10. GoProfiles

Final Thoughts

In modern workplaces, a robust culture of reward and appreciation is a must.

Whether it is something you already do or something you haven’t actively done before, it is a proven accelerator for any company.

You do not need to show your appreciation with grand gestures. Just a few words can go a long way and make your employees feel recognized.

But before the appreciation parade comes the task of building high-performing virtual teams that earn every bit of it.

Zenius can help you build personalized remote teams with pre-vetted and rigorously screened remote workers. By hiring with us, you can slash overhead costs like employee benefits, insurance and more.

So what are you waiting for?

Get in touch with Zenius to hire productive remote teams!