A ‘thank you’ from your bosses’ boss is an instant hit and a huge boost for confidence and moral. I have used it many times and it is free!

I have also used ‘duvet’ days. Give someone an extra day off and they can spend all day in bed if they wish.

Bring in some cakes, sweets, buy the bacon sandwiches.

Organise a ‘team building’ event. Doesn’t have to be expensive.

Organise a ‘red letter’ day for an individual.

One more thing I’d like to add: If you do thank a team, ensure you thank the whole team.

A few years ago, I was managing a team, which completed a mixture of ‘business as usual (bau)’ activities and ‘change’ activities. We had a major change project, which had to be completed, and we move individuals from the bau pool to the ‘change’ pool to meet the deadlines. They did and we thanked them for it via some special vouchers. What I didn’t appreciate, was the bau team had been robbed of staff members and the remaining team had to work extra hard to keep all the issues to a minimum. They were not including in the ‘voucher’ thank you. That didn’t go down well.

Andrew

Usually you do a nice one with little gifts for your childreen, but there is the default 99 euro cent chocolate calender. My boss would use to give out one to everybody on first of december and it has a little bit the feeling of christmas.

It became a tradition just after one year and the whole department was looking forward to it. Simple thing, big effect. After all – who does not like chocolate? ;)

Even on Black Friday, iCare is not for sale for use with your team.

Great post, and great blog!