One of the most important ways to retain employees is to make them feel appreciated, and one of the numerous ways to do that is by recognizing their milestones and acknowledgments. Celebrating their anniversary is one of the milestones you can celebrate. By celebrating their anniversary, we don’t mean organizing a party, no. A well-written anniversary letter is enough to recognize an employee.
As a company, you should take every chance you get to make your employees feel special. Recognizing important dates such as these is one of the numerous ways to make an employee feel important. If you’re writing an anniversary letter to a stellar employee, accompanying the letter with a gift, a coupon, or a gift card also adds a personalized touch to the letter.
Writing an employee anniversary letter is not as difficult as you might imagine. One of the most important aspects is to ensure it’s personalized to the employee. If you’re unsure how to go about writing a personalized letter, we’re going to list out everything you need to know to write a personalized employee anniversary letter and include some samples to give you a head start when you need to write one.
Online Communication to Effectively Improve Employee Engagement
How to Write a Work Anniversary Letter
An effective work anniversary letter translates your appreciation to your employee. For your intentions to be properly captured in your letter, it needs to be written correctly. In this section of this article, we’re going to list a step-by-step guide to help you write an effective anniversary letter.
1. Your Recognition Should be Timely. This goes without saying, but your anniversary letter must come timely. If it’s not possible to send the anniversary letter on the day, then sending it in between the week works fine as well.
Taking note of the particular day translates to the employee that you care about them enough to note the day they joined the company. If you send the letter days after the actual anniversary date, it tells the employee they’re not a priority but an afterthought.
2. Your letter should be personalized. The purpose of an anniversary letter is to celebrate the employee. If the letter isn’t personalized to them, it defeats the entire purpose. Most managers often make the mistake of talking more about the company in the anniversary letter than they do the employee.
While you must talk about how the employee’s work has impacted the company, it is you must do this in a way that speaks of the employee more than it does the company. An example of this is,
“Your commitment and mindset have propelled this company toward success and we wouldn’t be here without you.”
Notice how the message drew a line connecting the employee’s importance in line with the company’s growth.
3. The letter should be brief. Your employment letter doesn’t need to be unnecessarily long. The ideal anniversary letter ranges from two to three paragraphs. The length of the letter is not as relevant as the message itself. So, when writing this type of letter, be sure to pay more attention to the content than the length.
4. State notable achievements. To further personalize your letter, you should highlight some specific achievements. If the employee has been pivotal in securing a deal and helping the company achieve something, this should be pointed out in the letter. If they’ve increased an aspect of the company in any way, this should also be highlighted. An example of this is:
“Since you’ve been onboard our customer retention rate has increased 20%.”
“Since you’ve taken over our newsletter, our open rate has increased by over 50%.”
These are some ways to highlight the employee’s achievements. When doing this, remember to note that you’re only supposed to explain the employee’s notable achievements and not their day-to-day tasks.
5. Reaffirm the employee’s special traits. It is also great practice to mention some of the special traits the employee has. Do they do anything that makes them and their work stand out, include this in your letter.
This can be anything from their resourcefulness, ability to perform a task with little or no supervision, ability to think outside the box, kindness, etc. Pick a trait that is specific to this employee and highlight it in your letter.
6. Mention your excitement for the future: A work anniversary letter should state the joy you have with working with an employee and should also express your optimism towards working with them in the future.
Referring to the future when writing a letter to an employee is a great way to express your appreciation to the employee and it also translates a sense of security to the employee. Mentioning your excitement about the idea of working more with the employee is also a great way to round off your letter.
How to Write Thank You Emails to Employees
More Tips to Appreciate Your Employee During Their Anniversary
There are multiple ways to recognize an employee during their anniversary. If you decide you don’t want to write a letter, you could choose any from the options below. Also, you could decide to write a letter and do perform the options below. All of these depend on your company culture and the employee in question.
Buy them a present
When we talk about buying presents for employees, you don’t have to break the bank for these presents. The best gifts are personalized and aren’t necessarily expensive. A gift card, a framed picture or a mug with a cool inscription does the job fine.
Making a public announcement
This is also a great way to express appreciation for an employee. A short public announcement with the employee’s manager showering them with praise. If you have a large team with multiple employees having anniversaries the same week, you could tally them all up and do it in one day.
A public announcement appreciating an employee can be before the start of a general meeting, towards the end of the meeting, or a brief intermission during a workday. These options are effective both for in-person teams and remote teams.
Employee Anniversary Letter Template
Dear (Employee's name), Today marks (the number of years) years since you joined our team! We can't express how lucky we are to have you as a member of our team. Since you've been a part of this company we've enjoyed tremendous success and we are more than happy to have you on our team. We're writing this letter to say happy anniversary to you! Since you've been with us in the (mention employee's department) we've achieved (state-specific achievement). Thank you for your kindness, generosity, astuteness, and hard work! You're an invaluable member of our team and we are lucky to have you. Regards, (Name of employee)
Employee Anniversary Letter Sample
Dear James, It’s been a year since you joined the marketing team at Jones and Jones! You are an invaluable member of our team and we cannot tell you how great it is working with you. Since joining our team you’ve brought a different approach to how we view marketing and this approach has increased our revenue and client base! None of these would be possible without your input. Thank you for your creativity, thank you for thinking outside the box, and thank you for being an incredible teammate! Happy Work Anniversary, James! Kind Regards, Head of Marketing, Jones and Jones.
Conclusion
In the workforce, you need to do everything you can to make sure your employees feel valued. When writing their work anniversary letter, ensure to mention aspects of their character that resonates with you the most.