I've just been given a monthly budget for morale boosting and I'm trying to come up with various little things to do for the employees.  I have treats, lunches, things like that on my list, but does anyone have any other suggestions?  I'm thinking about office deocrating contests for the holidays or something along those lines.  Any ideas?

Thanks!!

depending on the nature of your business/employees, you may want to consider concierge services.  Best morale booster ever was when my old company picked up the delivery fee for peapod and paid the surcharge for a drycleaners to come to and from the office.  Granted, we worked hellish hours as in-house counsel so those conveniences freed up a lot of our spare time.  We had to pay for our groceries, but they paid the $7 dollar surcharge and took care of the delivery at hte front receptionist.

A little late, but one thing that I started doing was a Pumpkin Carving Contest.  The first year our theme was "Company President".  This year's theme was fairy tales.

In the summer, I try and have a picnic/bbq on the company grounds.  We had a big grill brought in and Management cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone.

Recently, I purchased several "T.E.A.M. - Togerther Everyone Achieves More" pins.  I gave one to the Production Manager. She and I started wearing them on our name badges.  We have had several employees asking how they can get a "pin", as well.  I am constantly amazed at how excited adults will get over a pin!  We will give these out publicly as employees show a team spirit.

 

How about each department head nominating an employee per month for outstanding service to be awarded a gift certificate for lunch somewhere nearby.

Some fun things we have done in the past were x-mas tree decorating contest, monthly night out (everyone brings their family to do something with the company),  poker games(winner gets the bonus for the month), the most popular is always cash bonus on their check... 

That can be tricky, how many employees are involved, what do think the underlying problem is? What are you hoping to achieve with this moral boost? (This helps get to the underlying goal)

These questions are important to answer when creating a program, just giving out things for giving out things sake can backfire, a well thought out plan over a period of time will help you achieve your goals. That way you can test different ideas and see if they are moving you in the right direction. I have seen one company that had a customer service problem to the tune of only 60% of their customers where happy, productivity and engagement was way down too, with in 3 years of using a well thought out program, they managed to increase customer satisfaction to 95% and some divisions reporting 100%, morale went through the roof! Not bad at all! :) If you would like answer the above questions and I can check my bag of tricks and see what I can tell you.

I am trying something new this year - we are near mountains so I enrolled us in the Corporate Ski Program wherein employees and families can ski/board at reduced rates.  Included is two Employee Ski Free Nights....I will let you know how this unfolds.  I have a LARGE list of employees and family members.

One of the best and cheapest things I ever did was buy everyone in the company a coffee mug with the Company logo on it.

You can have assocaites where their favorite sporting jersey to work on the day of or before a big sporting event such as the world series or superbowl, etc.

At my last company we did TONS of fun stuff that everyone could choose to partcipate in (their choice). We had themed Potlucks and had all employees vote for the best dish, most creative dish, etc. - the winner(s) would get a gift card to a popular store (Target, Best Buy, etc.) and we even gave away baseball tix in conjunction with our Cubs vs. Sox Potluck! We were right outside of Chicago so 1/2 of our staff were Cubs fans & the other 1/2 were Sox fans - everyone was also allowed to wear their favorite baseball jerseys, jeans & hats! It was great! We had huge Halloween parties too (no alcohol of course) which included the themed Potluck lunch, decorating contests, costume contests, etc. Family members were invited to come for the Potluck lunch & tour of the "haunted office"! Same thing with the prizes - usually a gift card but sometimes tix to sporting events (Cubs/Sox games, Bears games, Bulls games, etc.) or even an extra Vacation Day for the calendar year. Everyone really got into it & had lots of fun - and the playing field was equal as the "contests" were not about work related things (likes sales, collections, etc.). Another fun one was when we had everyone bring in a baby picture of themselves, photocopied them in black & white (to make it trickier), hung them all up on the wall with a number attached. Then everyone had to try & match up the employee with their baby picture! We actually had someone get 100% of them correct & she (obviously) was the winner! We also had Company BBQ's - one time we even rented a dunk tank & each member of management had to sit in it for 10 minutes while various employees tried to dunk them. Another good one was having a different employee each month go to lunch with the owner. We had everyone's name on a piece of paper in a box - after an employee returned from lunch with the owner they would draw another name for the next month's lunch date.

I have a lot of examples - let me know if you'd like more!

A friend of mine works for a company that does something called "one nice thing" at their team meetings. Basically, they go around the room and share one nice thing that has happened to them or they can think of. It doesn't necessarily has to be work related. But I always thought it was a nice touch, and a way for co-workers to feel connected.

This reminds me of something we used to do at my company. We have monthly company meetings to go over results and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We used to have a program where employees could nominate other employees for awards each month. I think three were chosen and the awards were $50.00 American Express Gift Cards. Nominations were often related to the individual helping you with a project at work. However, many times they were related to something nice one employee did for another such as an employee helping another who had a flat tire at the end of the day. It was fun, rewarded good deeds, and everyone could participate.

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Barbie

These are GREAT ideas!  I really like the employee-to-employee nominations and the themed potlucks!  We're an accounting firm, so we're heading into our busiest and most stressful period and I think these ideas will be great morale boosters, especially for a break during the long hours!

 Thank you all VERY much!

One of the coolest companies that I was called in to work with had their conference/training room decorated with moral building posters that THE EMPLOYEES MADE!   Along with that they had a popcorn machine and a soft drink machine (free of course) always filled so that employees who came to any training session felt appreciated and enjoyed the fun and educational time together. 

Interesting to note that their board of directors also met in that same room... what an impact it had when a member of the board would go over to an employee and tell them how much they liked and appreciated the sentiment of their poster!

 

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Have a Great day and a Profitable Week

Staff would actually appreciate the options considered so far. However the best morale booster to staff i think should be something to help improve their lifes; that to remember and appreciate top management of the company. you need to evaluate staff toknow what they desire but do not have the means to attain or unable to meet because of job exigencies. So depending on amount budgeted think of something that would brigthen their lifes not just for one day.

Markson John-Fibika