Here’s a great staff appreciation idea: keep your team happy by offering lunchtime sessions where your employees can learn a new skill or receive specialized training. At Fond, we facilitate a regular “Lunch and Learn” program for our employees where we invite speakers to come and present on a specific area of expertise. The goal of this program is to use the lunch hour to provide training and development for our workforce to help them grow in the areas they’re interested in.

At one of our recent Lunch and Learn sessions, we had the pleasure of hosting Jeff Butler, a leader in workplace psychology and productivity. As our happiness guru of the day, Jeff set the stage for his talk on how to foster staff appreciation and create employee happiness by introducing us to Maddie. Maddie is a 70-year-old farmer from Switzerland that works over 100 hours a week, day in and day out, and has been her entire adult life. When asked by her children to slow down and come live with them in San Francisco, she noted that given the choice, she wouldn’t live her life any differently, that she was quite happy in this routine.

So how does Maddie derive such happiness from what she does?

In order to help answer this question, Jeff presented the group with two different ways employee happiness can be created through both external and internal factors:

External Employee Environment

Perks, rewards and recognition, benefits, stocked kitchen, ping-pong table, wellness programs, employee or team outings—all of these are fantastic staff appreciation ideas.

Internal Employee Happiness

Being able to derive a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment for yourself no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

For more staff appreciation ideas and to hear Jeff’s Lunch and Learn talk in full, check out the video below.

staff appreciation ideas