4 Employee Appreciation Ideas for National Roofing Week

By Danielle Look, Team Engine.

Learn about the different ways you can show appreciation to your hard-working team.

One component of National Roofing Week is employee appreciation because, where would the industry be without the hard-working people that make it all happen? It is my hope that employers are shining a light on the many different ways they celebrate their employees throughout the year—not just on this one day or week of the year. 

Showing appreciation for employees can be done in many different ways, at all levels of the organization. Here are some ideas for engaging field staff and other hourly employees who don’t sit behind a computer or at a desk all day.

1 - Provide free food

You simply can’t go wrong with offering your employees a free meal or snack! Here are a few ideas to keep it fresh and interesting:

• Organize a lunch or breakfast pitch-in (provide grocery gift cards or reimburse employees who cook)
• Throw a pizza party
• Show up randomly with sweet treats like cupcakes, ice cream or popsicles
• Organize a baking or cooking competition (cookies, chili, wings, etc.)
• Have a food truck come on-site

2 - Create a friendly competition at an entertainment venue

Take your team out for a fun, completely arbitrary competition against each other. Consider any of the following:

• Escape rooms
• Paintball
• Go-kart racing
• Virtual reality
• Arcades
• Axe throwing
• Bowling
• Top Golf
• Laser tag

3 - Take a class together

Learning a new skill as a team (even if those skills are irrelevant to the job) can be an effective way to strengthen co-worker bonds. Some ideas:

• Cooking
• Glass blowing
• Welding
• Brewing beer
• Archery

Also try checking local museums and universities for location-specific classes available in your city!

4 - Do something nice for everyone

Everything on this list so far technically qualifies as “doing something nice for someone” but for this one, think more along the lines of a grand gesture, such as taking the crew out on a chartered boat to fish for the day. Or organizing family day at the local trampoline park or amusement park. 

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you get feedback from your employees about what sounds fun to them before you book the event. They’ll appreciate the opportunity to help decide, which will in turn result in higher engagement and turnout — which is essential when you’re picking up the bill for an event of that caliber.

It’s important to take proactive steps like these to show your employees that they are appreciated, but it’s especially important in the midst of a labor shortage like we’re currently experiencing. With so many employers competing for the market’s top talent, can you really afford to lose the ones you already have? 

To take the ideas discussed here even further, check out this blog post with team building activities designed to strengthen bonds amongst your staff. 

About the author:

Danielle Look (based in Denver, CO) is the Content Marketing Manager at Team Engine, an HR automation software designed to help you recruit, engage and retain your deskless workforce. When she’s not building audience at Team Engine and keeping them informed on industry best practices in hiring and employee retention, she writes about immersive entertainment in Denver and markets for a commercial haunted house in Indiana. 

About Team Engine:

Team Engine’s software helps labor-intensive companies build, manage, and retain their blue-collar workforce by delivering proven best practices in hiring and retention, tools that get the job done, and a way to automate the repetitive (but very time-sensitive) steps in that process. With Team Engine, companies can find quality applicants, reach out to applicants first (before competitors do), reduce interview no-shows, and communicate with current field staff via text messages.