33 unique ways on how to make employees feel valued

33 unique ways on how to make employees feel valued

33 unique ways on how to make employees feel valued

November 06, 2020

How to make employees feel valued

A good leader should always know how to make employees feel valued and inspire a positive atmosphere at the workplace and make the workplace a stress-free zone. Sometimes, it’s not even about spending money on lavish gifts. In fact, in such cases, employee satisfaction is only bought, and you can bet that it’ll be short-lived.

When discussing how to make employees feel valued, money plays an important role, but it’s the feelings that are crucial. Hence you have to use your emotional intelligence.

Luckily, we have made an extensive list of all the creative ways to show employee appreciation and it is all in one place – below. So now lousy bosses have no excuse for making their staff feeling undervalued, not reading this article and not trying to be better bosses.

Jump directly to: 

 1. Go the extra mile

 2. Let them keep the products they review

 3. Employee appreciation cards always work

 4. Create a Gratitude Wall

 5. Give them space to breathe

 6. Praise their good work with notes

 7. Treat them family dinners

 8. Buy them food

 9. Get to know them

 10. Give them responsibility

 11. Strategic employee appreciation

 12. Take them out for a lunch

 13. Celebrate your employee’s work anniversaries

 14. Offer them career growth opportunities

 15. Half-day KICK meetings

 16. Personalized rewards

 17. Internal awards ceremony

 18. Announce an employee of the demi-month

 19. Surprise them with unexpected presents

 20. Organize team days out

 21. Set up a reward system

 22. Don’t forget the remote workers

 23. Shopping spree raffle

 24. Help them with their financial pinches

 25. Virtual get-togethers for the best employees

 26. Annual office party with posh giveaways

 27. Create a #you-are-awesome Slack channel

 28. Maintain a corporate greenhouse

 29. Give them cash for home office equipment

 30. A special appreciation letter 

 31. Appoint a Fun Ambassador at the office

 32. Set a table with essentials

 33. Gift them time

 34. Conclusion

33 ideas to show employee appreciation and inspire satisfaction

When focusing on how to make employees feel valued, it is vital to make sure your employees feel recognized and heard. Employees cherish thoughtful gifts and they want to have a voice within the company, they don’t want to be taskmasters. They want to feel valued and needed. Understanding their needs and developing systems that showcase that appreciation is key to employee appreciation. 

Go the extra mile


Make your company environment
safe and inclusive for all. Make sure your employees feel comfortable in expressing their concerns to you. Always be open to feedback. Work hard at building strong relationships by checking in regularly. Create a safe environment for employees to connect. Team building activities are a good way to get employees together. Lastly, provide support and understanding through offering solutions or just being available to listen.

Jonathan Bass, the Chief Executive Officer and Owner of Whom Home

Let them keep the products they review

In our various online businesses, we use a lot of freelancers through platforms like UpWork, TextBroker, and Freelancer, particularly for content creation. Sometimes these great people complete a lot of work for us over time and become full-time employees. 

We can show our appreciation by sending them the best products to review. As one example, they can photograph and write a review about a 10-gallon fish tank, and then they can keep it and use it themselves. Often they can also then come back and update the review with further thoughts on the product’s durability and long-term use. In our experience, they consider being able to keep awesome products as an exciting benefit and reward for good work.

Daniel Morris, Owner of PetNPat

In our various online businesses, we use a lot of freelancers through platforms like UpWork, TextBroker, and Freelancer, particularly for content creation. Sometimes these great people complete a lot of work for us over time and become full-time employees. 

We can show our appreciation by sending them the best products to review. As one example, they can photograph and write a review about a 10-gallon fish tank, and then they can keep it and use it themselves. Often they can also then come back and update the review with further thoughts on the product’s durability and long-term use. In our experience, they consider being able to keep awesome products as an exciting benefit and reward for good work.

Daniel Morris, Owner of PetNPat

Employee appreciation cards always work

Cousins Subs has a robust employee recognition strategy. In meetings with restaurant general managers, Alan Lundeen, Senior Director of Talent Management, calls on them to be recognition detectives. Then on Tuesdays, Lundeen brings in a stack of congratulations cards and each store manager is asked to take some back with them and give a card to someone they want to thank. Cousins Subs also hands out employee birthday cards as well as wow cards, given for high performance or going above and beyond.

Kathryn Kazan, PR Manager at Cousins Subs

Create a Gratitude Wall

Ask the team to fill out a quick survey, naming colleagues they are grateful for and writing a sentence on why. You can submit multiple responses. Just make sure everyone has a couple of gratitude cards each. Then have someone compiled these in a PowerPoint deck to showcase. If you are onsite, even better, print them out and put them up in a high traffic area like above the printer. 

It is important to appreciate your employees, but it also feels great to be the one giving thanks and bringing a smile to a colleague’s face.

Samantha Roberts, Talent Associate at Global Health Strategies (NYC Office)

Give them space to breathe

Giving employees a shout out, gift card, or free food/drinks is easy, but what employees really crave is flexibility. During the pandemic, employers have gone in the opposite direction by investing in employee monitoring software to spy on their remote teams. This is also known as the perfect recipe for distrust and dissatisfaction. 

Your employees will feel appreciated when they finally have breathing room to get their job done when it works best for them. Employees should be given the ability to work when they want and where they want, especially given virtual work platforms that can help teams stay connected regardless of time or location. Trust your employees enough to let them manage their own lives and schedules. You’ll be amazed at how appreciated they feel.

Peter Jackson, CEO of Bluescape

Praise their good work with notes

Employees want two things to be of value to their mission and to be heard. A manager’s job is to acknowledge these things. I find writing small notes that I leave for my staff recognizing their good work or their ideas can be helpful. But even better is when I stop by and have a conversation with them about the impact that they’re having or an idea that they brought to me and how I’d like to implement it. 

That type of engagement may not feel like traditional appreciation but helps motivate and tell the employee that you are engaged with them, which is a form of acknowledgement and appreciation.

Priya Jindal, Founder of Nextpat

Treat them family dinners

It’s their family whom they will most likely want to celebrate small and big victories. Whether it’s their kids, husbands, and wives, or friends whom they consider as family, or support system, we make sure they get to feel appreciated and vital too in one’s excellent performance. 

When celebrated alone, victories are no fun, which is why we find this appreciation token effective to relieve them from stress and allow them to bond with their loved ones even for a night. It’s these people who continue to support and push them, especially during their rough times. After all, they are their rock, and what makes someone love someone or something else more is when they learn to value and appreciate the people who are close to their hearts.

Willie Greer, Founder of The Product Analyst

Buy them food

People love food, so why not buy everyone doughnuts or pizza so they can enjoy their day with a happy tummy. Not only are you buying them food but you are also strengthening and building relationships within your employees while giving them the feeling of being appreciated.

Daniel Snow, CEO and Founder of The Snow Agency

The concept of employee appreciation has been around for a while, but the pandemic has put a spotlight on the ideas that businesses have chosen to execute.

One such idea has been mobile food delivery, including convenient options like meal kit delivery for one person

Our business has many young families who’ve needed to adapt to being teachers overnight on top of delivering a fully productive workday. One way we’ve enjoyed showing our appreciation to employees is by treating individuals or teams to mobile lunch deliveries to their homes. We’ve also opted to send fresh fruit and veg boxes.

Dane Amyot, Managing Director of bountiXP

Get to know them

Get interested in their current reality. It’s not about creating a happy hour activity for the group but facilitated in some cool virtual way. It’s about knowing how your employees’ personal life is ACTUALLY going, make it safe for them to open up. Ask about their family’s fears and concerns. Figure out how this job connects to their personal life and how that personal life has changed. See if you can have more impact on things that really matter.

William Schumacher, CEO and Founder of Uprising Food

Employees feel appreciated if you engage with them in some way. Know something about them, their kids, dogs, partner’s names. Hobbies, passions, and dreams if you can.

When your greatest asset, your employee, has done good work, look them in the eye and tell them. No email, text, or call is ever as valuable as a face to face acknowledgment.

Letting them know you value them enough to make the time for them, as well as knowing their dog has been unwell, leaves your employees feeling a million dollars. And, you feel good too.

Laura Horton, Founder of Hound101

Give them responsibility

Our number one way of making employees feel valued is not money, perks, time off or other extras. It is just giving people responsibility. Providing employees with as much responsibility as possible boosts engagement, helps them grow, and also speeds up the process of determining if they will be a good fit in the longer term. Obviously, you need to recognize their innate capacity and level of experience, but err on the side of providing more responsibility rather than less and you’ll be surprised with the results.

Rick Wallace, Founder of Tackle Village

From experience, I have found that the best way to make employees feel appreciated is to involve them in company decisions. It can be something as simple as choosing a new uniform or what brand of coffee to use in the office. When they feel they have a voice they feel appreciated.

Ahmed Mir, Founder of Sip Coffee House

Strategic employee appreciation

This is a two-step process.

Step #1: Catch someone doing something good (effort also counts). Be specific in describing the behavior. For example: “Yesterday, when speaking with the customer, you really let him talk about what was important to him. That was incredible”.

Step #2: Name 3 specific reasons why this behavior is important. For example: “This makes a big difference because the customer really felt that you care about him, this will make him more connected to our company (1). Also, he will like us so much that he may recommend us to customers (2). And lastly, knowing that this is how you take care of our customers makes a huge difference for me personally, because I know I can fully trust you, and focus on other areas of the business (3)”.

Many people find it easy to come up with 2 reasons, but the 3rd one is the one that makes the real difference. It forces you to spend more time and energy on what the employee did well, and makes them feel truly appreciated.

Dr.Eyal Ronen, Co-Founder and Director of Sensemakers

Take them out for a lunch

In today’s world of constantly expecting something of monetary value to reward a job well-done, it might be nice to go a little old-school. If you are currently working in the office, as a way of thanks, take an employee out for lunch. This also offers you time to explain just how helpful they have been, and to inspire them to keep doing so in the future.

If everyone is still working from home, have a quick meeting and explain the same points. However, you’ll have to send over a gift card to cover lunch. Or, if you’re still working in the same city, some creative people I know have sent over a delivery service so that they can still have lunch (virtually) with an employee. Really… how cool is that?

Alice Ray, Founder of Know Your Chickens

Celebrate your employee’s work anniversaries

It’s uncommon for companies to do this, mostly it’s just the employee who remembers. As such, celebrating work anniversaries (especially milestone ones) is a great way for the employer to show genuine appreciation for the work that the employee has put in.

It doesn’t have to be lavish as well. A simple cupcake or a team effort of appreciative notes is great, as long as the day is remembered and the employee is recognized as a valuable part of the group.

Anna Nielsen, Marketing Director at Our Good Living Formula

Offer them career growth opportunities

My best idea for employee appreciation is career growth opportunity offers. From experience, I think most driven employees prefer rewards in the form of additional knowledge. When you give employees new resources to expand their horizons, this will provide them with opportunities to take on projects even outside the scope of their usual duties.

Doing this has brought about positive and noticeable work results in my organization, employee interaction also got better thereby creating an improved workplace culture.

Employee appreciation at its best means giving employees a sense of purpose at work. At the end of the day, appreciation comes in many forms, and organizations shouldn’t expect perks or bonuses alone to convey the meaning. However, companies that strive to practice appreciation consistently will stand out.

Manny Hernandez,  Founder and CEO at OMNI, INC

Half-day KICK meetings

Every six weeks, we run half-day ‘Kick’ meetings; standing for Knowledge, Innovation, Collaboration and Kudos, to celebrate and recognise those who have gone the extra mile.

Encouraging public recognition is not only an important part of keeping team members motivated, but also boosts feelings of being emotionally and socially valued.

It’s very important for staff to feel visible, acknowledged and also confident of their place in the business. I’d recommend this approach to any business leader who wants to give their team a boost, while also improving communication and mental wellbeing.

Carlene Jackson, CEO of Cloud9 Insight

Personalized rewards

We all appreciate it when others take the time and effort to get to know us. When your company wants to show appreciation for a specific employee, engage team members to find out more about that person.

One of our employees was celebrating her 5th work anniversary. Our HR department talked to her colleagues and learned that she loves doing different art projects with her seven-year-old daughter. Our gift was a pottery class for the two of them. She was touched and later showed us pictures of mugs and bowls they created together.

Personalized recognition is an excellent way to make your employees feel truly valued and unique. This kind of appreciation has a tremendous impact on the motivation and loyalty of your staff.

Dorota Lysienia, Community Manager at LiveCareer

Apart from being a professional, each of your employees is a unique personality with passions, hobbies, interests, etc. The message is simple — to keep your employees growing professionally, make sure they are fulfilled as personalities.

For this, pay attention to employees’ preferences. As an example, you can customize your birthday/seasonal corporate presents. Your accountant is crazy about Italian cuisine? Present them a cooking class certificate!

Be ready to meet your employees halfway and they’ll exceed your expectations. For example, if your employee aspires to learn French but doesn’t manage to fit it into the work schedule, allow them to shift hours when they need it. Corporate parties and team buildings are important, but your attention to employees’ personalities is priceless.

Olena Herasymchuk, Content Manager at cloudprinter

Internal awards ceremony

At the end of the year, we hold an impromptu internal awards ceremony for the team and award each team member a small gift in recognition of something amazing they did. This could be from closing a deal to showing kindness to a fellow teammate when needed, or putting a smile on everyone’s face by telling the best jokes! 

It’s our way to show our employees that no matter their position and missions, we acknowledge them, support them and are proud of them. One’s success is everybody’s success as we work as a team. It’s important for us to shine a light on each and every one of our employees!

Sukhi Jutla, Co-Founder & COO at MarketOrders

Announce an employee of the demi-month

One week is too short, one month is too long, but a recognition every two weeks is just right. The key is to have some kind of a symbolic mascot, toy, or an item that encapsulates the team’s spirit and what it stands for. You want it to be an inside joke of sorts and thus making the object all the more prestigious and valuable. Complement this with a gift card ($50 will do) to the person’s favorite store and restaurant and voila, you have a recipe for a marvelous team bonding and appreciation experience.

Bonus: The current winner gets to nominate the next one, thus making the process all the more grassroots and organic.

Peter Bryla, Community Manager a ResumeLab

Surprise them with unexpected presents

The way I show appreciation to my employees is not always by giving monetary incentives. I noticed they feel incredibly ecstatic when they receive unexpected presents. I know it feels great to think that someone put some effort into getting you a gift. I keep a list of what they like. I don’t announce when to distribute what I prepared – it just happens, like a big surprise on a regular day.

Steve Johnso, Owner of www.bootmoodfoot.com

One of my favorites is what I call “Suprise Appreciation.” Once or twice a month, I will pick someone who has done an exceptional job with some aspect of their work. I do this irregularly, so employees never know when it is coming. Then I task the rest of the staff to create positive notes for the recipient and decorate their desk or their tech truck while they are at lunch or leave for the day. I purchase a surprise like flowers, balloons, or a stack of their favorite candy, etc. 

It’s a small, relatively inexpensive way to show appreciation, but it always makes the individual feel good, and it builds team camaraderie and even usually feels great on those days.

Laura Fuentes, Operator of Infinity

Organize team days out

At Wicklewood, we always have team days out. Recently, we hired a boat on the Thames and everyone took the day off work to relax and socialize with one another. Between driving the boat, jumping into the water, and tying the boat up at the docks, it was a really unique and fun team-building exercise. It was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know one another on a personal level and unwind outside of the office.

Another unique angle we take at Wicklewood to show how much we appreciate our team is our “Quilt Days”. Every team member gets a quilt day once a quarter when they can call in at the last minute and take the day off to relax at home with one of our cozy quilts from our latest range. It’s a small gesture but sometimes people just need a day off to recharge.

Rosie Axford, Co-Founder and Marketing Director of Wicklewood

Set up a reward system

We use a reward system in our company to show our appreciation for each accomplishment being made by our employees. In this system, each employee would be given points for each task that would be completed. The points differ depending on how big the task or the project is. Upon collecting these points, employees can use it to redeem rewards like free products from the company, gift certificates, a day off, a paid vacation trip, or paid leave.

Oliver Baker, Co-Founder of Intelivita

Every staff member may assert tasks of their preference and, upon completion, would collect the point values correlated with the tasks. For something ranging from an extended holiday and work-from – home days to company-paid continuing education, these points could be redeemed by team employees at a workplace bonus site. One thing is to value workers in a way that makes sense to you, but the gamification tool we used allowed individuals to be valued in a way that was most important to each worker.

David Meltzer, CEO of East Insurance Group

Due to the new WFH scheme being implemented, the company is saving quite a lot and we are planning to give back to our employees by giving a raise to those employees who deserve it. We plan to have it by conducting a performance assessment to each employee by the end of the year and those who would be selected would be compensated using the funds that are allotted for this plan.

Aaron, Founder of TestPrepGenie.com

Don’t forget the remote workers

About 25% of the staff worked in the NYC home office and the other 75% worked remotely, causing them to feel left out of company events. Whenever the firm took onsite employees out (happy hour, dinner, cruise) they compensated the remote employees with a gift from Snappy. Snappy costs about $7/month per employee, and allows the employee to choose from dozens of theme-related items – Cinco de Mayo, LGBTG, Birthday. 

Remote staff looked forward to the email from Snappy notifying them they could choose their gift. All employees received that same email for other milestones — project success, birthdays, anniversaries. 

I’ve talked to several employees who’ve moved on to other firms and they tell me that what they miss most was the Snappy gifts that made them feel like they were an important part of the team. In addition, those gifts — thermal coffee mugs, weighted blankets, essential oil diffusers — still remind them of good times at that firm. By the way, this firm earns five out of five stars on Glassdoors reviews, so it must be working.

Laura Handrick, Contributing HR Professional for Choosing Therapy

Shopping spree raffle

My favourite method for this was to set up a sort of ‘shopping spree raffle’ where staff could earn entries for completing their tasks to be entered into a draw. Each month a few people would win a ‘shopping spree’ and be given an amount of money to spend, then we would take them to the local mall and let them spend the money within a short time frame.

The rules were loose but they had to purchase 1 item for themselves, 1 small item for their team, and the rest was up to them. After it was done, we would take them back to the office to share their small item with their office and that way everyone felt like they received ‘something’.

Andrew Cunningham, Founder of DailyPest

Help them with their financial pinches

Most of the guys that work for me are loyal, hardworking, blue-collared type of folks. They are the definition of what you look for when hiring. However, when it comes to money, they don’t always make the right financial decisions. 

We came up with the ‘We Care Program’ as a way to show that we support and appreciate what they do for our business. We emailed all of our guys and said when they find themselves in a financial pinch to reach out to us and let us know what’s going on. It not only gives us an opportunity to coach them up and assist them but an opportunity to show them that we care.

Myles Daniel, Owner of Sell My House Fast

Virtual get-togethers for the best employees

Showing appreciation to employees is such an important part of a company’s culture. The best thing you can do to show your appreciation, especially given what a crazy year we’ve had, is without-a-doubt a warm virtual get-together for your best employee and their remote family and friends, filled with love and laughter. 

What we’ve done at Offsyte ourselves includes sending a private virtual ramen and sake tasting class for the people we are really thankful for, with the ramen and sake kit delivered to them and their remote family before the live class. We’ve also helped many other companies plan such events, including Google, Apple, Dropbox, Netflix, etc. There are many virtual events with delivery on Offsyte that are perfect for this occasion, including blind wine tastings, mixology classes, boba tea workshops, and more.

Emma Guo, Co-Founder and CEO of Offsyte

Annual office party with posh giveaways

This year, the company I am working for is planning to have a virtual annual office party. The company announced that it is going to give away luxurious gift cards, gadgets, and other prizes as a way to thank employees who stayed with it despite the crisis. We are also about to invite a celebrity to our virtual party and our employer announced giving 2022 all-paid trips to Europe. With this, I think this is a kind gesture from our company to appreciate us.

James Bullard, Founder of Sound Fro

Create a #you-are-awesome Slack channel

One of my favorite ways to show employee appreciation is with a #you-are-awesome channel in Slack. In this channel, any team member can give praise or shout outs to any other team member. 

For example, recently our sales manager posted a note about a successful sale by one of our sales reps, and a marketing team member gave a shout out to an operations team member. The reason this channel is so effective for employee appreciation is that it is peer-to-peer, which means it tends to provide recognition and appreciation for the kinds of contributions that may not be on a managers radar. After the praise goes up, everyone else piles on with emojis to cheer the team member on.

Michael Alexis, CEO of TeamBuilding

Maintain a corporate greenhouse

Showing appreciation to employees would be through a theme of health and wellness, by maintaining a corporate greenhouse. Employees would choose a vegetable, herb or fruit they love, and they would plant it in the greenhouse with their associated name. The greenhouse contents would be nurtured by employees supported by trained horticulturist volunteers. Webinars would educate on how each plant type grows and is cared for. 

That information would align to a corporate message of overall wellness, and programs reinforcing the importance of making good health choices. Employees would share in the harvest from the greenhouse, by getting a care basket with a card and recipe suggestions for its contents. The card would say ‘From our greenhouse to your table’. We care for our people, our environment, and our health!

Jenn Drakes, Founder of ICANNWORLD INC.

Give them cash to buy home office equipment

The Covid-19 lockdown happened and suddenly everyone in our performance marketing company had to work from home. This was a situation that no-one had really prepared for and raised all kinds of issues over suitable working spaces and equipment. 

Our staff gets a benefit to spending on travel and wellness, but we quickly changed that to allow them to spend the cash on home office equipment instead. So they used company funds for all manner of chairs and tables and laptop stands, to set themselves up for comfortable home working. 

We also sent them boxes of healthy snacks, fresh fruits from a local farm, and a tasty takeaway, just to keep their spirits up as the pandemic wore on, and to help the local food economy.

Mario Cacciottolo, Branding Manager at Blexr

A special appreciation letter to employee for outstanding performance

Send a letter of appreciation to the employee’s house, but don’t address it to them. Address it To the family of [NAME]. Detail the employee’s contributions. Describe the difference their work has made in your life, the lives of your clients, and the lives of their co-workers. Speak directly to the family, like this: “I’m sending this letter to tell you about the incredible work your Mom’s been doing and to thank you for sharing her with us….”

Be detailed and celebrate that employee. This gesture costs nothing and will feel truly special. Remember, effective appreciation is not about a gift, it’s about people feeling noticed and valued.

Joe Mull, M.Ed, CSP, Speaker, Author and Commitment Consultant

Appoint a Fun Ambassador at the office

One of the best ways to truly show employee appreciation is to provide them with a fun work environment. By providing a fun work environment, employees are excited to go to work rather than just clocking in and can’t wait to clock out.

There are actions you can start taking TODAY to encourage fun and employee appreciation in your workplace and create an open, creative, and collaborative environment.

One great way to implement more fun and appreciation is to appoint someone in the company (or on your team) as the official Fun Ambassador.

This person would be responsible for championing your “fun roadmap” or establishing a “fun culture blueprint” on an ongoing basis. This position should be someone who is positive, upbeat, and who others look up to.

If you want to implement things like monthly work parties, an employee recognition system, or a team-based hiring process, your Fun Ambassador would make all that happen in your company.

Rebecca Binnendyk, CFO (Chief Fun Officer) and Founder of Fun Outta Life Mentoring & Coaching

Set a table with essentials

I show appreciation to my 9 employees by *setting up a table once in a while with a “Take What You Need” sign.

The table has Advils for when they get headaches, Kit Kat bars if they need a break, printed Starbucks barcodes for free coffee, a calendar to schedule a day where they can bring their pets to the office, and earplugs for when they need some do not disturb time. This is my simple way of showing that I listen to their needs and their hard work is always appreciated.

Valentina Lopez, Co-Founder of Happiness Without

Gift them time

When I found out that one of our employees is working overtime to achieve the goals, I was surprised. First of all, I investigated why is this person taking so much time to do some tasks? I found out that his work efficiency is quite good but the task itself was unpredictable. Finally, he achieved the goal and it was huge for us. To appreciate his efforts, we gave him a paid one week off from work. 

We do gift bonuses or gifts, but sometimes just gifting Time to someone matters more than anything else! That time was well spent with friends and family. He was very happy.

Adam Rowles, CEO at Inbound Marketing Agency

Conclusion

Managers need to stay on track with each employees’ development. It is up to the manager to challenge each employee with a steady pace of growth that is pushing them to learn but not at the speed of being overwhelmed.

Besides, executives need to make sure there is a visible opportunity to grow within the company. An employee should always have a viable position to be striving towards. It will motivate them to work harder as well as provide a visible success path within the company. 

Lastly, integrating core values into the company culture that support the team members and place value on their best interest as well as encouraging open communication and feedback.

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

Related Articles

5 benefits of spend controls for your business

5 benefits of spend controls for your business

One of the most effective ways to gain full control over your business comes down to one key feature of corporate spend – spend controls. With the right spend management software, you can gain access to a wide variety of advanced spend controls, to give you a firmer...

read more

Talley – Revolutionising mental wellness as we know it

Talley – Revolutionising mental wellness as we know it

Talley – Revolutionising mental wellness as we know it

September 25, 2020

talley app

Talley is founded by Lara Cena, and an accomplished Business Analyst with 5 years of experience working in tech. Her continuous efforts to create a stance for women in tech-led environments led her to join the Women in tech Forum at 20th Century Fox and volunteer for women in tech-driven events such as Ada’s List. 

After going through a few traumatic situations in her personal life, Lara was inspired to create Talley. In 2016 after receiving a demotion at work and experiencing money issues and extreme sadness as a result. Within the space of a month, Lara realized her reference group could not relate to her issues, and that she couldn’t speak to friends or family for fear of judgment. She needed a platform where she could anonymously speak to people who had experienced what she was going through but couldn’t find any safe space where she could connect based on experiences.

Talley, the mental wellness startup and peer-to-peer therapy platform were born in November 2019. Talley helps communities discuss personal issues in a safe space where someone truly listens to them. Through Lara’s work and recent crowdfunding campaign, Talley aims at becoming a mental wellness application that people can turn to when going through emotional distress stemming from real-life situations. With Talley, people are connected to real individuals who have been through the same distressing experiences, and professionals well equipped to help.

Lara is a trained mental health first aider and has become a champion for mental wellness, through her work as Founder of Talley and her social media presence. She often speaks on the importance of mental health, as well as the need to help people become self-aware and take control of their own lives. As a result, she started the Vision Board Workshop, a non-profit workshop session series to help people assimilate their goals for the year ahead and put in actionable plans. 

This is only the beginning for Lara, as she is a woman on a mission to give back. She aims to do so not only through championing mental wellness but also female empowerment and tackling period poverty in the future.

How would you describe Talley to a 3-year-old?

As a safe space where you can go whenever you’re feeling like you can’t talk to family or friends about life situations you may be going through. At Talley, we connect you to other people who understand what you’re going through because they have been in similar life situations and you’re able to have anonymous conversations with them. They are basically there to listen, you can get an understanding of their experiences as well.

What is the story behind Talley?

The story behind Talley is my own experience: I went through a tough experience where  I felt like I couldn’t speak to family or friends. I was experiencing issues at work, with my finances and in my relationship, I felt alone in my struggle, and that was when I had an epiphany. I thought that it would be nice for people to be able to actually have an outlet, especially when they feel like they can’t or don’t want to speak to family and friends. Surprisingly speaking to strangers is quite easier than speaking to people very close to you sometimes, especially when you don’t want to revisit the issue over and over again.

How is Talley different from your competitors? What is your unique selling point?

Talley is different because we connect you based on experiences to other people who have been through similar life situations as yourself, so we’re not just connecting you to random listeners, we try to connect you to people who have close experiences to yourself. Empathy amplifies our experience as humans.

What is the most difficult aspect of running your own company?

The most difficult aspect I guess is funding, getting that funding hurdle, and doing it right. Also, for us at the minute a lot of the people who work with us are volunteers, so it is also about managing volunteers and people who are willing to give whatever time and skills they can – and it leads me back to the funding because if we had enough money we would pay people and would be able to get their full time. It’s a journey, but we’ll get there.

Tell us a curious fact or an anecdote related to Talley

Talley is run on a team of volunteers: we are a very tight-knit team, we’re like a family I guess. It’s so much fun, when we do our team meetings we start with a check-in and we do a checkout as we do on our TalleyTalks. Also, every two weeks we all watch a movie together and discuss it during our team meetings, it kind of keeps engagement – because we are a mental wellness community, the team’s mental wellness is paramount. It is important that we walk the walk we talk about. So, when we do our check-ins, our check-ins are not about the work we’re doing, it’s more about our personal lives, like how we are really doing, so it could be positive or negative as much as people are willing to share.

Talley is given $1 million, how would you spend/invest them?

I think if we’re given one million dollars, the first thing we would do is get full-time staff, pick a few people to work full time. We would also get our app up and running, and we would basically get more people attending TalleyTalks because they are very helpful, and we get so much good feedback every time.

Where is Talley headed now? What’s the next big thing you’re striving to achieve?

The next big thing for us after finishing our crowdfunding is the development of our application.

Connect and do business with Talley on Enterprise League

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

Related Articles

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Remote team communication: Using software to prevent misunderstandings

Remote team communication: Using software to prevent misunderstandings

August 28, 2020

Remote-Communications

Some people will say that now, we’re in the golden era of remote work. But anyone who’s ever worked this way knows well that distributed teams face many challenges on a daily basis.

Remote team communication is probably the toughest nut to crack.

When you struggle to get on the same page with your team, many things are likely to go off the track. Increased project costs and failure rate, longer task delivery periods and decreased productivity are only a few to name.

But worry not. Today, we’re coming to you with 9 actionable tips on how you can use software to improve communication in your remote team.

Where do misunderstandings even come from?

But before we get to the remedy, we need to assess the problem that bothers your team.

No solution applied will ever be effective if you don’t understand where the issues with remote team communication come from in the first place.

And there are at least six most common reasons for why misunderstandings happen between people who work from a distance.

Let’s have a look.

Reason #1: Your team tries to apply old ways to the new setting

Imagine this: you’ve got a task for your colleague. They work just a few steps away from you, in the same office. What you’re going to do, most likely, is to get up, approach them and delegate said task verbally.

Now, in the remote setting, there’s quite a bit of distance between you. Many companies try to replicate this “approach and delegate” method. Doing so, they end up on endless video conferences or call each other several times a day.

When you look at it from the side, it doesn’t make much sense to do so. Just because something worked in the office, it doesn’t mean it will work in the remote setting. Things once effective may now be your biggest time wasters.

And nobody likes daily calls anyway, right?

Reason #2: Your team has got no idea on how to get organized

If your team is new to remote work, then it’s likely you’ve got no idea where to even begin. Should you just get video conferencing software and call it a day? Do you need more tools? New processes?

Don’t beat yourself about it if you’ve got no idea how to organize your team’s work in the new setting. It’s not an easy task even for the seasoned remote workers.

That said, keep in mind that being clueless on how to organize things could lead to mistakes that kill effective remote team communication.

Reason #3: You’re bad at written communication

To limit the number of daily video calls, teams often turn to written communication as an alternative. From emails to chat rooms, the options are plenty.

Now, written communication is an art in itself. You may do excellent when talking in person and, at the same time, be horrible when it comes to conveying ideas through written messages.

The written communication sins are plenty: from leaving things out because they “go without saying”, to misinterpreting the other person’s tone (because we don’t hear it, of course).

And they might be the main reason why you and your team suddenly can’t get along.

Reason #4: Lack of shared working space

In an office, you share a common space where you see your team on a daily basis. Maybe you meet up in a social room. Maybe you’ve got a giant whiteboard where people pin their messages and add notes about projects.

With remote work in the picture, the physical office vanishes. And with it, the precious aspect of sharing your working space.

Suddenly, you lose all ties to your colleagues. You’re alone in your own home office. You’ve got no idea where others are and what they work on. To get an update on tasks, you need to get on a (yet another) video call.

It’s hard to communicate when most that you’ve got in common are spreadsheets you’ve shared online.

Reason #5: Unclear rules and undefined processes

It can be related to the fact you’ve got no idea how to organize the work of your newly remote team.

Because of their limited ability to quickly communicate on the changes, distributed teams have double the need of working according to strict patterns. When questions arise and you can’t immediately get in touch with the right person, processes and tasks get delayed.

Remote team communication suffers from lack of processes. Getting them right could solve quite a few of your problems.

Reason #6: Different expectations and habits related to remote work

Imagine the situation in which the team switches to remote work. They were happy in the office and collaborated well. Now, the manager, full of trust towards their team members, believes they are fully capable of getting around the new setting.

Meanwhile the employees, even though having the best of intentions, are lost in the situation and count on being guided.

This is an easy example of how different people can view remote work. Some people need more flexibility. They want to be trusted and left to work independently. Others, on the other hand, need guidance and a daily to-do list delivered to their inbox.

People are different. And if you don’t get the expectations clear on the table, you might end up with a whole lot of communication issues.

Using software to solve remote team communication issues

Now that you know what troubles your team most, let’s talk about the solutions.

Software is a wonderful addition to your workflow. There’s an app for practically any issue you struggle with, including:

  • Task distribution (project management software)
  • Time tracking software
  • Customer relationship management software
  • Online support software
  • Appointment scheduling software

That said, many of these tools share some common features that you can implement right away to improve communication in your remote team.

Let’s have a look at it step by step.

Create visual workflows

Visualization is probably one of the strongest tactics that a remote team should implement. The easiest way to get started is simply by using a Kanban board. This way, you can devote a column to every stage of your process and move tasks along as they progress. This way, you will easily see which stage has currently the busiest one and where more action could happen.

Not every process in your company can be visualized with kanban due to its complex nature. However, setting up a kanban board can encourage you to streamline and simplify some of the processes so they fit the project board. It’s an excellent way to get rid of some needlessly complex elements of your work.

Get into (extreme) details

If you go with a task assignment/project management tool, you’ll have plenty of room to describe what you want from your team. Use it to the fullest.

Include checkpoints, control lists, useful materials, examples, samples, templates – anything that your team can use to get the job right.

Think of it this way: you’re not in the office and you can’t look over your colleague’s shoulder to check the progress. Oftentimes, you won’t see the task until it’s delivered to you. That’s exactly why you want to offer sufficient information to get it done right from the get-go.

Pick the right communication channel

You and your team needs to agree on one crucial thing: your main communication channel.

It could be email threads, once-a-day video calls or setting up a chat room. You may also keep all the discussion to the comment section of your task.

Don’t be afraid to innovate and experiment.

Use task tags, deadlines and assigned Users

The majority of software you will pick comes with deadlines, tags and user assigning (if they don’t, they’re probably not good enough for you ). These are features we often underestimate in managing workload of our teams.

Meanwhile, by applying such simple filters you can easily see if your work is evenly distributed across areas, employees and deadlines. Depending on your software, it may take two to three clicks to understand if someone is overloaded or whether deadlines come too closely together.

Create knowledge base

It’s good to have an easily accessible knowledge base for all the processes and workflows you’ve documented and shared with your team. It could be a separate shared folder or a whole kanban board with different categories.

Consider setting up one to store everything that is important to your team – from your logo and mission statement, to process documentation and best practices for a variety of tasks.

Create templates

It’s going to be so much easier to stick to processes when you create templates for your workflows and tasks.

Most of the project management tools offer this option and if you don’t use it, start today.

It’s an easy way to include the roadmap, checkpoints and guidelines for your team without spending additional time on recreating their content.

Use appointment scheduling tools

Most teams use an appointment scheduling tool to arrange meetings and calls with their clients. But it’s a creative thing to do to use them to arrange team calls as well.

By choosing the date from a shared calendar, you can cut out the annoying shuffle related to picking up the date that works for everybody.

Use the task-related threads

Do your best to limit your task communication to one particular channel. If it’s a comment thread for the assignment, keep it there. If it’s a Slack chat thread – don’t move away from it.

Do this to avoid scattering communication across multiple channels and eliminate wondering where was given information or guideline shared.

Set up notifications and reminders

An important milestone approaching? Set up a reminder for your teammates to make sure they don’t miss it. It will land directly in their mailbox when the time is right.

Use notifications to keep your team in loop about the important changes to the tasks, workflow, processes, scheduled events and more. There’s plenty of options to do it – from integrations to email and your communication channels to simply using built-in options from your project management tool.

Final thoughts

Using software to improve remote team communication is one of the easiest fixes when you know what your problem is.

The options are out there and the decision is up to you which of the platforms you will go with. Don’t be afraid to experiment and test them out as you go. It may take a while before you find the right fit for your team.

Good luck!

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

Related Articles

Custom corporate gifts by WLWYB that you will actually keep

Custom corporate gifts by WLWYB that you will actually keep

Custom corporate gifts by WLWYB that you will actually keep

July 29, 2020

Featured Member - WLWYB

Everyone knows bespoke corporate gifts, whether you received them in the past or gave to someone. Personalised business gifts are a great way to raise brand awareness. They can be motivational presents, thank-you gifts, or sales incentives when you’re right before the new product launch or store opening. Other occasions can be annual gifts for your clients and staff members, trade shows or an anniversary of a team member. 

With these corporate gifts your goal would be to motivate your colleagues during a team building, thank your business partners, clients and staff members at the end of a hard year, pull in potential new customers, raise awareness of your brand through a give away or a trade show.

Lighting pens and power banks are not cool

So let’s see what are the most common bespoke gifts that a company can give.

The kind of stuff that everyone received the past couple of years was a bunch of lightning pens, tote bags, mugs, power banks, pop sockets, notebooks, drawstring bags, keychain bottle openers, wine, chocolate. And which of these were memorable? 

Maybe you made notes with the pens in the notebook, you went shopping with the tote bags, you charged your phone with the power bank which broke after a couple of months but to be honest none of them were the best because of their quality or usefulness. 

And how much of them did you re-gift? Because that’s a thing. You always receive a bottle of wine, a box of soap or fondue pack that you’ll never use. The first though before being harsh is thinking of who can you re-gift it to and when? If you are not on a budget you might give tumblers, earbuds, a box of great quality cheese, a bluetooth speaker. But still, these are cliches.

Personalised business gifts that are entertaining

Being the Business Development Manager at a startup venture that is a player in the secondary market of LEGO gives the opportunity to work with B2B and B2C customers from all around the world where we offer bespoke LEGO kits. – Dorottya Fogel

The possibilities are endless; it only depends on whether you have a smaller budget or money doesn’t matter. 

Our knowledge that we gained in the recent years and the fact that we closely work together with well known LEGO builders gives us the opportunity to create for each and every project of ours a unique, personalised creation that inspires adults and children alike. Let it be an original sized city light poster with a logo of a company, a microscale furnished office HQ from several thousand pieces or personalised minifigures with the right outlook and tools for team members. 

We guarantee that the recipients of the gifts will spend much more time with their presents than an average gadget. 

So if you’re struggling with what to give whether you have a small budget or money doesn’t matter, that is a memorable, fun and the gifted would only give it away to their kid who will be happy as hell, I would suggest to reach out to us and we would be happy to build some fun thing together. 

Connect and do business with WE LOVE WHAT YOU BUILD on Enterprise League

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

  • Spice Kitchen – The spiciest UK business operating on family values
  • Koala Rank – a different approach to your content marketing strategy
  • Tekrevol – the company born in a small bedroom

Related Articles

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Spice Kitchen – The spiciest family business in the UK

Spice Kitchen – The spiciest family business in the UK

Spice Kitchen – The spiciest family business in the UK

July 27, 2020

Spice Kitchen Featured Image

Give a standing ovation for the spiciest of our members – Spice Kitchen! A mother and son team bringing joy to homes around the world with their award-winning spices, tea and artisanal cookware. It all started 8 years ago on Christmas and has since grown into a successful family business staying true to tradition and cultural heritage.

Want to add life to your meals or sell their mouth-watering spices in your store? You can find them on Enterprise League.

How would you describe Spice Kitchen to a 3-year-old?

Spice Kitchen believes it is really important for families to spend time together at mealtimes, and so we create exciting, colourful spice collections that everyone loves. We are passionate about introducing people to flavours from all around the world so that we can all learn more about one another’s culture and heritage.

What is the story behind Spice Kitchen? 

This is a legendary story we regularly remind ourselves of! 

Spice Kitchen was born in a relaxed chat over the dining table on Christmas Day in 2012. Shashi (AKA Mamma Spice) had just retired and was looking for a little project or hobby. I (Sanjay) suggested that she try selling a Masala Dabba on eBay. She liked the idea and so we gathered the ingredients and put one up for sale. It went immediately. So, we did another. And another. Then, we got a massive order for 10,000 tins and suddenly all hands were on deck, blending and grinding spices. And we haven’t stopped since. 

Coming to the present day, we now have two distribution units, an ever-expanding team and a wonderful array of products that our customers love! It’s been such an incredible, unexpected journey and we are all having a blast.

What is the most difficult aspect of running your own company?

Up until quite recently, I had a relatively small team and was juggling lots of balls, as well as wanting to spend quality time with my wife and two-year-old daughter. 

Bringing in the right people is always a challenge for any company, but especially when it’s a small family business. I’ve been so fortunate recently that – having taken the decision to expand – the people I’ve brought in have slotted into position and are really passionate about the brand. It makes a massive difference and I’m loving having more team members around to share the load!

Tell us a curious fact or an anecdote related to Spice Kitchen.

Everyone who works with me (and even those who don’t) knows that I will stop any conversation to answer the phone to a customer. So, I can be in the middle of a business meeting, but if a customer calls with a question about a spice, I’m taking that call. For me, answering that call is the most important thing I am going to do that day. I’ve always stuck to that philosophy in business and so far, it’s never let me down.

Spice Kitchen is given $1 million; how would you spend/invest?

There are probably many more glamorous answers to this question, but for me, I would probably look at introducing some of the best staff benefits that I could find. I’m very aware that a business is only as good as its people, and so I’m really keen to ensure that I take care of the people that make Spice Kitchen possible.

Where is Spice Kitchen headed now? What’s the next big thing you’re striving to achieve?

I recently joked that I would like a spice tin in every kitchen, but the reality is not far from that. 

When you’ve tasted really good spices, there’s no going back, and so I want everyone to be able to experience the difference that these incredible ingredients can make to their recipes. 

We are right in the middle of some incredible growth. With lockdown, many people started to cook at home again and so our products were flying off the shelves. So, in the middle of upscaling our distribution, we are also in the process of creating recipe guides for all of our spice tins and (deep breath) doing some serious work in creating our very own Spice Kitchen cookbook. Watch this space!

Connect and do business with Spice Kitchen on Enterprise League

More must-read stories from Enterprise League:

  • Need help with your business admin? Meet our member Get Ahead VA.
  • Koala Rank – a different approach to your content marketing strategy

Related Articles

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.