We celebrate a lot of things at Maximum FX. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, skill certification milestones, when the salon hits a goal, five-star Google and Yelp reviews and the list goes on.
We love to celebrate but it can get expensive real quick! If you’re not careful, it can become a real problem financially. Add to that the additional challenge of trying to show your appreciation while not being cheap about it. Another thing to consider is the “same gift every year” dilemma. That’s so boring! Plus, if you keep doing the same thing you’ll soon find that your praise and acknowledgment will eventually fall flat.
For years, we made it our goal to always celebrate big when it came to team member birthdays and anniversaries. We allocated a $20 budget for cake and a card for each team member for their birthdays and the same for their work anniversary. That started adding up real quick when our team started to grow.
Interestingly enough, I sat down and asked my salon teams which were more important, birthdays or anniversaries? Unanimously, they said anniversaries! “It’s a big deal, you know?” they would say. “It’s an important milestone every time we spend another trip around the sun together!”
You could also argue that with employee loyalty these days at an all-time low, anniversaries are an opportunity for you to pause and really show your team members how much you care for their loyalty and their contribution to the company’s success.
Now that we knew that anniversaries were really more important to the team, we decided to revamp how and what we were going to celebrate. We decided that for birthdays we would still get a birthday card and have everyone on the team sign it.
For anniversaries, we partnered with a local business in Austin, Texas called Loop & Tie. It’s a company that brings customization back to gift-giving! Their unique offering is simply this, “You select a collection of gift choices, the recipient chooses their favorite.” Plus, you can even make the gifting experience branded with your company’s logo!
Loop & Tie has spending categories starting at $25 and goes up to $100 so you get to establish how much you want to spend. The employee never sees how much you are spending on their gift. They are just presented with a list of gifts from which to choose.
The gift-giving process is so simple and easy to do. Did I mention that shipping is included in the pricing? So cool, right?
The response from our team has been really positive. When a team member receives her gift, she has an opportunity to send a thank you reply via email. We get some of the most heartfelt thank you notes from the team now that we’ve started partnering with Loop & Tie.
Check out their website and see for yourself. Loop & Tie is a great way to send gifts to friends and family too!
