What Is the Best Way to Celebrate an Employee Birthday [POLL]
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Office celebrations can be great for employee recognition and morale. They can also be the subject of lawsuits, like the case in Kentucky where an employee asked the company not to celebrate his birthday and they decided to do it anyway. That’s what today’s reader note is about – birthdays.
I feel like this would be a good topic for an article by the HR Bartender.
Picking out birthday cards for coworkers who you consider friends, but not actual “real friends” is a minefield rife with easy missteps if you don’t want a plain, boring “wishing you the best” kind of card. Especially if the coworker is a woman and you’re a single, straight man.
This might be a tremendously unpopular opinion, but I’m not a big celebrator of birthdays. Personally, my birthday falls near a holiday, so it often gets lumped into the holiday celebration. Which is fine by me. But honestly, I don’t really want a big celebration or a card. A simple, “Have a nice birthday.” is great. I’m also totally fine if you didn’t remember my birthday until Facebook reminded you. LOL! If you don’t remember my birthday, it’s not the end of the world.
Since my point of view might not be isn’t very helpful in this situation, I wanted to bring in some other views – yours. We haven’t done one of our one-question polls in a while, so I hope you’ll take a moment to answer this one about office birthday celebrations. And please don’t let my POV sway you, this is a completely anonymous poll.
So, please take a moment and answer the poll. As always, I’ll share the results in a couple of weeks. Thanks!
This poll might not show up in the subscriber email so I hope you will link through and take the poll online. My apologies if there’s not an exact match to your birthday preference. I tried to cover what I thought might be the top responses.
And if you’re saying to yourself, “How does this answer the reader’s question?” Well, it will be interesting to see if the poll results show people prefer to receive birthday cards. I also wonder if views about workplace birthday celebrations could be changing in light of hybrid and remote work. I think the reader’s question is great and the best way to offer some insight is with the views of many, not just me.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby while exploring the streets of Austin, TX
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