Business research identifies three reasons to give employees gifts:
How should a company acknowledge an employee’s birthday?
Professional milestones like work anniversaries require center stage. These specifically celebrate the employer-employee relationship. Expressing gratitude for employee loyalty and effort can help maintain retention and morale.
With that in mind, many regard personal milestones like birthdays as low-stakes. Everyone has a birthday, and they’re mostly celebrated outside of the workplace. So why bother with more than a simple “Happy Birthday?”
As always, it’s less about what you spend, and more about consistency and intention–all for a very good reason. Find out why these milestones matter and much more as we dive into celebrating employee birthdays:
Why celebrate employee birthdays?
Simple, low-cost work birthday celebration ideas
Employee birthday gift ideas for in-person and remote teams
How to make employee birthdays inclusive, not awkward
Automated birthday recognition: What to look for
Ideas for writing birthday wishes to employees and coworkers
How HeyTaco makes employee birthdays effortless
Why celebrate employee birthdays?
Celebrating birthdays recognizes employees as human. Feeling cared for as a person is still significantly impacting engagement. Surveys from MetLife and Gallup unearth heavy percentages of employees who feel dispensable and take that personally.
Benefits, job flexibility, and encouraging work-life balance are the best ways to show compassionate, human care for employees. But acknowledging birthdays is a great supplement to any of these. We’re taking the time to see and celebrate someone for a milestone that has nothing to do with their job role.
Plus, it seems to work. Respondents participating in a study by the gifting platform Snappy overwhelmingly agree that celebrating employee birthdays is good for morale and retention.
That’s not all. More than 90% of the 1,500 respondents said they enjoy celebrating their coworkers' birthdays even more than their own. By skipping work birthday celebrations, we’re missing out on organic, peer-driven team bonding opportunities.
Positive peer interactions have even more beneficial effects on employee engagement. Birthday celebrations are a great “excuse” for organizations that struggle to fit team-building activities in the right places.
Any given month, there are convenient opportunities to bring teams together for easygoing, non-work-related, rapport-building activities.
Simple, low-cost work birthday celebration ideas
From easy and inexpensive to thoughtful and free, here are some starter-friendly ways to wish employees a happy birthday at work.
1. Automated employee birthday wishes
This should be the first on the birthday recognition to-do list.
Program a tool, automate a message, set up a Slack birthday bot, use HeyTaco Milestones, etc. Whatever avenue you choose, this covers the most basic, essential part of employee birthdays: the recipient getting their milestone acknowledged by the company on time.
2. Cake Day
Ah, the sheet cake in the break room. A true workplace celebration classic. If buying each employee a cake is cost-prohibitive or logistically challenging for hybrid teams, try Cake Day instead.
Once a month, host a Cake Day with sweet treats honoring that month’s birthdays. This doesn’t replace the personalized well-wishes on their respective birthdays, but it creates a happy ritual everyone can look forward to.
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🚨 Alert! Cake Day is for personal milestones only. See our list of work anniversary gift ideas to help create meaningful celebrations for work milestones. |
3. Dec-a-desk
Decorate the employee’s desk with streamers, balloons, confetti, or birthday banners. It’s a great reminder for everyone who passes by to offer them well wishes. It also makes their working environment a lot more festive on their special day.
Virtual teams can surprise their remote coworker by applying birthday backgrounds on Zoom meetings.
4. Coffee chat
Have management or other leadership invite an employee for a coffee break. Lay work topics to the side and enjoy a brief chat led by the employee. This is also a prime time for leaders to express appreciation and share a birthday card.
It’s a small, informal gesture that can be incredibly encouraging for employees, who remember recognition from leaders more than anyone else.
5. Charitable donations
Companies with core values related to sustainability, social consciousness, or generosity can consider making birthday donations a tradition.
In an employee’s birthday card, let them know the company has donated to a cause in their name. This idea is best reserved for employees who don’t have a strong preference for material goods or public celebrations.
6. Birthday playlists
If you have to work on your birthday, why not do so to an awesome soundtrack? Pepper birthday classics in with songs by artists the employee enjoys. Who knows–a little impromptu office karaoke may ensue.
To foster more peer involvement, invite teammates or their closest coworking collaborators to help build the list.
7. Team potluck lunch
Similar to cake, consistently catering birthday lunches can be costly. If your company culture thrives on celebrations, invite them to team up for birthday potluck lunches.
Just make sure the company pitches in a little something, too. It doesn’t have to be hyper-coordinated, either. The goal is to share a meal together when everyone might normally wander in different directions.
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🌮 Taco tip: Employees can volunteer to participate in building a birthday taco bar. One person can bring the tortillas, another the protein, and so on. |
Employee birthday gift ideas for in-person and remote teams
A report we referenced earlier in this guide found that two out of three people would prefer to keep their birthday low-key.
They may want their day acknowledged in some way. And we know they do want to celebrate with their coworkers. They’re just not big on companywide birthday announcements as recognition.
In these cases, a present is the answer. Here is a range of employee birthday gift ideas for all needs, budgets, and work models.
1. Gift and greeting card duo
A gift card inside a greeting card is great for personal milestones. They get the thoughtful message in the card, plus a small gift they can use the way they’d like.
This is also easy to make equitable across the whole team. It’s both discreet and thoughtful. However, do choose gift cards that are relevant to the recipient.
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⚠️ Before you buy gift cards in bulk: Variety keeps recognition meaningful across multiple occasions, personal and professional. If you want to do gift cards for birthdays, choose something else for Employee Appreciation Day and work milestones. Here are a whole bunch of inexpensive employee appreciation gift ideas. |
2. Gift catalogs
No, they won’t be paging through a Sharper Image mailer. You don’t even need to use a corporate gifting platform if you’d prefer not to. Build a bespoke company catalog of on-budget gift options, and give employees a choice.
This is a wise choice if a company does not yet have enough data to fully personalize tangible types of recognition. It may also align with a core value that’s promoted to employees, like autonomy.
3. A day off
Employers looking to build tradition, spend less time arranging birthday recognition, and delight employees–all at once!–can just give them the day off. (And don’t forget the people whose birthdays fall on a weekend.)
If this isn’t completely practical, make it a half day. It aligns nicely with virtual and in-person workplaces that emphasize work-life balance and employee well-being.
4. Themed birthday bags
Movie night, spa night, fitness swag, tech swag. Looking to add personal touches to remote employee birthday gifts? Build experiences and mail them in a neat package.
Physical goods can have a unique impact on employees who are never seen in person.
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🧑🏻💻 Strong remote connections: Read the latest on sustaining and strengthening remote employee engagement. |
5. Team treat delivery
Remote teams with a sweet tooth don’t have to miss out on the traditional enjoyment of partaking in a coworker’s celebration. Dispatch small boxes of baked goods that they can enjoy during a non-work catching-up meeting or virtual celebration. Make the birthday person’s a little bigger or fancier, if possible.
In-person teams can enjoy this if they’d rather skip a big cake to-do. Making cookies, donuts, or other sweet tokens available on birthdays takes little budget or fanfare.
6. Team e-cards
Create a custom card in Canva or another application that everyone can sign. Make it humorous, heartfelt, or whatever else is appropriate for the employee. This makes it so we can get the message just right and bring the whole team in on it.
How to make employee birthdays inclusive, not awkward
It’s one thing to have your family or loved ones sing you a song on your birthday. It’s a bit different coming from restaurant staff, strangers, or everyone you work with.
Sure, some people are into it. Most of us can grin and bear it. A few of us would like the floor to open up and swallow us whole.
Here are some ways to make employee birthday wishes kind and inclusive, not awkward and cringe-inducing.
Let them opt out of public celebrations
Why don’t some people like celebrating their birthday at work? Many reasons, and most of them are personal. Let employees opt out of birthday acknowledgments, and don’t ask why.
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Tip: Revisit this by asking employees to opt in or out annually during their onboarding or a routine survey. Circumstances change, or maybe your company does birthdays so well that they’ve decided they’d like to get in on the fun. |
Keep celebrations similar
Remember that this is a personal milestone. It happens regardless of how someone performs, how well-liked they are, or how long they’ve been there. Keep messages and celebrations equitable across all participating employees.
Celebrate during work hours
An employee might invite their coworkers to an after-hours celebration, but otherwise, keep it on the clock. Don’t automate birthday wishes to hit at the stroke of midnight, and don’t introduce ideas or celebrations that cut into the personal portion of their day.
Automated birthday recognition: What to look for
Unlike some other forms of recognition, automation is perfect for birthdays. It’s guaranteed to arrive on time, and the milestone doesn’t require as much personalization.
When you’re choosing a tool or platform for this, factor in the following:
- Keep it on the platforms where people are already working, such as a birthday Slack bot. Anything that interrupts workflows can be distracting to the honoree’s coworkers, and we want their birthdays to have a positive vibe.
- Make sure you can customize messages. Celebrations should be similar in scale, but every employee getting the exact same message is a little too offhanded.
- Again, double-check that employees have had the opportunity to opt out.
Ideas for writing birthday wishes to employees and coworkers
We’ve shared a LOT of advice for drafting appreciation messages to employees. How to make it specific, relevant, appropriate, and meaningful. Great news–saying happy birthday to a coworker or employee is much easier.
Seriously, jotting down “Happy Birthday, James! Wishing you a wonderful year!” is good enough. But if the team culture includes more focus on b-days, or you want to stand out from the sea of well-wishes, here are some tips and examples.
- Keep the birthday the focus. This isn’t the time to “catch up” on any work-related appreciation they may not have been getting.
- That said, feel free to mention their contributions. If they’ve made a ton of progress or gone above and beyond, mention it briefly.
- Appreciate their personal qualities. You can also (again, briefly) acknowledge the person during this personal milestone.
Here’s what the above guidance may look like IRL:
“Happy Birthday to our favorite problem solver. We celebrate you every day!”
“Another year wiser. Thank you for sharing your gifts with the rest of us. Happy Birthday!”
“A very Happy Birthday to a valued member of our team. Wishing you another year of growth and success.”
“Happy Birthday! Your resilience, sense of humor, and positive attitude are always worth celebrating.”
How HeyTaco makes employee birthdays effortless
HeyTaco is a peer-to-peer recognition platform that puts meaningful appreciation and acknowledgment in employees’ hands.
Using virtual tacos as a symbol of positivity for all types of values, behaviors, and contributions has already caught on at more than a thousand companies worldwide. Thanks to seamless integration with Slack, Teams, and Google Chat, it’s almost too easy to deploy tacos when the mood (or birthday) hits.
And thanks to fun gamification features, it promotes friendly competition and lets teams work together toward meaningful rewards.
It’s also THE way to celebrate in team chat! Receiving virtual tacos and nice messages doesn’t put intense focus on those who like keeping it low-key. It’s fun, lighthearted, and now even includes automated employee birthday wishes (both public and private) with our new Milestones feature.
Try it for free and give employees what they want–to celebrate one another.
Employee birthday FAQ
How much to spend on an employee’s birthday?
A wide range of sources indicates that per person, we shouldn’t spend less than $15 or more than $100.
However, this should not be taken as hard advice. Many companies don’t buy gifts at all, keeping employees happy with genuine acknowledgment, such as a message or card.
Is it appropriate to celebrate birthdays at work?
Yes, although these personal milestones probably shouldn’t take precedence over professional ones. It’s also important to note that while people say they like celebrating their coworkers’ birthdays, they like theirs to stay quiet, if not off the radar.
Are employee birthdays confidential?
Employees must be allowed to opt out of any birthday acknowledgment, in which case, yes, their birthday is confidential. It is part of their private information, and employers should obtain consent.
Even if an employee consents to having their birthday celebrated, employers shouldn’t share the year of their birth. That’s at the discretion of the employee.
