Do you love your employees? Colleagues? Managers? It’s okay for one to love his or her co-workers as long as you keep it “formal”. Love is not only between couples, and valentine is for everyone who wants to celebrate any kind of love.
So, how can you celebrate Valentine’s Day at work?
Manager 2 Employee:
Buy mini colored notebooks with a pen each to your employees and write them a dedication in the first page. Write how you feel towards them and talk about the positive things in their personality. Put the negatives aside, save that for another occasion perhaps :D. Ask them to keep this notebook for planning their day, writing their positive thoughts and for documenting their achievements and learnt lessons. Show them how much you need them and how much you believe in them.
Employee 2 Manager:
As an employee, the best Valentines gift you can offer your boss is doing extra work! Managers can occasionally be very emotional, but work will always stay in your way. Adding to this, by the end of the day, leave to your manager a piece of paper attached between the work you handed out. In this paper write to them what do you like about their management, highlight the points you like in them, and save the things you dislike to yourself. Let it go. Try to think of the positive, and let it out. It will be an excellent gift for a manager finding a piece of paper by your handwriting among the work progressed.
Employee 2 Employee:
Your colleagues are important too yes. This also applies on Manager 2 Manager. You are all a team, and each one of you is part of the other’s success, assuming of course you are in a sane and healthy working environment, where your colleague is not your worst enemy. It’s valentine we are trying to be positive here. Take a deep breath and always keep all the negativity aside. Today you are only allowed to love. So how can you gift your colleagues? First rule, if you have a crush on your colleague do not bring him/her an extra gift. It will sound weird to this person and everyone else. Try to find a smarter approach. For example if you are writing a letter to each colleague, you can type the letter to everyone else, while the one you have a crush on write the same words but using your own handwriting 😉
HR 2 Employee:
As the HR you know who is married, engaged, and single. You can send a message or an email to each of your employees. The messages sent to the married, engaged, or “it’s complicated” relationship include the name of their partner in the message, and suggestions on where they can go out on that day. In the message to single employees, make it more about individualism and the awesomeness of being single. Organize an outing perhaps after work for all employees.
Through the day, dedicate a couple of hours to make a session for and by the employees. On that day each employee will give a short speech about their current or pervious relationships, and tell funny, dramatic, and sarcastic stories. It will be a good personal moment to share their experiences and how these stories affected them at work and social life.
Employee 2 HR:
I will leave this to you ladies and gentlemen. Surprise us. Be kind with us. We are not that evil after all 😀
Celebrating Valentine’s Day at work can be a waste of working hours. This depends on how you are willing to celebrate it. It can be a very motivational and ice-breaking day.
Written By: Mahmoud Mansi & Alia Faramawi
PHOTOGRAPHY: Mahmoud Mansi