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Start a free trialGood people are the best thing that can happen to a business — and good people who stick with you are even better.
So it makes sense to reward the employees who have been with you for years, and for everyone else to see what will happen if they stick around for just as long.
Giving the right sort of long service awards is a great way to keep good people when you’re not a big name, so they can make a real difference for a small business. Offering long service awards gives your employees an added incentive to stay, and demonstrates the value you place in them.
Long service awards matter because:
Rewarding our employees was something we thought about a lot in the early days at Charlie, because we knew we’d have to keep our high performers in order to achieve the sort of success we wanted. We came up with long service awards that reflect the way we feel about our people and show that we appreciate the difference they make.
To save you some of that thinking time, I’m going to share our best ideas for long service awards, as well as what we do at Charlie to reward our most loyal employees.
Long service awards are given to employees to celebrate and acknowledge the number of years they have worked for the same employer.
An employee long service award could be anything from a gift voucher, trophy or certificate, to a prize like a spa retreat, or something else entirely.
The recognised time period for long service awards varies and is likely to be in line with the age of the company in a small business setting. It’s not unusual to see 5 year long service awards, and recognition all the way up to 10, 15, 20 and 25 years.
Small business owners are likely to worry about a lack of resources when it comes to rewarding people for their long-term loyalty, but you’ll find lots of ideas to inspire you for long service awards in this blog.
Long service awards recognise and celebrate the contribution of long-standing members of your team — the people who have helped to make and shape your business, and demonstrated their commitment to you as their employer.
Long service awards can help to:
As a fellow small business, we think it’s great to celebrate people but we also understand that it can be hard to know the best way to do it. So we’ve come up with long service awards ideas that don’t necessarily centre around money, but your team is likely to really value.
Done right, long service awards will mean a lot to your team and make them feel good about themselves and you.
But the opposite can also be true — the wrong sort of employee long service award could come across as a hollow gesture and cause negative feelings. So it’s really worth giving long term service rewards some proper thought.
Here are a few ideas that are a bit more meaningful than a gift voucher…
Sabbatical leave is something we offer at Charlie, and we think it’s a great way to reward team members who have been with us for a long time.
Sabbatical leave is when someone is supported by the company they work for to take extended time off, and typically ranges anywhere from a month to a year.
We’re a young business, so we offer a month’s sabbatical at 50% pay to anyone who has been with us for over three and a half years. (And we’re still considering what to do when someone has been with us for more than seven years, as then they can technically request to go on sabbatical again.)
Offering sabbatical leave as long service awards has so far proved successful for us, and has been really well received by our team.
Although it’s not something we currently offer at Charlie, rewarding long-standing employees with extra holiday allowance is another popular idea for long service awards.
The number of extra holiday days would need to correlate with how long someone has been at the company, so you’d need to calculate how that will work best at your business. The extra holiday could be an annual benefit from that point on, or a one-off award when they reach a particular milestone.
Like sabbatical leave, offering extra holiday is a tangible and meaningful idea for long service awards that’s likely to go down well with your team.
Some employers trust their employees to work more autonomously the longer they’ve been with a company, and choose to offer flexible working as their long term service reward.
As flexible working is the norm at Charlie, it doesn’t make sense for us to offer this. And it’s worth noting last year’s law change, where UK employees can now request flexible working from their very first day of employment. It may not be interpreted as the most generous of long service awards because of this.
Depending on the nature of your business, options (where employees have the right to buy shares in the company) and shares (where they are given shares and immediately become a shareholder) could be great long service awards .
However, you’ll need to take into account the fact that only non-cash awards can be given tax-free. Any share options given as long service awards will have to be reported to HMRC and the recipients will be charged tax and National Insurance.
Gifts like clocks and watches were once the tradition for long service awards, but are a pretty old-fashioned concept nowadays.
Although a gift will make someone feel a bit special, it’s not going to motivate them to stay with you long term or make any real difference to their life. There are also a number of boxes you need tick for long service awards gifts in order to avoid reporting them or paying tax:
For example, you can give a non-cash award with a value of up to £1,000 for 20 years’ service (GOV.UK).
So think outside the box with your long service awards and reward your most loyal employees with something that they’ll really value, and that makes them want to stay at your company.
