How to Launch a Gratitude Challenge at Work | Prialto

Hosting a gratitude challenge is one of the most effective ways to boost employee motivation and productivity during the holiday season.

In addition to helping foster a positive culture, research shows gratitude challenges can improve your employees’ overall wellbeing.

Workplace gratitude is linked to benefits including:

• Fewer sick days
• Greater job satisfaction
• Lower levels of work stress
• Greater confidence in our ability to achieve goals

All of these benefits drive employee performance and help your employees stay focused during this busy time.

To create a workplace gratitude challenge you need to:

1. Giving your employees prompts to help them brainstorm who they’re grateful for.
2. Creating a space for them to share their gratitude.

We’ve created prompts for the whole month of November and three easy activities you can set up in your office or virtually.

Use These Workplace Gratitude Challenge Prompts

Promote gratitude throughout November by encouraging your team to thank someone every business day of the month. Here are 18 gratitude prompts to inspire your team’s gratitude challenge.

Each day ask your team to give thanks someone who:

1. Makes your organization a more enjoyable place to work.
2. Helped you solve a difficult problem.
3. Gave you valuable feedback.
4. Is a manager who helped you achieve your goals.
5. Is a direct report who made your life easier.
6. Supported you during a rough period.
7. Is always there to answer your questions and support you.
8. Has given you exciting opportunities.
9. Lets you bounce ideas off them.
10. Is a great teammate to work with.
11. Gave you a great idea for a project.
12. Helped you meet a tight deadline.
13. Taught you a valuable skill.
14. Inspires you to become better.
15. Gave you access to a valuable resource.
16. Let you shadow them.
17. Helped you become more productive.
18. Provided career advice and/or mentorship.

Release all of these prompts a day or all at once depending on if you want your team to answer one each day or pick and choose the ones that they resonate most with.

Read More: How Practicing Gratitude Makes You More Productive

How to Set Up Your Gratitude Challenge

Launching an organization-wide gratitude challenge is easy. Now that you have prompts, you just need to create a method for your employees to show their gratitude.

Here are some fun and simple options:

• Create a gratitude board where your team can post who they’re grateful for and why. You can do this in your office via a white or cork board and post-it notes or an online via a tool like Trello. Regardless of which option you choose, make sure that everyone knows where to access it.
• Set out blank thank you cards that employees can use to write notes to the people they’re grateful for. This gives your team an opportunity to privately show gratitude for their coworkers. If you have a dispersed or remote team, encourage your team to send these messages via chat or email.
• Share gratitude in your team meetings. To share your team’s gratitude live, add five minutes to the beginning or end of your meetings for people to share who they’re grateful for and why. Add this time to every team meeting throughout November so people have plenty of opportunities to show gratitude.

Implement one or all three of these activities to drive your gratitude challenge depending on which you think your team will be most likely to engage in.

Since some employees may be reluctant to participate, kick off the month by having the leaders in your company share who they’re grateful for. As the month goes on, your team should become more open and engaged with the challenge as they experience how encouraging it is to hear how they’ve impacted others.

Give Your Employees the Gift of Productivity

One of the most meaningful ways to show your employees you appreciate them is giving them more time to focus on the work they love. Learn how to give your employees the gift of productivity by checking out our free guide How to Give Your Team Leverage with Virtual Assistants. In it, you'll learn: 

• What kinds of time-saving tasks your team can offload
• How we work with you to maximize the ROI of our service
• Our process for securely leveraging your systems