15 Ways to Say, “Thank You For Your Hard Work”

A 10-year study revealed that 79% of people who quit their job say they did so because they didn’t feel appreciated. Most employees never took a minute of their time to send a “thank you for your hard work” appreciation gift or postcard.

If you’re looking for a way to keep your employees happy, retain your best employees, and motivate them to keep doing good work, it’s important to find a way to tell your employees, “Thank you for all your hard work.” 

How To Motivate Employees

A recent survey found that the most important motivation for great work is for employees to be recognized for their work and feel appreciated. 

When employees feel appreciated, it:

• Increases employee morale
• Increases productivity
• Improves relationships
• Increases engagement with your employees
• Helps retain top talent
• Encourages better performance

Employees who feel recognized for hard work are:

• 2.6 times more likely to see promotions as fair
• 2.2 times more likely to think the company embraces innovative thinking
• Two times more likely to say that the company goes above and beyond

For appreciation to motivate employees, the appreciation should be:

• Specific and relevant: Recognition is meaningful when tied to a specific accomplishment. Specific recognition helps to encourage continued strong performance.
• Timely: Recognition should happen promptly rather than months after the fact. The longer it takes to receive recognition, the less appreciated an employee feels.
• In many forms: Research indicates that people need more than monetary appreciation for their hard work. That’s why we’re listing 15 ways to say, “Thank you.”
• On a day-to-day basis: Hand-written notes, emails, or peer recognition are powerful daily motivators.

Appreciation Letter vs. Postcard to Employee

An appreciation letter or postcard is an excellent way for a company to provide employee recognition. A thoughtful-well-designed piece of postal mail or email can have a big impact. The value of appreciation letters and postcards for employees is that they are:

• Tangible
• Personal
• Automatable
• Helpful for increasing employee morale
• Useful for reducing employee turnover

Physical emails and postcards can also stand out more than emails, making a bigger impact in a world of digital overload. 

Employee Appreciation Letters

Employee appreciation letters are personalizable ways for employers and supervisors to express specific sentiments concerning an employee’s hard work. 

Some areas of appreciation a letter can mention include:

• Points of appreciation and admiration about the employee
• Acknowledgment of areas of growth
• Detailed encouragement and appreciation for doing a great job on a specific project
• Information about an award their hard work has won
• Appreciation for their value to the overall goals and mission of the company
• Acknowledgment of leadership qualities
• Recognition for work anniversary milestones
• End-of-the-year reflection and gratitude

Employee Appreciation Postcards

Appreciation postcards are less personal since they won’t include specific sentiments and acknowledgments. However, the appreciation quotes they offer can still have an impact. Plus, small postcards are more cost-effective than letters and easy to send in bulk to multiple employees who deserve the same appreciation for their efforts.

Some ideas for employee appreciation postcards include:

• Thank yous
• Birthday wishes
• Sentiments for employee recognition holidays
• Recognition of work anniversary milestones
• Appreciation postcard redeemable for days off, free dress, or other employee perks
• Appreciation postcard redeemable for free appetizers, desserts, or restaurant meals  

Consider using meaningful thank you quotes for the picture on the postcard. Here are some ideas for gratitude quotes you can use:

• You make all the difference.
• Thanks for all the hard work.
• Your work speaks volumes.
• We appreciate you being such a team player.
• Thank you for your hard work and dedication.
• We’re so glad you’re on our team.
• Not everyone pays attention to detail like you do.
• We appreciate your hard work. Thank you for giving 100% every day.
• It takes hard work to handle everything you do.
• Thanks for doing an excellent job.
• You are the reason we stand strong.
• Words cannot describe how much you are appreciated. Thank you for all your hard work.
• We appreciate and value your dedication, talent, reliability, teamwork, and commitment to excellence.
• How do you do it? Seriously, we have no idea. We’d be lost without you.
• Your excellence is a big part of our success.
• You make hard work fun.
• Gracias por tu trabajo duro. (If you want to know how to say thank you for your hard work in Spanish)

How to Set Up an Automated Letter or Postcard Campaign

Postalytics has an automatable Triggered Drip feature that can allow you to automatically send letters and postcards so that it’s not a single effort. This option is perfect for events you can anticipate ahead of time, like employment anniversaries and birthdays, and sending regularly-scheduled notes or gifts.

You can integrate information directly from software and apps like HubSpot, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft/Keap, Zoho, and Zapier. Then you will use the Campaign Wizard to choose a template and personalize it to get your mailing ready to go.

Since Postalytics tracks your letters and postcards, knowing that an employee received their mail can be a trigger for the next steps, such as phone calls or emails. 

15 Ways to Say, Thank You For Your Hard Work

Building an employee appreciation program into the company’s culture and into the company’s calendar can help recognition come from multiple sources and give employees pride in their work and workplace. No matter how many employees you have, saying thank you can help create an inspiring work environment.

If you’re looking for how to say, thank you for all your hard work, here are 53 ways to recognize and motivate employees throughout the year:

1. Letters

Letters are the perfect way to show employees that they’re greatly appreciated. But, a letter does more than merely say, “Thank you.” Instead, it provides an opportunity to express exactly what efforts and qualities an employer or supervisor appreciates about an employee. 

Postalytics has many expert-made templates to make direct mail letters and online letters easy to design and send.

Letters are an excellent way to say thank you to your employees for any occasion, but they’re especially helpful for:

• Sending mailable gifts
• Sending notices of financial incentive awards
• Sending notice of raises
• Sending notice benefits package updates
• Providing peer-to-peer recognition
• Providing recognition from a boss or CEO
• Company scholarships
• Award announcements

2. Postcards

Postcards are a little less personal than letters. However, timely postcards that recognize special events, milestones, or efforts are always appreciated, especially if they include vouchers or are redeemable for perks. 

Postalytics direct mail postcards have plenty of pre-designed templates, or you can create your own design.

Direct mail postcards are perfect thank yous for:

• Birthdays
• Work-related holidays
• Work anniversaries
• Peer-to-peer recognition

3. Little Notes

Brief notes of appreciation can help build self-confidence. For example, a simple personalized email message, postcard, or post-it note that expresses appreciation for an employee’s hard work and a positive attitude can help boost morale.

Little notes are excellent ways to offer warmth and encouragement like:

• We love having you on our team.
• I appreciate your hard work.
• Just a note to say thank you for helping things go so smoothly around here. 
• We wouldn’t have made it through the week without you. Thanks so much!

Using Postalytics to send a postcard to a team member can also make an employee feel special. After all, it’s not every day that employees get real, physical mail from anyone, especially not from their co-workers. If your business is remote and employees don’t see their co-workers in person, it can add a personal touch that is often lacking in an online work environment.

4. Emails

Personal and group emails are excellent ways to show appreciation. Group emails can call out individual accomplishments and express appreciation for the team’s contribution to success. Personalized emails can express gratitude for specific accomplishments and praise hard work.

Online letters are one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to send a letter of appreciation. However, using Postalytics to send your emails makes it easier since you’re able to create several templates that you can use over and over for different occasions. 

It’s also easy to schedule regular emails of encouragement or set up campaigns to automatically send an email for special occasions, like birthdays, work recognition holidays, and employment milestone days. 

5. Gifts

Gifts are a great way to show gratitude for your workers. You can give gifts to commemorate: 

• Achievements
• Milestones
• Birthdays
• Appreciation holidays
• The end of the year

Giving non-tangible gifts that are redeemable by QR code or a personal URL (pURL) has become more popular and is easy to automate with a Postalytics letter, email or postcard campaign.

6. Experiences to Enjoy with Family and Friends

Rather than giving something physical that your employee may or may not enjoy, why not give an experience? The best experiences are ones enjoyed with others. So, rather than offer a gift for an individual, an employee can offer a gift the employee can enjoy with family and friends outside work hours. Options include:

• Family zoo membership
• Fun-park passes
• Restaurant gift cards
• Gift cards for a group experiences
• Event tickets

If you’re offering these gifts to multiple employees, Postalytics is an excellent tool to use to send these gifts by mail or email. Since many memberships, passes, gift cards, and tickets are digital, Postalytics can integrate personalized QR codes or pURLs for each individual employee. This option eliminates the need to stuff envelopes with individual tickets or cards.

7. Work Recognition Holidays

Adding work recognition holidays to the company calendar and doing something to commemorate these holidays can help employees feel their worth. Recognition holidays are also the perfect time to send a direct mail postcard.

Some holidays to consider celebrating include:

• Employee Appreciation Day
• HR Professional Appreciation Day
• National Custodian Day
• National Customer Service Week
• Bosses Day
• Administrative Assistants/Professionals Day

If you would like to add a token of your appreciation, like a gift card, tickets, or membership pass, you can integrate a personalized QR code or pURL through your Postalytics mailer.

8. Appreciation Awards

Regular appreciation awards like Employee of the Week can give employees something to work toward. Some employers like to showcase these awards through public media outlets or on work bulletin boards so that the recipients can be the focus of appreciation for a specific period. 

It’s possible to create appreciate award letter templates in Postalytics so that it’s easy to send a postal or electronic letter to each new recipient.

9. Financial Incentives

Financial incentives are always an acceptable way to show gratitude for hard work. Some options include:

• Pay raises
• Benefits 
• Bonus checks
• Company stock
• Stock options
• Special allowances
• Merit pay

Having a letter template ready to send through Postalytics when you offer financial incentives can make the process easier for you. Your HR department will appreciate having templates available to make generating financial incentive award letters even easier. Including a personalized letter from the CEO is also a nice touch.

10. Peer-to-Peer Recognition

For some people, peer recognition is more valuable than corporate-level recognition. Meaningful recognition from peers like managers enhances company culture, promotes a sense of belonging, and can increase performance by as much as 14%.

When employees know that their peers value their work and value their work on the team can make it even more pleasant to go to work every day. Regular encouragement can also help retain the best workers and make them enjoy coming to work every day. 

Be sure to put peer-recognition postcards, emails, and letters on your calendar so that peer managers can continue to keep up morale throughout the year. Postalytics can help you automate this process.

11. Learning and Development

A LinkedIn study revealed that 94% of workers would stay with a company if it invested in their professional learning and development. Investing in improving job skills shows a company’s indebtedness to an employee for the increased value they can bring to a position.

Some ways to invest in your employees’ learning and development include:

• Providing a scholarship for work-related certifications
• Providing a scholarship for a work-related degree
• Funding out-of-town conferences in fun destinations
• Providing a meaningful budget for professional development

You can use Postalytics to automate sending scholarship letters, scholarship renewal letters, and budget allowances each year through a Triggered Drip campaign. 

12. Anniversary Milestone Recognition

Celebrating anniversary milestones helps employees feel appreciated when they have given years of their life to a company. A one-year milestone is important just as milestones in multiples of five or ten.

Anniversary milestones deserve public recognition within the company. Many companies offer raises or gifts of increasing value depending on the number of years or decades an employee has worked with a company. 

Anniversary milestones are also the perfect opportunity to use Postalytics to send an automated letter or postcard of appreciation. If the milestone comes with a gift card, tickets, membership, or subscription, you can generate a QR code or pURL to redeem it. 

13. Birthday Recognition

Birthdays are an excellent time to single out a person for recognition. Don’t forget birthday postcard mailings.

Because birthdays come around yearly like clockwork, Postalytics’ automated triggered drip is an excellent way to stay on top of them without having to worry that you’ll miss someone on a busy week. Birthdays are another opportunity to include a QR code or pURL to redeem an accompanying gift.

14. Subscriptions

Year-long subscriptions are an excellent gesture of appreciation. Some ideas include:

• Magazines
• Entertainment streaming
• Dry cleaning
• Meal services
• Subscription boxes of consumables (like snacks, wine, coffee, or something hobby-related)
• Fresh flowers or plants
• Books
• Clothing

Since these usually need renewing on a yearly basis, setting up an automated triggered drip campaign can allow you to express your continued appreciation yearly with a personalized thank you along with a notice that you’re extending the membership.

15. Lottery Tickets

Buying lottery tickets is another way to express thanks. Watching the revelation of the winning lottery number together can be fun, too.

First, use Postalytics to send a letter that integrates a personalized lottery number (or lottery numbers) for each of your employees. Then, let the anticipation begin.

Final Thoughts on Using Postalytics for Saying Thank You For Your Hard Work

Thanking talented employees for their hard work is important for company culture, workplace happiness, and employee retention.

One of the first and easiest steps you can take is to start to send appreciation letters and postcards for special events or milestones. Postalytics makes sending letters, emails, and postcards easy with these features (and more):

• Visual editor
• Templates and designs
• List importing and list library
• Campaign scheduling
• Personalized tags
• Personalized URL, pURL, and QR code integration
• List importing
• List library
• Address verification and validation
• Real-time mail tracking and delivery status alerts
• Retargeting campaigns
• Over 4000 Zapier integrations

Create your free Postalytics account today.