Employee Appreciation Day

Friday, March 1, 2024, is designated as Employee Appreciation day.

Of course, if employees are appreciated only one day of the year, there is something terribly wrong in the work environment. However, forcing a moment to encourage reflection on employee support is meritorious, and a designated day helps that.

Here at Georgetown we have a large variety of employees. Some of them work in countries or U.S. states far away from Washington, D.C. Some work remote from the campus, in workgroups that gather on Zoom most of the time but come to campus once a month or so for group face-to-face meetings. At the other extreme, we have colleagues who arrive every day and spend eight or more hours contributing to the university.

Unfortunately, the slow adaptation to a post-pandemic work environment has complicated communication among employees of the university. As I walk the halls of some academic departments, for example, most faculty doors are closed, but staffs are at their stations by and large, greeting students, visitors, delivery workers, etc.

It’s harder to deliver an impromptu compliment to a co-worker with the prevalence of Zoom/email/chat. Most Zooms are not spontaneous; text is a little better, but probably too task-oriented for effective affective communication. There’s no coffee maker to permit a chance meeting of members of the same unit. It was a lot easier just passing a colleague in the hall or exiting side by side from a meeting.

In universities, everyone is an employee of the institution. In that sense, each of us has some day-to-day opportunity to appreciate our colleagues. Employee recognition is a duty of a work culture not only a management design.

Employees of Georgetown spend many hours a week working to fulfill a proud mission of the university. All of them are asked to be flexible to the dynamic nature of a university, to be empathetic to those they serve directly, to take the initiative to fulfill the mission, to show integrity, to be honest, and to support the culture of people for others so key to Georgetown. Appreciation paid for these attributes is highly deserved. We’re fortunate to have mission working for an end much larger than our own job. Doing this in our work groups is a meaningful part of many of our lives.

So, what’s the point of this? This Friday is a great reminder that supervisors need both to facilitate the productivity of their teams, but also foster a culture of appreciation of all those in their unit for their contributions to the whole. Supervisors need to link the larger mission of the university to the contributions of every single staff member. So, Friday is a good moment to thank them for those contributions. Supervisors have a special role.

But it’s also an opportunity for everyone. We can thank our peers in the university for what they do for the mission and their support of our own work. We can thank those in similar positions as ours. We can take just a moment to note that their work helps us in ours. So, in a sense, all of us have a role in building a culture of appreciation of all employees. Friday might be a day to communicate that in a simple but sincere way.