I would say there is no greater time for employee appreciation than now. I believe we are entering an era where the customer isn’t the central focus of a business, rather, it is the emphasis on the employee, regarding retention and satisfaction, which will drive major business decisions. As we realize talent is plentiful and employees now must compete on a global level, companies as well must compete for the best talent on a broader scale.

The challenge is that employee appreciation is rapidly changing. Whereas employees use to want a workspace with ping pong tables and cafes and Segways on a large campus, employee sentiment is shifting towards enabling them to have the ability to seek that out on their own. Appreciation is in the early stages of being shown through the ability to choose when, where, and how you work.

Where you used to have mandatory break room celebrations, you now have emoji explosions in group chats and mostly feeble attempts to communicate recognition. We used to mandate someone come in no matter their specific occasion because they could be with their friends/colleagues. Today, you now must message them “Happy Birthday! Oh, and by the way, can you do this for me..” When you’re not able to provide a gathering or share moments during a special day, the question must be asked, ‘Should employers even require employees to work on their birthday (or equivalent occasion) if those employers are unable to communicate gratitude appropriately towards their employees?’

The future of employee appreciation will likely be communicated via more allotted freedom during personal special occasions OR by new technology specifically designed and built in an innovative way that will, at a minimum, communicate the same level of gratitude as those break room gatherings do. This technology needs to create the same warm-hearted “feelings” and collective ambition as was the primary reason office parties were constructed.

The new era of employee appreciation becomes exciting because it has the capability to be highly personalized. It should go without saying that while the intention of the “office party” is to connect us and share in a collective appreciation and ambition, depending on the person it can oftentimes have the opposite effect. Technology opens the opportunity to create a new more personalized level of appreciation that can communicate this “intended message” in a far more efficacious way.

The benefits that enable creativity to flourish on an employee level simply by allowing the individual to find the best method of their own work-life balance combined with personalized appreciation technology will ripple across all industries. After this personalized appreciation technology is addressed and combined with more freedoms, remote-first companies will thrive and see increased levels of morale. This will eventually lead to better products for the consumer, better-developed systems on an internal level, and greater flexibility to pivot business strategies swiftly.