Preparing an Employee Appreciation Letter

An employee appreciation letter is a great tool to improve morale as well as recognize deserving employees.

The one mistake many supervisors make is that they over think things. This turns into complicating something so much that they end up not doing it at all.

An employee appreciation letter does not have to be so formal it gets stuffy.

In many cases a hand written thank card is much more appreciated than a formal business letter. However, there is a time a place for both.

The hand written thank you card is great for those times when you want to recognize someone's efforts immediately.

The formal business letter is a great tool for those times when the employee needs to be recognized in a more public way. A letter like this may be presented at a formal gathering. The actual employee appreciation letter may be placed in a frame so that the employee can display it where they choose.

In either case the outcome is the same! The employee is recognized and appreciated for their performance.

A thank you card can be as simple as;

John,

Thank you very much for all the hard work you did to help us prepare for the corporate office visit.

Signed ...

On the other hand a more formal employee appreciation letter may look like this.

John,

Thank you very much for helping our facility prepare so well for the corporate office visit on June 15, 2012.

I personally received several positive comments from the Corporate Vice President, Mr. Harry Barns, on how efficient and clean our facility was. He personally asked me to thank you for the amazing job you were doing.

John, it is individuals like you that make our company as successful as it is.

Please except this gift as a small token of our appreciation. You are a valuable employee and we are all excited about our future.

Signed ...

Some key factors to remember when writing an employee appreciation letter is to make personal. In other words make sure you thank them for something specific. Don't generalize it!

On the other hand you don't want to go into such detail that you lose the purpose of the letter. So short and specific is the best way to go.

In other tip is to personalize it by addressing them by their first name only, and not Mr. or Mrs. There are some exceptions to this but as a general rule this works best.