Work anniversaries—sounds like the plot to an episode of The Office. It is amusing to imagine the Dunder Mifflin Party Planning Committee back-biting and in-fighting over the cake, decorations, and entertainment for not just birthdays but the annual reminder of every employee’s hire date. Farcical, right? Not to Rick Joi, a former software engineer who is now, in the words of his website, “the world’s leading work anniversary expert.” The premise of his INSPIRING WORK ANNIVERSARIES is simple: companies do a poor job of celebrating their employees, and that needs to change.
Right off the bat, Joi invites readers who would “rather skip the theory and get right to the practical part” to move ahead to Part 2 of the book, which offers specific ideas for celebrating work anniversaries. These are a mix of the typical (gifts, stock options) and the unexpected (a celebrity shout-out on Cameo). His focus is clearly on for-profit companies—nonprofits and the public sector don’t offer stock options, for instance—which is unfortunate. Moreover, some of his advice is contradictory, such as when he chides companies for “leaving a paper certificate on an employee’s desk” only to state later that certificates make a great gift. Yet these are minor annoyances in an otherwise intriguing, well-written book.
The real value of INSPIRING WORK ANNIVERSARIES is not the celebratory suggestions. Rather, it is Joi’s philosophy of the workplace. To some, celebrating every day that one of the employees was hired would seem insurmountable, requiring a huge culture shift (not to mention at least some expense) to bring it off successfully. Are the rewards worth the effort? Joi says they are, and he makes his argument with both passion and logic: a rare combination. While many employees contemplate their role in an organization, most of them spend little time considering the organization’s purpose. To Joi, purpose is the sine qua non not just of work anniversaries, but of work in general. Getting this wrong, he insists, “can do a lot of quiet damage to your organization’s culture,” while getting it right “unlock[s] a lot of value.” Such a message is sorely needed amid the upheavals of gig work, quiet quitting, and a still-unsettled post-COVID economy.
Writing in a simple but arresting style, workplace consultant Rick Joi argues that celebrating the anniversaries of employees’ hire dates is the key to unlocking company value in INSPIRING WORK ANNIVERSARIES.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader