Our CEO was talking with her friend last night who shared how her company is at the top of their game when it comes to engaging their employees during the COVID pandemic with thoughtful COVID Care Packages to show support and solidarity.
Once a quarter, each employee receives a care package with some goodies and a thank you note, all handled by their HR team.
I loved the idea and wanted to share some of the good stuff and perhaps inspire some of you to do something similar for your employees. If you start now, you may just have enough time to get these out before the holidays.
This article provides step-by-step instructions and a personalized employee survey sample to create thoughtful employee COVID Care Packages.
How to Create Employee COVID Care Packages
1. Determine your budget.
Create your COVID Care Package budget. Say, x$ per employee.
2. List & source items.
Create a list of items that you may want to include in your employee COVID Care Packages and make sure that you can source them for availability and immediate delivery. (Think Amazon Prime). These items will become options and their count will be determined once you collect your employee preferences with a survey.
3. Survey your employees to personalize each COVID Care Package.
It’s best to get people what they want, and not what they don’t want - or can't have. (You don’t want to include a bottle of Baileys in someone’s COVID Care Package if they’re regularly attending AA).
You can't assume, so ask! And your employees will feel like "you so get me".
- Based on your item categories and options, create an employee survey. Be sure to include a response deadline date.
- Here’s an Employee COVID Care Package survey example for collecting individual preferences. Consider keeping the purpose of the survey high level if possible, so that the arrival of Care Packages are an unexpected surprise.
- We created this survey using Survey Monkey but if you don’t have a survey app, Survey Monkey provides you with a free account that would likely accommodate what you need to accomplish here.
- Once the responses are in, print each individual response page in Survey Monkey for your COVID Care Package assembly line.
4. Buy the stuff.
Purchase the necessary items based on the survey responses:
- The COVID Care Package items
- Bubble wrap/packing paper
- Wrapping paper or tissue paper, ribbon/bows
- Boxes
- Packing tape
- Address labels
- Occasion-appropriate cards
- Thank you
- Happy Holidays.
5. Assemble your COVID Care Packages.
- Make sure the people creating the packages wear PPE, are symptom and virus-free, and are vigilant about handling protocols. Consider ordering gift baskets online if you can’t ensure adherence to protocols.
- Carefully pack the items with enough protection with paper or bubble wrap.
- Write a handwritten card.
- Don't forget to throw in that wrapped roll of toilet paper!
- Seal the packages.
- Choose your delivery partner
6. Virtual Team Building Games
Top off your COVID Care Packages with regularly scheduled remote team building games. Here are some ideas. Check out the tiny camp fire!
7. Get ready for low turnover/high retention!
This thoughtful gesture will engage not only your employees, but their families who have a lot of influence over your employee's love it or leave it decisions. They won't easily forget this gesture.
Sarah Visca is the Operations Manager at
ConnectsUs HR, a company that provides tools & resources to quickly set up a Human Resources department.
You can contact her
here.
