For a recent Employee Appreciation Day, everyone on my team decided to prepare an individual 'Note of Appreciation' for one of their colleagues that they would read during our morning celebration breakfast.

Names were drawn in advance and each team member took on the task of preparing a note for their colleague that they would share with the group during the celebration. The entire team really got into it and far exceeded expectations. People created poems, riddles, scrapbook pages with pictures and charts, and stickers to describe the employee's interests; anything from travel, to sports, to shopping. We had one colleague build a frame of pictures, including one of the person whose name he had picked and several of the beautiful places the person had visited around the world, sharing something about a colleague that the team did not know. It was a fantastic and happy experience, and we talked about it as a group for a long time after that day.