• Encourage staff nights out to allow team bonding and letting off steam.
• Lunch together – encourage a ‘fuddle’ type lunch once a month where everyone brings something in for staff to share and try.
• Eat lunch with the children – offer free school lunches for those members of staff that eat with the children.
• In summer, have a whole school picnic, giving an extra long lunch session for everyone to enjoy outside. Invite parents and carers too and for extra excitement, book an ice-cream van to come!
• Have breakfast together – croissants, patisseries and fruit, with fresh orange juice (perhaps as a treat provided by the head teacher!)
• Have a ‘Staff Kindness Week’ – take it in turns to ‘treat’ whoever gets chosen that week. Help them out in some way, bring them flowers, tidy their messy cupboard or leave them kind messages.
• Thank you/appreciation message board – have a message board in the staff room to add notes or tags such as the ones shown below to appreciate and praise each other. Pick one person per week to win a voucher – it only need to be a small amount (e.g. £5) for the winner to treat themselves on their way home. Supermarket vouchers might be a good idea. Download these lovely tags FREE for you to use here: Male, Female ‘You’re my Superhero’ tags.

• Use certificates or tags such as the ones above) to give to members of staff that have gone above and beyond that week – give them out in staff meetings along with chocolate!
• Provide free tea, coffee, sugar, milk and biscuits in the staff room.
• Allow a day off for staff who use their own time to run after school and lunch time clubs. Set a number of hours required to enable a day off.
• Take it in turns to bring in homemade cakes, biscuits, buns on a Friday. This will encourage a gathering n the staff room on Friday break times to see what has been made and how delicious it is! Non bakers can just buy!

• Allow staff to take time to go to their own children’s school events such as festivals, assemblies and nativities.
• Allow a day for report writing.
• Friday is chocolate day – bring in a tin or box of miniature Heroes – as all staff are heroes!
• Random cake offerings and biscuit tins left in the staff room by kind heads are very much appreciated, especially during stressful times such as during and after an OFSTED visit and exam periods.
• Many schools have ‘Star of the Week‘ prizes for children. Why not have a Staff Star of the Week or Colleague of the Month, with a nice treat for the winner?

• Encourage long service with ‘appreciation days’. If you’ve been at the school 3 years you get an extra day off a year, 5 years you get 2 every year and 10 years to get 3 days off every year.
• Have occasional wellbeing sessions as staff meeting/Inset days. Encourage staff members who are trained in other areas, such as head massage, yoga and meditation to provide these or ask parents who are trained in these areas to help.
• Have a free staff boot camp once a week,  possibly run by a willing member of staff – the PE lead perhaps?

We would love to hear any other ideas! Please let us know how you feel appreciated in your school by adding a comment below.