celebrating mother’s Day at work

how to celebrate mother’s day at work

This article will feature some great ideas to celebrate Mother’s Dat at work, including team activities, building a mom-friendly culture, and hosting wellness experiences!

Mother’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the great mothers and mother figures in our lives, organizations, and the world. We are grateful for all the incredible women who step up and embrace the role of caregivers, particularly working mothers who navigate motherhood and corporate careers every day and this deserves recognition. Recognizing your team boosts employee morale and encourages job satisfaction.

Mothers can often feel not seen, and this is an awesome way to highlight what working moms bring to the table, give your colleagues an opportunity to reflect on what motherhood means to them, and possibly send a little token of appreciation to moms in your organization.

important notes about celebrating Mother’s Day with your corporate team

Mother’s Day (US) is celebrated on the second Sunday of May, May 8th, 2022. If your company is going to partake in any Mother’s Day celebrations, be sure to schedule them during the week and/or working hours.
Mother’s Day is not a joyous occasion for all. Some people may not have a mother to celebrate with, some families may be struggling to become parents, and some mothers may have experienced losses. We will work to ensure our activities can still be enjoyed by many regardless of their current circumstances.
Remember, not all mothers are created equal. Think about the wording surrounding Mother’s Day, and remember it may not all be applicable or appropriate for the workplace. Ensure you are inclusive of all forms of caregivers and family dynamics including LGBT+ families, foster, step, and adoptive parents, and parents from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

Our team-building ideas to celebrate Mother’s Day with your remote team:

Mom Friendly Work Culture

Building company culture is a massive reason why we encourage you to invest in holidays and special occasions like Mother’s Day. It is an opportunity to examine our current practices and act on the areas that need improvement to potentially increase work-life balance for your teams.

How can we begin to build a mom-friendly work culture?

Value Flexibility: Depending on your role within the organization, you may not have the power to make structural changes regarding parental leave, PTO, etc. However, as leaders and managers, we can certainly work towards building a culture that allows for and encourages flexibility that working moms can benefit from.
What does this look like in practice? Think about an example: your meeting scheduling.
Are you scheduling meetings during potential school drop-off time, or around the time kids get home from school? What is the impact of this on moms working from home? These are really simple but important changes you can make that will have an immediate impact on the life of working parents.
Mother’s Day Tip: Arrange your week so your team can get a little extra time off before Mother’s Day weekend. For those celebrating over the weekend, wrapping up early on Friday, or beginning your Monday morning a little later than usual can be an awesome reward!
Network for Parents: Create a hub on one of your social media or team platforms for parents to have a place to connect. This can be a great resource for new parents who are being reintroduced to the workforce and for those navigating the changes of post-pandemic life.

Family Friendly Team Building Activities

An awesome way to show moms your company is welcoming of the little people in their lives is to host a family-friendly event the whole family can enjoy! Team-building activities are naturally great for boosting employee morale and helping with job satisfaction, so add a Mother’s Day theme to the event to make it that much more special.

What family-friendly team-building activities can you host this Mother’s Day?

Arts & Crafts: Host a card-making party for Mother’s Day, kids can be invited along for a fun session, and those without kids can make a card for an awesome mom in their life!
Bake Along: Chocolate is the way to many of our hearts, why not host an easy session kids can tag along too?
KraftyLab offers Chocolate Truffles and Chocolate Bombs team-building sessions that are easy and accessible. Let the kids have fun by decorating them, and even share a delightful cup of hot cocoa with mom at the end! For the adults, you can still enjoy rich and delicious desserts, and you won’t even have to share them!
Watch Party: Share a poll with your team and have them vote on their favorite family-friendly movie and host a watch party for the whole family to enjoy! This can be an awesome way to have fun with your team, but also a great opportunity to send along a gift for moms! Check out a Family-Approved Snack Box, a Mother’s Day Snack Bundle, a Woman-Owned Snack Boxes, or Movie Night Box!

Wellness Team Building Activity

McKinsey & Company’s study on Women In The Workplace highlights the higher levels of stress for working women and how they are burnt out, and how they are also more likely to provide emotional support and encourage well-being for their team members.

Give the gift of wellness to your team this Mother’s Day by arranging a zen experience for the whole team to enjoy, and even little ones can be involved! You will be helping the whole team find opportunities to prioritize wellness and giving them the tools they need to practice.

What wellness activities can you gift your virtual team?

Wellness Retreat: Host a wellness retreat where your team can engage in meditative and relaxing exercises. KraftyLab offers group meditation and group yoga classes that welcome participants of all abilities and require no prior experience!
Self-Care Package: Send your team a wellness gift package from a wellness company! This will be an incredible way to boost morale and aid them in their wellness journey. Loti Wellness provides corporate gifting boxes including face masks, serums, and more. For the women, and moms in your team, you could add a ‘The Making Of A Strong Woman’ journal to practice mindfulness and reflection.
Mother’s Day Tip: Since we may not know fully our employees’ personal lives, a great idea is to choose woman-owned and mom-owned companies to create your wellness gift packages. This way, you are supporting women and moms, instead of sending a specific gift to moms in your company. This will ensure inclusivity and build rapport across your organization.
Wellbeing Subscriptions: In honor of Mother’s Day, gift your team a well-being subscription such as Headspace or Calm which even includes lullabies and kids stories to help kiddos practice meditation, and sleep better, among other things!

Social Media Platforms

Using our social media platforms to engage with Mother’s Day content is a great way to help reach a wider audience. While your website may hold more commercial content, social media is a platform where we can share more personal and special content.

How can you use social media to celebrate Mother’s Day?

Shout-out a Mom: Mother’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate ALL the incredible moms in our lives, like our mothers, grandmothers, spouses, or even an awesome mom friend! As organizations, we have a platform to put these women on the pedestal they deserve and share why they are so special.
Give thanks to a Mom: Mothers are often wise and insightful and are there to support us when we need it. A really simple, yet effective social media campaign to highlight awesome moms is a prompt to thank moms!
This could be highlighting the best advice a mom has given you, or little habits you have picked up from your mom. This is applicable to children, but also to co-parents and spouses who may want to highlight their kiddos' mom!
Support working moms: Let’s begin the conversation and ask the moms within our organization about their experiences.
What is it that makes their roles fulfilling? What hinders their ability to thrive within their role? What could their company or team do to make their working life better? These can be uncomfortable but they are an essential step to doing better for working moms.

The main take-away

There are many actionable steps we can take daily to support working moms within our organizations. We can have open and honest conversations, we can promote flexibility, we can host fun team-building events and invite the whole family along.

The goal is ultimately the same: build a culture in which moms are valued and appreciated. Women are more than their parental status, but their parental status is an integral part of who they are and that cannot and should not be ignored.

A personal note from the author: To the moms here at KraftyLab, we see you, we appreciate you and we are so lucky to have you.