The pandemic has taken an enormous toll — not just on physical health, but on mental and emotional well-being. Widespread lockdowns, social distancing, isolation, and uncertainty have led to spikes in loneliness, anxiety, depression, and stress globally.
But research suggests a surprisingly powerful counterbalance: simple acts of appreciation and gratitude — for family, friends, healthcare workers, co-workers, neighbours. Studies show that gratitude and social connection can significantly buffer against pandemic-induced mental health challenges — lowering stress, anxiety, and depression, improving mood and resilience.
Hence, appreciating people — genuinely, intentionally — is not just nice, it’s therapeutic. It builds social support, hope, and resilience.
With that in mind, here are eight evidence-backed, actionable suggestions to show appreciation and strengthen bonds during the pandemic — whether you’re at home, working, or connecting virtually.
During the tough and challenging times especially during the current global pandemic, it becomes very important to give extra attention to the appreciation and support people during this pandemic and boost their morale. Here we will look at the top employee recognition ideas that will make them happy and appreciate your efforts. Without wasting any time, let us check out the top suggestions.
Table of Contents
Make Gratitude a Daily Habit — Through Journaling or Reflection
One of the most accessible and impactful ways to channel appreciation is to build a regular gratitude practice. Research during the pandemic shows that people who maintained gratitude in daily life — even during lockdown — reported more positive emotions, lower stress related to COVID-19, and better subjective health.
A small experimental study among university students found that participants who did weekly “gratitude journal reflections” for 10 weeks had significantly better mental well-being than a control group.
How to implement:
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At the end of each day/week, write down 2–3 things you appreciate: could be people, small acts of kindness, or even simple comforts (food, a roof, a stable internet connection).
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Over time, this shifts your focus from stress and scarcity (common during crises) to what’s working — which improves emotional resilience.
1. Give More Time To Complete Difficult Tasks
Everyone is trying hard to get the work done in a proficient now. Even parents are trying hard to raise their family and sprint retrospective meeting template & balance the workload. Every single person is struggling to complete their work at the right time by self-isolating from friends and family. It is the adjustment that is tough on everybody. When you’re dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress, consider the impact it has created on productivity. Things have become a bit harder to complete and employees have to struggle with their own lives. As most of the people are working from home today, unfortunately, our work has taken a big hit. Hence, give enough time for the employees to complete their work and set simple rules.
2. Use Current Tools
Increasing VPN connections, video conferencing, and becoming reliant on collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack are the current norms. These tools are assisting us to work together as a team. The same goes true for recognition tools. Modern mobile recognition applications are very important. They will help us to send the quick ecard, digital points, and nominate the coworker for the award. We can see some real-time victories over social recognition walls with comments and likes on the teammate successes make the recognition an inclusive experience for everybody.
3. Send Personalized Thank-You Cards
The best employee recognition ideas will be sending thank-you notes or emails to your team to make them know they’re appreciated and doing an amazing job will go a very long way to maintain and improve the employee morale, particularly during such uncertain times.
4. Do It Frequently
Suppose you will be making recognition one-time occurrence, then it will not have any long-lasting impact. To spread your appreciation, make it a bit frequent. You can make it the top priority to recognize people for their different efforts. For the start, you can try and make this the habit of sending thank-you notes to someone daily.
5. Appreciate Everyone on the Team
During such challenging times, people should unite & find strength with each other. Take a little time to recognize those people and spread a few words of appreciation to boost their morale and collective efforts. This takes the whole team to get things rolling and chief accomplishments are generally achieved by the team. Make a habit to appreciate and recognize the group efforts – it can boost the team morale & encourage their teamwork.
6. Stay Flexible with Lesser Restriction
With schools and daycares closed down and major changes happening in the life of an employee, employers have to be flexible and understanding. Let your employees work from home. Ensure employees know that they can stay home while sick without consequences, and trust your employees if they say they are not feeling well or going through some personal issues. Always be in touch with them.
7. Give Benefits
Even though you cannot give raises, if your organization is putting in more time, you can consider giving fringe benefits to show your appreciation towards your employees. Maybe you may start covering the cost of the parking and public transportation, or offer a stipend that will cover a part of the employee’s internet bill or other bills.
8. Allow Your Employee to Choose a Project
Finding a passion for your work will be a bit of a challenge for some employees. Lots of employees will find value from working on a particular project that they have an interest in or find interesting, and you may do it by assigning some hours every week for the employees to work over the quarantine project. Assign every employee any quarantine project, which they will put their whole energy in for some hours, and watch the excitement about your work grow.
Why These Suggestions Matter — What Research Tells Us
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A 14-day “daily gratitude” study during the pandemic found that on days when people felt more gratitude, they reported more positive feelings, less COVID-related stress — and these effects sometimes carried over to the next day.
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Among frontline medical staff in a pandemic hotspot, those who reported more gratitude had lower depression — and this effect was mediated by higher perceived social support and hope.
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Interventions — like gratitude journals or online kindness/gratitude activities — significantly improved well-being, increased positive emotions and reduced anxiety in students under pandemic conditions.
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For people in work settings, gratitude and kindness were predictors of life satisfaction and lower anxiety, highlighting the importance of appreciation in organizational and community contexts.
In short: appreciation helps build social support, hope, and resilience — all of which are critical for coping with the psychological stress of a pandemic.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic — or similar crises — test not just our health systems, but our emotional and social resilience. In such turbulent times, small acts of appreciation — gratitude, kindness, support — can ripple outwards and strengthen relationships, reduce mental distress, and foster hope.
Whether through daily gratitude journaling, a heartfelt thank-you to a co-worker, helping a neighbour in need, or simply staying connected with loved ones — you have more power than you think. Making appreciation a habit is not just about being nice: it’s about building resilience, community, and emotional well-being.