How Companies Can Recognize Veterans

Last week we talked about ways you can celebrate Halloween at the office. This week, we’d like to talk about ways to celebrate another upcoming
holiday, Veteran’s Day.

Veteran’s Day is celebrated on November 11 every year. Many employers hold special events in observance of the holiday.

However, many employers like to recognize and show their support for veterans, especially their veteran employees, throughout the year.

So we’ve compiled a few ideas for how your company can recognize veterans on Veteran’s Day, as well as any day of the year.

Check out the lists below:

Ways to celebrate Veteran’s Day at the office:

1. Name Veteran’s Day an official paid company holiday.

2. Send an internal email on Veteran’s Day thanking veterans (& their families) for their service.

3. Provide breakfast or lunch to celebrate.

You can get free “thank you, veterans” stickers and posters for the event over at veterans.com.

Ways to recognize veterans throughout the year:

1. Make public donations to VA causes.

There are several wonderful organizations to help, from the Wounded Warrior Project, which assists and cares for injured veterans, to USA Cares, an organization that assists veterans with finding housing, jobs, and more (based in our home state of Kentucky!)

Click here to visit Charity Navigator, a website that lists all veteran-related charities, their contact info, and rankings based on spendings and accountability.

2. Display the American flag at all facilities.

3. Offer volunteer opportunities to staff to assist with various military charitable causes.

4. Support local VFW posts or hold events there.

Click here to find a VFW post near you.

5. Include veteran recruitment sites in your recruiting process.

A few options include veteranrecruiting.com, recruitmilitary.com, and hireourheroes.org.
For our local readers, Recruit Military often hosts job fairs in Louisville for veterans. The next event will take place on April 14, 2016. Click here for info on how your company can participate.

One final note:

Employers sometimes ask about offering cash incentives for Veterans. For legal reasons, we would not recommend this idea. Doing so could be labeled as discrimination and showing favoritism/added benefits to a certain protected class over another.

That’s our list!

We want to know: Do you have anything you would add? What has your company done in the past to celebrate and honor veterans?

Also, we would like to take this time to thank our veterans for their service! Happy Veteran’s Day from all of us at Integrity HR!