These days, appreciating employees is more of a checkbox for many companies. There’s Employee Appreciation Day. There’s an obligatory email that says, “thank you for your efforts.” There’s some branded mug that will go into a drawer. It’s not that any of these gestures are incorrect, but they’re far from memorable. Appreciation should take more care than that.

Companies that get this right recognize appreciation needs to feel personal. It doesn’t have to be from the top-down with exorbitant gifts. It just needs to feel like someone actually saw what someone else was doing and cares enough to acknowledge it in a meaningful way.

Know What People Actually Appreciate

Appreciation on a mass level fails to acknowledge that all employees are not interchangeable. For example, some employees appreciate getting acknowledged publicly before all their peers while others would literally rather curl under their desks than have their names called out at a company meeting. Some people want appreciation based on growth opportunities, others require work/life balance and others just want to feel as though they do something meaningful.

Thus, the best way to give appreciation is to know who you give it to. What are their out-of-work interests? Are they struggling with anything? What would mean so much more than giving a half-hearted pat on the back that makes a person cringe or puts them in performative mode?

This doesn’t take covert surveillance. This takes two people having genuine conversations and one actively listening. If managers and peers can pick up on specific details, appreciation becomes easy to implement.

Make Celebrations Inclusive, Not Exclusive

Far too often, celebrations in the workplace unintentionally exclude others. For example, the team dinner at the restaurant with no gluten-free options. The happy hour that can’t accommodate all parents rushing home to pick up their children. The cake to celebrate an ending project that half the team will turn down for allergies.

These oversights send an unintended message: this celebration isn’t really for everyone. When planning any kind of workplace recognition or celebration, considering diverse needs should be standard practice, not an afterthought. Options such as a halal corporate cake ensure Muslim employees can fully participate in celebrations, while also being perfectly enjoyable for everyone else. The same principle applies to timing events during work hours so parents aren’t excluded, or choosing venues that work for people with mobility considerations.

Inclusive appreciation does not require one to bend over backwards for every potential option; it just requires minimal effort into consideration so people actually feel included and thus, the appreciation means something.

Be Time Sensitive

People who give recognition six months post-incident do not come across as appreciated; people who receive recognition shortly after the fact realize that someone genuinely saw what they had done and wants to ensure it’s not forgotten.

Time sensitive appreciation does not mean that every time someone does a mundane task or small piece of work for a project it needs to be recognized right away; that might become exhausting for all parties involved.

However, if someone goes above and beyond in a presentation, if they’ve solved an impossible problem or if they assisted a coworker when really they didn’t have time, appreciation needs to come sooner than later to show someone’s been paying attention.

The forgotten annual review where someone lists everything awesome they did nine months ago feels like they’re just doing their job. The genuine thanks two months in feels heartfelt.

Get Specific About What They Did

“Nice job on that project”—while appreciated—may go in one ear and out the other because it’s vague. While appreciation is great, specifics about what someone did and what it meant reinforces that the acknowledgment comes from someone who actually paid attention.

Instead of “thanks for your hard work,” it could be “the way you restructured that client presentation made the whole proposal stronger, and I think it’s why we won the account.” Instead of “good team player,” it could be “you jumped in to help finish the data analysis when the deadline got moved up, and that saved the entire timeline.”

For someone to dig deeper takes effort because it means understanding what people did and how it’s critical to have follow-through as that cannot come from any template.

Encourage Peers to Appreciate

Appreciation doesn’t always have to flow from top-down only; employees appreciate each other! Sometimes it’s more meaningful because colleagues know what it takes to do what and can better acknowledge it.

Companies that build systems around peer appreciation often cultivate better teams—for example, by building a time frame in meetings for shout outs or systems in which peers can appreciate one another. When this is built into an equation, company-wide appreciation becomes part of the culture instead of something every quarter the boss remembers as an afterthought.

Different Contributions Deserve Different Levels of Recognition

Not everything deserves the same level of recognition. Sometimes completing tasks is just expected and something someone else does beyond one mark should be appreciated to a greater extent.

For example, if companies appreciate everything across-the-board, they’re watering down mediocre gestures for those endeavors worth acknowledging. Of course it’s not good to ignore those doing their jobs but there should be a difference between “thank you for doing that” vs. “That was exceptional what you accomplished here.” Employees know it—appreciation without merit is like participation trophies; there’s a difference.

Meaningful workplace appreciation comes down to understanding what’s truly required instead of putting forth generic gestures because none are truly better than another. It requires effort—but that’s where it gets successful.