By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent, Sonnhalter
As any salesman, engineer or manufacturer will tell you: marketing has it rough.
Done laughing? Well, here at Sonnhalter, we added a new twist to our vacation plan. Our team members now get one extra day of vacation, no matter their time with the company.
The catch? You have to take it on a B2T (Business-to-Trade) holiday. What’s that? As you’ve probably noticed from your social media feed, almost every day has some “official” holiday designation. National Left-Hander’s Day (August 13), National Look Up at the Sky Day (April 14), Cookie Cutter Week (December 1-7).
But what you might not know is there are an abundance of days dedicated to the skilled trades, like:
- Plumbing Day (January 27) Celebrating the birthday of Thomas Crapper
- Be Electric Day (February 11)
- Worship of Tools Day (March 11) I’ve seen the way some guys look at tool boxes, so this isn’t a stretch
- April is National Welding Month
- North American Occupational Safety & Health week is the 1st full week of May
- June 22 is National HVAC Tech Day
- National Ugly Truck Day falls on July 20 this year
- August is Water Quality Month
- Labor Day of course in September
- October 14 is Manufacturing Day
- World Toilet Day is November 19
- National Roof Over Your Head Day is the 3rd of December
Now, I’m not trying to make you jealous of my workplace (although you should be). What I’m asking is, what are you doing to celebrate your trade?
Some manufacturers already embrace a holiday. The material handling industry makes an event out of Forklift Safety Day. PMPA and its members get energized for Manufacturing Day. We’ve created a downloadable/printable guide to Trade Holidays to make picking your day(s) easier.
But what can you do to draw attention to and celebrate your trade?
- Host a student day or employee picnic
- Promote it on your social media feed (it will make a nice, lighthearted break from just mentioning products)
- Send out a press release
- Encourage a day of community service to celebrate
- Email clients letting them know of the “holiday” (always nice to talk to them without it being sales or service related)
Basically anything you can do to use the day to celebrate your profession and the contribution it makes will show benefits in brand recognition, skills gap shrinking and employee morale.
So find your trade holiday and seize it!
