Turn Career Milestones into Meaningful Moments with Yearbook™ by O.C. Tanner

Career anniversaries are more than dates on a calendar. They are moments when employees pause to reflect on their journey, their contribution, and their connection to your organization.

When handled intentionally, these milestones become powerful culture builders. When treated as routine, they become missed opportunities.

Organizations that understand this are shifting from simply marking years of service to celebrating careers. O.C. Tanner’s Yearbook was designed for exactly that purpose.

What is Yearbook by O.C. Tanner?

O.C. Tanner’s Yearbook is a personalized keepsake filled with messages, photos, and videos that help employees reflect on their journey and impact within your organization.

Yearbook is built to fit into a broader service awards and employee recognition strategy at your organization. Key elements of O.C. Tanner’s Yearbook offering include:

• Crowdsourced messages from peers, leaders, and teammates who have worked alongside your employees
• Photos and videos that capture shared moments, milestones, and memories
• Digital and printed formats, giving organizations flexibility for global, hybrid, and frontline workforces

For employees, the experience feels deeply personal. For HR teams, it is structured, scalable, and easy to manage through O.C. Tanner’s Culture Cloud® platform.

“We wanted something that was personal to each individual. Something that would make them feel valued. The Yearbooks that O.C. Tanner provided were just absolutely the right thing for us.”
—Total Reward Lead, Yorkshire Building Society

Why celebrating career anniversaries matters

Career anniversaries create impact on two levels: people and business.

The people impact

Employees want to feel seen, valued, and appreciated for their contributions over time.

Career anniversaries provide a clear opportunity to deliver this kind of meaningful experience. When employees see their story reflected through the words of people they worked with, they feel a stronger sense of belonging.

The business impact

The benefits extend well beyond how employees feel.

Organizations with strong service award programs see employees stay 2–4 years longer and experience a 35% increase in belonging and inclusion.

Those outcomes support:

• Reduced turnover costs
• Higher engagement and productivity
• Stronger, more resilient workplace cultures

By turning career anniversaries into shared stories rather than transactional moments, Yearbook helps employees feel valued while reinforcing the kind of connection that drives retention and performance.

How top companies use Yearbook by O.C. Tanner

Delta Air Lines

At Delta Air Lines, career anniversaries (known internally as “Deltaversaries”) are treated as meaningful moments that reflect both individual contribution and shared purpose.

Employees celebrating a service anniversary receive a custom pin, a curated gift selection, and a personalized Yearbook, creating a layered recognition experience that feels intentional rather than routine.

Yearbook by O.C. Tanner helps capture messages from peers and leaders that highlight the employee’s journey and impact over time. When paired with symbolic awards like custom pins, the experience creates a stronger emotional connection to the organization and reinforces pride in belonging to Delta.

This combination of storytelling and symbolism reflects a broader best practice: recognition resonates most when it connects people to the organization’s identity, values, and shared history.

CIBC

CIBC, a leading financial institution, modernized its career milestone program by introducing a customized, personalized Yearbook as part of a broader recognition transformation powered by O.C. Tanner’s Culture Cloud platform.

These Yearbooks are paired with custom lapel pins that showcase milestone years of service, giving employees a tangible symbol of pride they often wear at work.

The impact is both human and measurable.

One CIBC employee described receiving a Yearbook during a remote milestone celebration as “so powerful,” noting how hearing from colleagues about the impact of her career made the moment feel deeply meaningful—despite being virtual.

By integrating Yearbook into a modern, purpose aligned recognition ecosystem, CIBC ensures career milestones feel personal, inclusive, and connected to the organization’s values rather than isolated from everyday recognition.

Amway

At Amway, career anniversaries are designed to reflect both the employee’s journey and the organization’s values, using O.C. Tanner’s Yearbook to bring those together.

This allows Amway to move beyond simply acknowledging tenure and instead celebrate contribution, growth, and alignment with values—the elements that make recognition meaningful over the course of a career.

Yearbook supports Amway’s broader service award strategy by providing a consistent, scalable way to gather personalized content for each milestone while reinforcing cultural identity through branded imagery and narratives.

“Yearbook really helps us tell the stories of our employees, because everything links back to our values and who we are in our organization. The Yearbooks integrate and weave that imagery in.”
—Jenni Lee, Director of U.S. Benefits, Payroll, and Employee Programs, Amway

Large global insurance company

A large global insurance organization implemented Yearbook as part of a broader, modern recognition strategy that included points-based peer recognition and social recognition tools.

By positioning Yearbook as one component of an integrated recognition strategy, the organization was able to balance everyday appreciation with deeply personal milestone experiences that strengthened both participation and impact.

How to launch O.C. Tanner’s Yearbook for maximum impact

Start earlier than year 5

Many organizations wait until year five to recognize careers. That’s often too late.

Research shows a majority of employees miss recognition at year one and year three, even though those early milestones are when people are most likely to reassess their future with the organization. Start celebrating from year one.

Make it specific, not generic

The most common mistake organizations make with service awards is being too vague. Personalized, specific messages and notes of appreciation resonate.

• Prompt Yearbook contributors to highlight projects, growth moments, promotions, or ways the employee made a difference
• Encourage leaders to reference company values, behaviors, and impact over time
• Use Yearbook as a space to tell the employee’s story, not summarize their tenure

Add symbolic, custom awards to increase memorability

Research shows employees are far more likely to remember recognition experiences that include symbolic awards tied to the organization.

• Pair Yearbook with a symbolic award, numeral, or milestone-specific gift
• Ensure the symbolic award reflects company history, values, or shared purpose
• Match the award to the significance of the milestone

Involve the community

Recognition from leaders matters, but hearing from peers, past leaders, or cross-functional partners creates a richer experience. Be sure to:

• Invite peers and collaborators to contribute messages
• Include former managers or teammates when possible
• For larger milestones, consider involving family or external partners

Yearbook makes this easy by centralizing contributions in one place, turning recognition into a shared moment rather than a top-down gesture.

Plan ahead so the moment feels intentional

The most meaningful career anniversaries should be planned well in advance.

Use automated reminders to give managers time to prepare, set clear timelines for collecting messages and content, and coordinate delivery so the Yearbook arrives as part of a larger celebration, not after the fact.

Working with a recognition partner like O.C. Tanner can help you manage these milestone programs at scale.

Make career milestones memorable with Yearbook

Career anniversaries are rare moments when employees stop and take stock.

Organizations that use those moments to recognize contributions, tell stories, and reinforce belonging create lasting impact. Yearbook helps turn career anniversaries into shared memories that strengthen connection and support long-term performance.