Do you celebrate birthdays?

Imagine being the person who has to scramble for a last-minute cake or hunt for obscure Serbian food because someone’s birthday popped up without warning. Now multiply that by two or three birthdays a week.

That might seem manageable in a small team, but it quickly becomes unscalable as your company grows. Celebrating every birthday on the exact day sounds nice in theory—but it drains time, attention, and money.

Make birthdays scalable

Celebrating birthdays is important—it shows appreciation and builds team morale. But like any good process, it should scale as your team grows.

Here are some common approaches:

🎂 Option A – Same-day celebration

This is the classic approach: celebrate someone’s birthday on the actual day with cake or a special lunch.

Why it’s not scalable

Hard to maintain once you have 1+ birthday per week
Easy to forget or miss someone
Last-minute planning stresses whoever is responsible

Use this only if:
You have a very small team (fewer than 10 people) and someone loves managing birthday logistics.

🎁 Option B – Let individuals choose how they celebrate

Some teams give the birthday person a choice—e.g. pick the Friday lunch venue, get a small gift, or have a shout-out.

Why it may/may not work

Adds admin complexity—requires someone to follow up and remember preferences
Not all team members enjoy making these decisions
Still requires manual coordination

Use this if:
Your culture is very personalized and you can handle the overhead.

✅ Option C – Monthly grouped celebrations (Recommended)

Group all birthdays into a single celebration at the end of each month, ideally during something already on the calendar (e.g. Friday Free Lunch).

Why this works best

Scales well as your team grows
No one gets forgotten
Easy to delegate and automate

The best way to do this is with a monthly summary email to the organizers using an automated Power Automate flow, scheduled for the last Monday of each month.