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.
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:
This is the classic approach: celebrate someone’s birthday on the actual day with cake or a special lunch.
Use this only if: You have a very small team (fewer than 10 people) and someone loves managing birthday logistics.
Some teams give the birthday person a choice—e.g. pick the Friday lunch venue, get a small gift, or have a shout-out.
Use this if: Your culture is very personalized and you can handle the overhead.
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).
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.
The following birthdays happened this month:
| Name | Site | Birthday | Dietary Note |
| {{ NAME }} | {{ CITY }} | {{ DATE }} | N/A |
--
Notes:
<This email is sent as per https://www.ssw.com.au/rules/celebrate-birthdays>
✅ Figure: Good example – Automatically generated monthly birthday email that makes celebrations easy and scalable