Every year, Employee Appreciation Day is an opportunity for companies around the globe to celebrate their workers—

from lunches to special gifts to even just notes of thanks, it’s a chance for leaders to show their employees just how much they appreciate all they do for the company year-round. At Integrity Staffing Solutions, while we celebrate the occasion, we also view employee appreciation as much more than a once-a-year effort!

We take our motto of being “associate-first” to heart every day of the year—it’s much more than a tagline but part of our overall organizational mindset. In fact, our investment in and dedication to our associates is one of our company’s core values, meaning we have it baked into every aspect of our business model and we strive to live up to our dedication to our associates in everything from our policies to our benefits to our culture.

For instance, when new associates join our company, we use our leading technology to match them to the right role—not just for our client but for the employees themselves. We want to make sure workers are doing a job they love and developing the skills they’re looking for to take their career to the next level.

And we want to come along for that journey! As part of our associate-first mindset, we invest significantly in the future of each of our associates. For example, our Next Step U program connects workers to free, online education courses designed to help them pursue specialized skills. We’re eager to see our associates follow their interests in a way that will help them move up in their career—and make them more engaged, satisfied workers in the meantime!

We also aim to make the day-to-day work of our associates a little easier by relying on innovative technology, like that deployed in our Opportunity Engine app. Here, associates can get connected to new work, onboard, sign up for and change schedules and more, all with just a few clicks—taking some of the hassles out of the workday. We also recognize that finances can be a major source of stress for workers, so we offer associates access to Payactiv, where they can get their on-demand wages without having to wait for a formal payday.

All of that work is supported by a deep drive to put our associates first. For us, it’s not a fad, a gimmick, or an annual opportunity—thinking about our workers first and foremost is just how we do business. When our associates are happy, our clients are happy—and when both are happy, we’re happy!