Alongside secret Santas and seasonal parties, many laboratories develop traditions to show appreciation to colleagues — from sweets and mulled wine to quizzes and ice-skating trips

How to thank your lab mates: eight ways to show gratitude at the end of year

A small wad of cash sits in a glass beaker labelled ‘motivation’, in a safe inside John Tregoning’s office. A vaccine immunologist at Imperial College London, Tregoning sticks some money in the beaker every time someone in his laboratory has a paper published. If the group publishes ten papers in one year, he doubles the cash. The proceeds fund a team dinner at the end of the year. “I quite like the cash as a physical reminder of the motivation,” he says.

Tregoning’s team varies from five to ten members. With such a small group, he stresses the need for teammates to support each other, and for senior staff to lead by example. “There’s a family dynamic to it — not in a paternalistic way, but it’s supportive,” he says. “And when it works, it’s about support and growth — and some of that is praise and reward.”

Many workplaces have parties or team meals to celebrate the end of the working year, but some show true appreciation by cultivating group traditions. Nature asked group leaders to explain these, and how they thank colleagues for their hard work.

Fun and games

What is your boss’s cat’s name? This question was one of several in-jokes in a year-end quiz run by geochemist Robyn Pickering (the reason was “because my cat, Copper, had interrupted every Zoom meeting we had during the pandemic”, she says). Pickering and her team of around ten at the University of Cape Town in South Africa have been doing an annual quiz since 2021, with each person submitting five questions. “Then you end up with something like 50 questions,” she says, ranging “from specific, like, ‘What year was this paper published?’, to silly things.”

Her university’s academic year follows the calendar year (as is the case for some institutions in the Southern Hemisphere), so December is a time to celebrate the end of both years. “Everything completely winds down,” says Pickering. Her team has a party “to celebrate the successes of the group, to reflect on what went well, and to make plans in a kind of relaxed way for the following year”.

Pickering hosts an afternoon barbecue party at her home. It’s family-friendly and the team can enjoy the sunny weather — which isn’t to say the atmosphere is totally relaxed. “The quiz gets really competitive,” she laughs. “Everyone takes it super seriously. And, in general, we all do shockingly badly — lots of scores below 50%.”

Postdoctoral palaeoecologist Tsilavo Razafimanantsoa has worked in Pickering’s lab since March 2023, and came to the quiz as “the new guy”, he says. His PhD research in South Africa and master’s and undergraduate studies in Madagascar didn’t have such end-of-year traditions, and he appreciates the barbecue party. “I think it’s a good way to get to know your colleagues,” he says, adding that the quiz questions people submit often reveal details of their lives.

Razafimanantsoa also notes that having the party in Pickering’s home offers a personal touch. Hosting her team is “a way to show trust, and to say thank you as well”, he says.

Geochemist Benjamin Tutolo also welcomes his team into his home for dinners to show appreciation — although this can happen at any time of year.

“I have Italian ancestry, and we have long traditions of making interesting, fun recipes,” he says. “So, a party that we’ll do is that everyone brings their own filling for raviolis, and then the Tutolo family makes the [pasta] sheets. And then we make a ton of raviolis, it’s super fun.”

Tutolo manages a group of 10–15 graduate students, postdocs and undergraduates at the University of Calgary in Canada. His team’s end-of-year tradition is to anonymously rank all the papers that the members have read at their weekly meetings that year. Doing it anonymously means that the more junior members can participate without worrying about what senior colleagues think, he says.

When ranking the papers, Tutolo says, they use categories such as “Why was this published in (insert prestigious journal name here) again?”, and “Most thought-provoking”. He enjoys seeing what people liked reading, as well as “the ones that turn out to be ragged on by everyone”.

The most important element of team bonding, Tutolo says, is to show that the principal investigator likes to have fun, too. “Just because you’ve risen to some level of respect doesn’t mean that you’re still not a grad student at heart. And I think that gets lost.”

Sweet treats

Padmavathi Alwar Ramanujam, a scientific officer at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Kalpakkam, India, is part of a team of 50. In her lab, the group head greets everyone individually at the start of January to personally wish them a Happy New Year, and gives each staff member a gift of traditional Indian sweets, often made with ghee and dried fruit. Now, others follow his example, doing their best to greet as many colleagues as they can on the first working day of the year.

“It’s an important part of team building, because we are all from different backgrounds,” says Padmavathi. “Greeting everyone individually creates a special bond — reiterating everybody’s importance in our group and giving a sense of belonging.” Another group tradition is to take stock of progress in December, which is the midway point in the team’s project year.

Ernesto Rafael Osorio Blanco agrees that sweet treats are a great way to say thanks. Osorio, a Venezuelan chemist at Beiersdorf, a skin-care company in Hamburg, Germany, leads a team of four that researches fresh ways to treat wounds. Every year on St Nicholas Day, 6 December, he stashes chocolates around the office for his team to discover. This tradition is widely popular in Germany, Osorio says — although it’s usually for children.

He and his team also enjoy a holiday breakfast together, often on 6 December itself, at which they look back on the year. “Everybody brings something — I like to bake a typical Venezuelan Christmas bread called pan de jamon — and we just set aside one to one-and-a-half hours where we come together to reflect a little bit on what has been good, what has been maybe not-so-good, and how can we improve?”

But the group’s extra-special tradition is a trip to a Christmas market. Germany is known for these markets — which feature stalls selling seasonal food, drinks and artisanal gifts, plus live music — and with dozens in Hamburg, the group visits a new one each year. They walk to a nearby market and often discuss their family traditions, taking in team members’ roots in Venezuela, Iran, Germany and Ukraine on the way. “The atmosphere is nice,” he says. “With the cold weather, it’s very sentimental. Everyone gets a mulled wine, is in a festive spirit and you can even smell the Christmas trees.”

Building connections

Sometimes traditions can grow from humble origins to reach people outside the team. Chuck Epstein, associate director of the epi-genomics programme at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a keen ice skater. Epstein developed his love for skating as a graduate student at the Rockefeller University in New York City, where he practised for hours every winter at a makeshift ice rink constructed on a tennis court.

Around 12 years ago, he gathered his team to visit a rink just a 15-minute walk from the institute. The first year, about six people came along, “because they didn’t know they had a choice”, he jokes. The tradition now encompasses skaters outside Epstein’s group. “We started inviting other people on the floor to join us. And now the word is outif you enjoy ice skating, there’s a group that’s goes at least once a year.”

The group now has 10–15 ice skaters, with four times as many joining for the annual lunch afterwards. For Epstein, it’s key that he enjoys the activity itself, and not just that it builds camaraderie. Enjoyment should be the focus of group activities, he says. “You should be yourself. Propose things that you personally enjoy, because you’ll be having a good time, and people want to be with people who are having a good time.”

Small gestures

Of course, showing gratitude isn’t something that lab leaders need to defer until the end of the year. Many who spoke to Nature mentioned how they try to make their team feel appreciated throughout the year. As Tregoning says, “It’s lots of little things, like buying cakes. If you notice people are working hard, do something — and it never has to be a big thing. More little things are better than one big thing.”

Padmavathi’s team has small parties or shares sweets to celebrate “every accomplishment”, she says, be it professional, such as getting a promotion, or personal, such as buying a house. Osorio tries to mark the end of every project in some way, usually with a lunch or coffee together, even if the outcome wasn’t what the researchers had hoped for.

Sometimes, even the smallest of gestures takes on huge importance.

“I’ve got a load of stickers that somebody gave me that say ‘good science, well done’,” Tregoning says. “They have acquired this kind of cult status. People are like, ‘Have I done enough to get a sticker?’”

Ziyin Wang, a postdoctoral immunologist who has worked with Tregoning for five years, laughs in agreement. “We take these stickers very seriously. John appreciates small achievements, like when you learn a new technique, or when you have overcome a very difficult experiment — he would really dish out the stickers.”

Wang keeps one sticker on her work notebook for its special significance. In the second year of her PhD, also with Tregoning, many experiments weren’t working. “I had just figured out why it was going wrong. John gave me a sticker and said, “This is what science is, really. Experiments fail probably 80% of the time. But just the process of finding out why you went wrong, and how to improve it, is really important.’”

“He makes it known that he appreciates what we do, regardless of the result.”

Nature 635, 1029-1030 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03829-w

This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Anne Marie Conlon