Looking for ways to celebrate your line crews? Start brainstorming with these ideas:

1. Write a news release highlighting the men and women who connect your community to broadband, telephone and electric service.

Highlight the number of miles of line maintained and the fact that line crews are always on call. Include quotes from longtime lineworkers, a lineworker you’ve recruited in the last year or so and mention any lineworker scholarships offered in your community.

2. Show and tell your story.

Have a chamber of commerce, Lions, Rotary or Kiwanis event in April? Offer to bring a line crew to the event to talk about life on the line, and let community members try out the gear. Work with your local parks and recreation department to organize a Touch a Truck Day; if one exists, make sure you participate! You can also work with a local elementary or middle school to arrange a visit from a crew. If you do, be sure to bring plastic hard hats for the kids with your logo on them. Tip: Give your line crews a few extra hats for their kids, too.

3. Host a “Lineman for a Day” event at your utility.

Your audience could either be staff members (here’s an example from Kentucky’s Electric Cooperatives) or high school students, as Community Electric Co-op does each year (read the story here).

4. Surprise snacks!

Add fun to the day by surprising crews with a paper bag packed with fresh fruit, energy bars and/or drinks and a thank-you card signed by staff and/or community members. Place the surprise snacks either in each utility truck early in the morning or place them in your utility’s linemen office/meeting space. If you have the budget, include a $10 gift card for lunch at a local restaurant. Supplies: Thank you cards, small brown paper lunch bags, snack variety packs, candy bars, and either bottled water or an energy drink. 

5. Biscuits and banners

Nothing says ‘Thank You’ quite like a warm biscuit. Treat your line crews to breakfast and hang a ‘Thank You’ banner on your warehouse dock. Keep the banner up for at least a week. No time for a banner? Post 8.5 by 11 flyers around the office and dock. Supplies: Call ahead to your local biscuit supplier (or a chain such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box). Order a biscuit for each of your lineworkers. You may want to order enough to feed other operations and engineering staff, too. Get a picture of your CEO/General Manager hanging up the banner to use in your newsletter.

6. Lemonade for lineworkers

As the linemen return to the docks, have either member service representatives and/or senior staff hand out lemonade to crews. Supplies: Buy in bulk from your local grocery store or buy sugar, water, and lemon juice and make it from scratch. Serve from a large thermos or other container; have a stack of plastic cups handy. Invite local press to snap pictures. If the afternoon time doesn’t work, consider having staff fill thermos for the linemen to take with them in the morning (some crews attach a thermos to their bucket trucks).

7. Ask consumer-members to say thank you.

If there’s one group you can be sure garners community love, it’s lineworkers. We’ve seen folks ask for lineworker valentine cards. Why not invite local schools to make cards for Lineworker Appreciation Day, too? If you want to make it even easier for community members to send love, consider creating a web page with a form for anyone who wants to give lineworkers thanks. Here’s an example from Alabama Power, an investor-owned utility. Surely we can do this, too!

8. Host a ‘Line Life’ photo contest.

Lineworkers have a unique point of view. Odds are your crews post plenty of pictures of line life to their social channels. Use a photo contest, complete with prizes or gift cards from local shops, to ask them to share their favorite work-related pictures. Showcase submissions on your social channels in April, then have members vote for the winners. Use hashtags #LineLife and #ThankaLineworker to tie the contest to your other celebration plans.