MILWAUKEE — Downtown employee appreciation week is back to reward the city's dedicated workforce with five full days of incentives, giveaways, discounts and more.
"It's really our way of saying thank you to the over 90,000 people that typically work in downtown Milwaukee," said Milwaukee Downtown BID #21 CEO, Beth Weirick.
"It's really nice to see a great community here and to see the city do something for its employees," said downtown employee, Jada Boggs.
For the past 17 years, the weeklong event has offered a variety of opportunities for businesses to engage with the downtown workforce.
"We know how important this workforce is in the messaging that downtown Milwaukee is a great place to locate your headquarters, to raise and grow your business," said Weirick.
Last year, appreciation week had to be held virtually because of the pandemic. But as more people begin to return to the office, event officials wanted to make this appreciation week even more special.
"We know that there were a lot of people that struggled over the last year and a half," said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
"Two days a week we go in, so we're slowly kind of getting ourselves acclimated back in," said another downtown employee, Dionne Villarreal.
According to Milwaukee Downtown officials, nearly 1,000 people come to the event each year. But this year they were only able to draw about half of the normal attendance.
"Typically by this point in time, we've got a line going around the block, but as you can see, our line is a little bit smaller this year," said Weirick.
But event organizers say whether you're working in person or still working from home, they want to do everything they can to make sure each and every employee feels appreciated.
"If we bring joy and gratitude to several dozen people or several hundred people versus a thousand, we're really happy because that's what we've set out to do," said Weirick.
To find more employee appreciation events this week, click here.
