Ideas for NPSTW Theme Days

Based on a survey from the APCO Member & Chapter Services Committee

In February, APCO’s Member & Chapter Services Committee (MCSC) surveyed chapters about how they celebrate National Public Safety Telecommunicator Week. The survey included questions about financing NPSTW, theme days, gifts, public recognition and more. 29 chapters responded and over the next few weeks, we’ll share the results here to provide ideas for your initiatives.

Theme days are a fun and inexpensive way to celebrate. In this post, we share the answers to the question:

Do you celebrate theme days? If so, what have been some of the staff’s favorite days in which to participate?

The responses included:

  • Beach
  • Camo
  • Carnival
  • Collegiate
  • Concert t-shirt
  • Crazy hats, crazy socks
  • Decades-themed
  • Disney
  • Dress down
  • Farmer
  • Formal/prom
  • Friends
  • Law Enforcement/Public Safety
  • Mardi Gras
  • Monopoly
  • Movie characters
  • Murder mystery
  • Pajamas
  • Pirates
  • Red carpet
  • Royalty
  • Sports-themed
  • Superheroes
  • Tacky
  • Tie-dye
  • Tourist
  • Tropical/Hawaiian
  • Twin/Matching
  • Western
  • Wizard of Oz
  • Other
    • A toast-to-you (champagne glasses and bubbles)
    • Dress as your spouse
    • Harry Potter
    • Nature code day
    • Outer Space
    • Second-hand dress a co-worker. Employees selected a second-hand outfit from a second-hand store and the co-worker had to wear it on the second-hand day.

The most common answers were:

#1 Sports-themed
#2 Dress down
#3 Pajamas
#4 Decades-themed
#5 Crazy hats, crazy socks
#6 Superheroes
#7 Beach
#8 Tropical/Hawaiian

Other thoughts shared by the respondents included:

  • We find the best participation comes with themes where staff does not have to spend much on an outfit or costume.
  • We have a morale team that we all put in ideas suggested by all employees. The Morale Team then chooses the Top 5. Once the top 5 have been chosen, we create a survey to send out to all staff members in the center. Everyone has the opportunity to vote for their favorite theme. We give everyone about two weeks to make their selections. At the end of the two weeks which theme has the most votes, we celebrate that theme the whole week of NPSTW. For example, this year our theme is Fiesta, We have Fiesta-themed shirts that we are selling for everyone to purchase. The funds that we raise from the shirts go back into our NPSTW Funds.

Thanks to the MCSC for making this information available. In the next post, we’ll provide responses to the question of whether and what gifts are provided.