Today is Veteran’s Day. It’s a day when people and organizations across the country take time out of their busy schedules to recognize the service of the men and women who served in our armed forces.

We understand and appreciate the importance of veterans in protecting our country and our freedom, so we honor them by saying thank you and acknowledging their contributions. Veterans and active duty members alike are motivated and inspired by the words of thanks from others. The recognition they receive contributes to the satisfaction they receive from doing their jobs.

What if employees viewed their jobs like our veterans? What if they came to work each day understanding that their contribution was a part of the bigger picture? What if they got satisfaction out of doing a good job? What if they felt inspired?

Today is a day to honor veterans, but every other day is an opportunity for you to recognize your employees. Practice recognition on Veteran’s Day by sending a thank you card to a local VFW, and every day after that, use recognition and praise to inspire your workforce.

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! “ - Maya Angelou

The holiday season is underway. All the usual signs are here: retail stores have put up the holiday displays, toy advertisements are in circulation, and that one annoying radio station has started playing Christmas music. At the same time, companies are beginning to consider the state of their holiday company celebrations. Typically, organizations take the end of the year as an opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of staff and the successes of the company. However, this year, it may seem like there are fewer reasons to celebrate…and less to celebrate with.

After a challenging 2009, many organizations are wondering if they can afford to have the traditional holiday party. Even if budgets are tight this year, we recommend not giving up on the holiday party altogether. This event is a primary employee morale booster and an important demonstration of good will for your employees. Instead, brainstorm ideas that will help cut back on the costs of the event without sacrificing the appreciation employees receive. This Associated Press article by Joyce M. Rosenberg has several ideas to pare back your company celebration costs.

Baudville’s also risen to the challenge to help organizations give their employees some much needed recognition this year. We’ve created three new holiday themes and coordinating employee gifts that help managers and company leaders give appreciation during the holidays. Most of the products in the collections are under $10 each, making recognition extremely affordable.

This year, when you select your employee holiday gifts and awards, you may find yourself recognizing different behaviors. Instead of broken sales records and exceeded revenue goals, accomplishments this year may be more subtle. Recognize the effort and hard work that helped you get through the year. And if you’re lucky enough to be able to recognize exceeded goals, make a big deal about it!

Don’t forget that for appreciation to be truly effective, it needs to happen more than once a year. An excerpt from Joyce Rosenberg’s article says it all:

“The boss needs to let employees know their work is appreciated no matter what time of year it is. And along with the positive feedback an owner needs to give, there should be periodic events to lighten the collective spirit…If you lay the groundwork throughout the year, it makes for a much richer environment, and people are much more willing to share."

Try “laying the groundwork” of recognition all year with day-to-day recognition practices, and extend employee cheer year-round.

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation.

When I was at the HR Southwest Conference, I told many of the HR Professionals who stopped by the Baudville booth how easy it would be to train managers to use day-to-day recognition tools. Last week, I mentioned some of the day-to-day recognition that managers can easily implement in their regular schedule. In this entry, I’ll share some tips for training your managers to use those tools to motivate, engage and retain your people.

1. Identify desired behaviors. A major obstacle keeping managers from recognizing employees is knowing what behaviors should be recognized. With a team of managers, review corporate values and give specific examples of what each behavior looks like in real life.

For example, one of Baudville’s core values is Nurture. The value is all about encouraging growth and learning. In practice, nurture can be an employee training a peer or showing a new employee around the building. For each of your corporate values, give a couple examples of how the value is lived out day-to-day at your organization.

Do the same exercise with department goals. Managers should walk away from training with plenty of example behaviors to look for!

2. Go out and LOOK for recognition moments. Knowing what behaviors to recognize only takes managers so far. They have to make an effort to recognize, especially if they haven’t practiced employee recognition regularly before.

Encourage managers to take time out of each day to simply stop and observe their team. Tell them they must go out and look for achievements and successes – they won’t always find them. Managers can walk around the office and directly ask employees what has been going well. Then write a note and give it to them!

3. Make it a habit. A few walk-a-bouts in the office won’t make your managers recognition professionals. A great tip is to schedule time on the calendar for recognition. Once a day or once a week, having time set aside to write and deliver thank you notes will make recognition more likely to get completed.

That’s it! Identify behaviors, go out and look for recognition moments and make it a habit. Train your managers quickly on these three areas and let them loose with recognition tools. Be sure to establish follow up criteria and check up on them in a few weeks to see how they’re doing.

And don’t forget to schedule time on YOUR calendar to recognize your managers’ hard work and dedication to day-to-day recognition.

Get your managers into the best recognition shape of their careers with some easy manager recognition training!

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation.

Today marks the finale of our Customer Service Week festivities and the close of our poll on your favorite Customer Service Week activity. The results were tied! "Lunch with the team" and "Puzzles, games and prizes" each received 44% of the vote.

At Baudville, we had a lot of fun with our Customer Service Week celebrations, and we kept our focus on recognizing the great customer service our team consistently offers our customers. If you're not a Baudville customer (yet), you can read about one of our Customer Service Representatives who was recognized as an Everyday Customer Champion by a customer strategy website. Do you have a story about great service you received from Baudville? Tell us about it!

Wednesday - SuperHero Day

Thursday - Decades Day

Last week we conducted a poll on our blog asking visitors if they use social media to give recognition. Here were the responses:

- 11.1% make sure every post has recognition
- 22.2% occasionally tweet a shout out
- 66.7% believe Facebook is a foreign entity

Our poll shows that 33.3% of respondents are using social media to express recognition and appreciation. I predict it will continue to grow as communication continues to be shaped by social media.

Social media has become a valuable tool for marketing, recruiting and sharing information. As more people jump on the social media bandwagon, giving feedback and praise will also become a common practice in these forums.

Today, many employees create and maintain personal “feel good files.” You may have given it another name, but I think you likely have a spot in your desk where you stash past thank you notes and cards of appreciation.

Every once in a while you even review your file for a little pick me up.

The words of thanks and appreciation remind you of past great performances and contributions to the organization. Every time you add another note to the file, you feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Imagine if your feel good file were on your online profile or your Twitter page. Not only would you be able to read through your feel good file when you needed a morale booster, but co-workers, managers, friends and recruiters could, too.

How would you respond if your boss gave you some props on your Facebook page? Or if someone contacted you about a job because of all the good things they’ve read about you?

Imagine your social media, loaded down with recognition...

On another note…

Did I mention that we now have a poll on our blog? Be sure to check back each week as it changes to give your two cents worth. For each poll, we’ll have a little write up (like this one) interpreting the results. Be a part of it!

You can receive updates from all of our blog entries, too, by subscribing to our blog email list on in the right hand navigation…right…over…there. Don’t miss any of the recognition updates!

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation. In addition to writing for the Baudville blog, she’s taking on the task of flooding the Twitterverse with positive mojo. Find out more - and join her cause! - at www.Twitter.com/Baudville using the hash tag #positivemojo.

Employee engagement has been a hot topic lately as companies look to fire up the troops and generate a positive attitude and positive results. With so many blog entries, tweets and articles popping up about employee engagement, one can’t help but ask, is this simply the latest fad? And how do I get some employee engagement in my organization?

There’s no question about it, employee engagement is no here today, gone tomorrow fad. The Gallup Organization has shown employee engagement to be a key to success. Engaged workforces make more money, save more money, are more innovative and more productive than lesser engaged workforces. Need an example?

• Best Buy claims than a 2% increase in employee engagement corresponds to, on average, $100,000 annual rise in store sales.
• Campbell Soup Inc, after a devastating Gallup review, raised employee engagement scores from 62% of managers not actively engaged in their jobs to 68% actively engaged. In turn, investors enjoyed a 30% increase on their Campbell’s stock.

So how does one tap this magical resource of employee engagement? Unfortunately, there are no short cuts to improving employee engagement. It takes a lot of hard work by both the employer and the employee. That’s right, employee engagement is a two way street.

To start down the path to engaged employees, management and staff must engage in active communication. Managers should let employees know what’s working and what needs work and vice versa.

At Baudville, we feel strongly that day-to-day recognition is a powerful way to provide regular positive feedback. Even Businessweek finds it’s smart to be positive and optimistic in the workplace. So get some note cards, send a few ePraise cards, and start recognizing the behaviors that contribute to your organization’s success. The more you recognize specific behaviors and attitudes, the more they’ll pop up in the day-to-day routine.

We have a white paper on day-to-day recognition that focuses on employee engagement. Download it for free from our Recognition Resource Center.

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation. In addition to writing for the Baudville blog, she’s taking on the task of flooding the Twitterverse with positive mojo. Find out more - and join her cause! - at www.Twitter.com/Baudville using the hash tag #positivemojo.

If you were at SHRM in New Orleans or WorldatWork in Seattle, you may have chuckled with us while watching one of our very funny Cubicle Chronicles videos. The Red Recruiter is a fan and mentioned our videos on his blog, too. We thought that, rather than gloss over the fact that there are many people who don’t do recognition well, we would take the high road and poke fun at them. Might as well turn some negative recognition moments into positive mojo, right?

The Cubicle Chronicles follow different recognition situations that fail to even remotely motivate or engage the recipient. Sadly, we’ve found that everyone can relate to one of these videos, and any people have experienced recognition done really, really badly at some point during their career. So why not try a different kind of recognition and see where it gets you?

We created these short videos to commiserate with employees and managers who may be suffering from out-of-date, insincere recognition in their workplace and to emphasis the need for a more relevant approach to employee recognition. We think that approach is day-to-day recognition, the frequent expressions of appreciation that happen on a regular basis between employees, managers and peers. 

The Cubicle Chronicles are also viewable on our website, YouTube and Facebook. Watch them, enjoy them, share them! Then give day-to-day recognition a try…and post your ideas for future episodes of the Cubicle Chronicles.

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation. In addition to writing for the Baudville blog, she’s taking on the task of flooding the Twitter world with positive mojo. Find out more - and join her cause! - at www.Twitter.com/Baudville and by using the hash tag #positivemojo.

You don’t have to analyze a study on motivational theory to understand some basic principles.  Namely, people respond positively when they are acknowledged and appreciated for their efforts.  This is not limited to the workplace, but in every aspect of the human condition—from raising children to greeting strangers.

So if everyone “knows” the importance of frequent, meaningful expressions of gratitude and praise, why don’t we practice it all the time?

Herein lies the mysterious chasm between a person’s knowledge and their actual behavior.

Take this example: who amongst us doesn’t know the importance of regular exercise and physical activity, eating healthy foods of the correct portion size, and avoiding harmful substances like tobacco?

Now—how many of us actual achieve the full execution of this knowledge, or even a significant percentage?  There would be no rising healthcare costs, and everyone would look like athletes!

What causes some of us to succeed while others fail?  Typically, the secret ingredient is having a coach or mentor.  Every athlete, from grade school to professional sports player, has a coach.  This person provides encouragement and guidance.

Keep this analogy in mind as you work to increase day-to-day recognition behaviors, either personally or in your organization.  Since none of us can realistically have a recognition coach by our side, think of Baudville as the next best thing!

Have you seen our new Recognition Binder System?  It literally is a coach that sits on your desk.  The tabbed dividers are filled with easy to follow (and easy to implement!) tools and ideas for frequent, consistent, immediate, and relevant daily recognition in your workplace.

Allison mentions one of the tools (the IOU Coupons) in her blog post below.

Just like any developing “athlete,” continued practice makes perfect.  Unlike diet and exercise, however, maintaining day-to-day recognition really can be easy!

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On the surface, Kurt is Baudville’s mild-mannered Director of Sales, but when it comes to recognition, he quickly turns into the dashing Director of Positive Mojo. Using his powers as a Certified Recognition Professional, Kurt infuses his team with recognition knowledge and experience, while encouraging them to practice daily recognition with his energetic and creative flair. We’re pretty sure there’s a cape hanging from the back of his door. 

At the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference in New Orleans, we met lots of new friends. One of them was Michael Long, aka the Red Recruiter. Michael was so smitten by our positive mojo and sassy shirts, that he recently wrote a blog post about us. Read it on his blog, www.redrecruiting.com.

Michael is currently involved in the Red Shoe Project that is raising awareness for the San Francisco-based organization, My New Red Shoes. The organization provides underprivileged children with clothing for their first day of school. Michael found it to be a worthy cause, and so did we.

As part of the project, individuals are contributing pictures of red shoes to the project’s Facebook group. Naturally, we couldn’t resist adding a little Baudville flair to the mix. We don’t put our feet up very often  at Baudville, but we’ll do nearly anything for a good cause.