Like most organizations, Baudville takes time at the beginning of the new year to set goals and initiatives for the coming year and beyond. Our executives recently presented company goals to all staff, and momentum is building around the exciting changes coming to the ‘ville!

Our management team knows that meeting these ambitious goals will require the participation and engagement of every Baudville employee. And they know that building excitement for these initiatives isn’t going to happen with an all staff memo!
 
So, they started with something that always gets our attention: a week of casual days! But more than just a time to wear jeans, they tied each day of the week to a specific goal, and encouraged us to dress the part.
 
We’re not going to reveal our top secret plans here; but we can tell you that each day involved a lot of spirit, creativity, and innovation.
 
Like today, when we were encouraged to incorporate a Baudville or IDville product into our attire. Our creative team went all out, as they are known to do, and got together to create some off-the-wall headpieces featuring everything Baudville and IDville they could get to stick. Other employees created Essential Piece jewelry or wore a lapel pin to show their support.

Seeing employees participate in a company-wide effort, and knowing that it’s all for the growth, development, and success of our business as well as each individual is really motivating. What a great way to support one-another!

How do you get employees excited about their goals? Do they wear crazy hats like this Baudville team?!?

Carefully choosing Baudville and IDville products.

 
Waiting to see the finished product.

 
Showing our Baudville pride!

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Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

With Christmas only one week away, those of us in the office who like to bake – and like to eat baked goods – have sugar plums, candies, and cookies dancing in our heads. If you’re like me, you may spend days in the kitchen making goodies to share with neighbors, friends, family, and party hosts. It’s a lot of time and a lot of work!

This year, one of my teammates arranged a cookie exchange among our department. Ten of us signed up for the very easy swap: bake enough of your favorite cookie to share with nine other coworkers. The result was fabulous! We didn’t all have to spend the entire weekend in the kitchen, but we got a delicious variety of sweet and chocolatey treats to share with friends and family.

When we got together for the exchange, we had fun learning about the different kinds of cookies and admiring the unique holiday packaging (we declared Hobby Lobby the best resource for cute bags). We each talked about the type of cookie we made and explained the significance, if any, of the recipe. I made my family’s sugar cookie recipe and decorated each cookie, while one of our designers made an authentic Bosnian dessert. Next year, we’ll each bring a recipe card for the exchange, too, so we can recreate a new holiday favorite.

This is a really easy and fun team activity. Everyone gets to take home delicious goodies and share a little bit about their holiday traditions, too. In our cookie exchange, we had brand new recipes and family favorites shared. You can use this opportunity to learn more about your teammates as individuals and celebrate the holiday season in a friendly way.

Here are a few of the recipes we swapped in our office cookie exchange:

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies

Chocolate Toffee Matzo Candy

Chocolate-Caramel Cookie Bars

Russian Tea Cakes

Rolo Cake Mix Cookies

You can find more of our team's favorite recipes on our Pinterest Board, Office Potluck Ideas. 

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Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

Whew, six weeks into my internship and I am just getting into the Baudville groove! I got my name plate on my cubicle and can finally clear a paper jam in the printer. But I am constantly experiencing new things about Baudville every day. For example do you know how we actually recognize our employees and co-workers?

Last week was a busy week of recognition for the whole company. We had baby showers, birthdays (mine!), casual days, and an entire company meeting. I‘ve never experienced so much celebrating with my co-workers before and who knew it would be such a blast!

I attended my first entire company meeting last week. I know what you are thinking right now, a “dull” meeting cannot include recognition. Absolutely it can and the best part, the meeting becomes exciting! Everyone gathered in a huge room located in our distribution center. Our CEO, Brad Darooge, gave us some encouragement for the upcoming six months and recognized us for achieving goals in the first half of the year.

Next, Cindy, the Human Resources Manager talked about how our Health and Fitness challenge is going thus far. (For those who don’t know, currently we have undergone a “friendly,” 10 week, Health and Fitness competition here at Baudville). On the first day of the competition we all received t-shirts displaying our work out pride. We received new water bottles to stay hydrated. Finally, she opened the floor for employees to share personal Health and Fitness goals. It was a great way for the whole company to encourage and praise people for a job well done.  

Since the whole company got together, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a mini competition. We were given plastic bags, scotch tape, string, and tissue paper. With these random elements we had to cushion an egg so that when it dropped it didn’t splatter everywhere. Whoever kept the yolk in their egg won points for their Health and Fitness challenge team. The absurd concoctions caused a lot of laughter and conversation in the days after.

I also found out this week that birthdays are a huge deal at Baudville. At the beginning of the month, birthday cards get passed from cubicle to cubicle and are filled with special notes or drawings. Then on your birthday, you receive your card with a little present inside. Lastly, you have to choose where your birthday lunch is going to be so co-workers can take you out to celebrate.

These are just some ways we have been recognizing co-workers lately and having fun here at Baudville. Other companies have been doing a great job recognizing as well. Tell me about some big or little ways you’ve recognized your employees or co-workers lately!

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Kendra is the newest Baudvillian. She is currently an advertising intellectual at Grand Valley State University, and is ecstatic about the change of atmosphere as Baudville’s web marketing intern. Watch out because this young professional just touched down at Baudville.

This week is spring break for most of the schools in West Michigan. While several of our employees have migrated to warmer climates, we brought fun to work with our own spring break festivities.

We call it Marketing Spring Break, and we plan something for every day of the week. Our entire week was easy to organize, very low cost, and lots of fun.

You can follow our example by having your own spring break in your office! To give you ideas, here is our schedule of festivities for the week:

Every Day: Employees can wear jeans to work all week! This is a huge treat, and gives us the feeling of vacation even when we’re at work. We also volunteer to bring in snacks. Each morning and afternoon we have a treat sponsored by a different co-worker.

To keep with our health and wellness goals, the morning snack is designated as healthy and the afternoon snack is something sweet. We’ve had fresh fruit and dip, banana bread, fruit salsa, and mini muffins and juice.

Monday: Sunshine Shirt Day. The entire team was encouraged to wear a yellow shirt. This is a really simple activity, and you’d be surprised how fun it is to see all your co-workers dressed alike!

Tuesday: Beach Day at the Office. We decorated our cubes to look like our ideal beach setting. Employees wore Hawaiian shirts and put tropical flowers in their hair. We had some pretty creative scenes in the office! We had an impartial judge view all the beach scenes, and we awarded prizes for the best office beaches. We had really caught the beach bug, so we had a limbo contest, too!

Wednesday: Haiku Contest. Everyone was given the task of writing their own Haiku about bananas. We had two judges pick their favorite poems. Here are the winners!

green yellow and brown
on my counter all week long
finally the trash

Chocolate covered
Bananas, sweet and tasty
Melting in my mouth

Thursday: Funny Hat Day. As you can imagine, we had some funny hats, and we took a fantastic team picture at the end of the day!

Friday: Cornhole Tournament. We’re closing out Marketing Spring Break week with a cornhole tournament today. The bracket has been drawn, and the first game begins in an hour. Who will be crowned champion? Only time will tell!

How do you bring fun to work? Does your company have any traditional activities or events that employees look forward to? Tell us about your favorite fun at work festivities in the comments!

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Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

This week calendars are promoting Fun at Work Day; our calendar lists it on Thursday, January 28. Though some people may roll their eyes or consider office diversions like Fun at Work Day to be frivolous, having fun at work can actually be extremely profitable, as Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For prove.

At SAS, a privately owned software company at the top of Fortune’s list this year, an employee-friendly culture reigns supreme and fun isn’t hard to find. Employees watch intramural teams compete in volleyball and soccer during weekdays and M&Ms are readily available for staff (they go through 22.5 tons a year).

One employee from Wegmans Food Market, third on the list, is quoted by Fortune on how a fun atmosphere encourages him to work harder: “I just love it. No day is the same as the previous day. I'm usually here until 6 in the evenings and on Fridays I work until 8, or if it's really fun I stick around until 9. Sometimes I lose track of time.”

Fun at work can translate to lower employee stress levels, higher commitment, increased engagement and improved results. While Fortune’s 100 best are able to offer desirable employee perks and benefits, organizations of all shapes and sizes can create a fun work environment that employees will appreciate. Remember, the key to a successful fun work culture is consistency. Managers and company leadership need to encourage and embrace fun all year round if they want to impact corporate culture.

Bring fun to your work this week (and beyond) with these ideas from Baudville. Having some fun may take a little bit of time out of the typical work day, but it will be well worth it.

• Play board games at lunch.
• Host a ping pong tournament.
• Get creative juices flowing with a game of Pictionary or charades
• Build ice cream sundaes together.
• Make the traditional potluck more interesting by having employees guess who made which dish.
•  Host a caption contest. Take a picture of someone in the office, add a thought bubble and have employees fill in the bubble. Post the results and give everyone something to laugh about.
• Have an "Embarrassing Incident" contest and give a prize to the person who suffered the funniest cringe-worthy moment.
• Give employees a set of our Print and Post sayings. Encourage them to give the sayings to their peers and brainstorm their own.
• Host a department spirit day or week and celebrate all the great things about your team.
• Have a paper air plane throwing contest.
• Keep a stash of Everyday Certificates handy and give out “You’re the Bomb Diggity Awards” often.
• Do an old-school arts and craft project like paper maché or anything involving macaroni or play-doh.
• Give employees their own candy dish full with sweets.
• Hand out Pick Your Nose Party Cups and take pictures of your staff with their new noses.
• Give employees their own set of coloring books and crayons for stress relief.

Allison, one of the regular contributors to the blog, was the subject in this Fill-in-the-Thought-Bubble exercise.

What are some of your organization’s fun office ideas? What activity or event do employees ask for over and over again? Tell us about it! We’d like to try it out for ourselves!

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her daily recognition tips by following Baudville on Twitter at Twitter.com/Baudville.