We’re an employee recognition company (obviously), so we hold ourselves to pretty high standards when it comes to recognizing our own. Last Thursday, we celebrated a very special Baudvillian in a very special way.

Joe has been a designer at Baudville for 20 years! That’s a big milestone at any company, but especially at Baudville, which has only been around 26 years. Joe has seen the company grow from 12 employees to more than 70. When he began at Baudville, he moved in an entire art department of tools, paper and drawing. After all, those were the days before computers were an office norm (now you know how long 20 years really is!).

Joe has not only helped shape Baudville products, he has become a critical component of the culture, too. Over his 20 years (I was only 5 when he started, by the way), Joe has played an influential role in the recognition culture at Baudville, often putting on a mascot suit and dancing for the enjoyment of his peers.

The accomplishments and successes Joe has had over the years are too numerous to neither count nor name. We celebrated all of them at an employee meeting last week that featured surprise gifts and a commemorative video (check it out here or on Facebook). The great thing about the public celebration and the video was that the entire company felt motivated and engaged in our mission – recognizing one another.

What are you doing to make service awards meaningful to your team? Are you personalizing each award so that it actually has an impact on the recipient? Are you presenting awards (however big or small) in public, in front of a team, to get additional miles out of your motivation? If you’re not, you should. Service anniversaries are opportunities to recognize and motivate more than just the celebrated individual. They can impact an entire team.

TO PLAY THE VIDEO CLICK ON THE ARROW.

------------------------------------- 

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.

I just returned from the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) Education Forum and Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s a rare thing to meet so many people passionate about their profession and dedicated to advancing it in today’s workplaces, but that’s exactly what I found at the conference.

It was Baudville’s first time as an exhibitor at the conference, and we received a very warm welcome! Attendees continually thanked us for being a part of their conference. How nice is that?

We talked to attendees about the whole kit and caboodle Baudville has to offer. It’s all about recognizing little things every day in personal and meaningful ways. Attendees were excited about our themes and clever sayings, but the sentiment we heard most often was “I should show this to my boss.”

When we get into the daily grind, it’s easy to let appreciation fall by the wayside – even appreciation for our most valued peers. The greatest mistake we can make is convincing ourselves that recognizing them once a year on their “official recognition holiday” is adequate. Or worse, adopting the archaic mentality that a paycheck is recognition enough (I shudder at the thought).

No chance. Putting off recognition of administrative professionals until their day in April will likely gain you one thing: an open position to recruit for. Recognition must be done immediately after the fact to make an impression on an individual. So don’t wait. Get the tools and training you need to make recognition a part of your daily routine, and keep passionate professionals happily working within your organization. 

Don't let your staff feel like Milton. Recognize them more than once a year.