Enthusiasm about our own individual Pinterests prompted some of us to create a Baudville Pinterest! Our Baudville boards share great office ideas, events, gifts, products we love, and office potluck ideas.

New to Pinterest?

Pinterest is a virtual idea board where you can "pin" ideas, projects you want to do, things you like, or whatever you want. The best part about Pinterest is how you can follow other people's boards and see what they're pinning.  Following other boards lets you discover new ideas, projects, photos, recipes, and fashion styles.  

Don’t have a Pinterest?

Just visit www.pinterest.com  and request an invite. Then start sharing your pins.

Baudville’s Pinterest:

We've set up a couple different boards with ideas and products that we think are fun employee recognition ideas.

Baudville Boards:
    

    Baudville Products we love:
This board is filled with our products that we love! We will be posting our favorite new products .  Get ready, we have a new product launch coming in January, so this board will be growing!
    Fun at Work:
        Mundane is not the Baudville way, and we don’t want it to be yours either! Our fun at work board contains a bunch of ideas to help create pizzazz into your everyday work life. We will be posting anything that catches our eyes, like how to do a cookie exchange to mustache cups. (Really who wouldn’t want these!)

 

    Gifts:
        Employee recognition is number one on our list and gifts are a great way to make people feel extra special! Giving a gift to an employee (no matter how much) will delight any Grinch.  We'll post free gift ideas, low cost gifts, and higher end gifts. We'll let you know what a great retirement gift is, day-to-day gift, Holiday gift, and many more.
    Events:
        Are you having an event for your company? Well, we want to help give you some creative ideas for decorating your events and fun food to prepare for your events. Create a Pinterest board of your own to help remind you of all the awesome event ideas!
    Office Potluck Ideas:
        We love to share and eat delicious food here at Baudville! So we want to share the yummy food ideas we talk about, with you.

 

How to follow Baudville on Pinterest:    

Once you have created a Pinterest account of your own.  You can begin following other Pinterest users, like us! To follow Baudville simply click here, then click the follow button.  It really is that simple!

Every week we will be pinning up new office ideas for you to use.  What are you waiting for? Create a Pinterest today to start pinning with us!

 

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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.

1 in 8 women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her life.  That’s 12% of the population!  Millions of families are affected by this tragic statistic.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Baudville is getting involved in this important cause with a week-long company fundraising event.

All employees have been given the opportunity to purchase up to five casual days for the week (casual days are a big deal around here!). In exchange for their donation, employees receive a pink Casual Day Sticker. The casual days only cost $1 each and all proceeds are being donated to the local Gilda’s Club, a free cancer support group community. Plus, our charitable foundation, Baudville’s Helping Hand, will match all employee donations!

On Friday, employees can earn extra money for Gilda’s Club by wearing a pink shirt. Every employee who wears pink will generate an additional dollar for Gilda’s Club!

As soon as I purchased my casual day stickers, I knew that I wanted to use this opportunity to honor my friends and family who have fought cancer. Today, I’m proudly honoring the memory of Larry Roth on my casual day sticker. Larry was a close family friend who lost his seven month battle with esophagus cancer last week. Later this week, my stickers will say Grandma, Mom, Rachel, and Danica. They are all people who fought cancer, and their stories inspire me.

My casual day stickers for the week. Each one honors a different friend or family member who had cancer.

Even at our small company, there are very few employees who have not been impacted by cancer in our friends, family, and community. This week is one way we can make a difference by providing support for families experiencing the effects of cancer first hand. By working with Gilda’s Club, it is also our hope to increase awareness of this wonderful resource to our employees, so if they are ever faced with cancer, they have a place to go for help and support.

Who will you honor this month? How will you get involved? Learn more about Gilda’s Club and how to get involved on their website.

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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.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Holidays are a great opportunity to have some fun in the office, boost morale, and improve employee engagement. We’re doing several things today to make St. Patrick’s Day fun for our employees:

- Casual day. Employees can wear jeans as long as they have on something green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day!

Enjoying a green casual day. Leprechauns are casual, right?

- Irish Music. Our office music was turned to an Irish station this morning to help everyone get in touch with their Irish side.

- Green Potluck. One of our favorite ways to celebrate! Our sales department is hosting their own potluck, and each employee was challenged to bring in a green item to share with the team. In honor of March Madness (also kicking off today), one of our employees made this green Spartan cake.

Goodies in our green potluck.

- Holiday ePraise cards. Send a special note to your employees or co-workers letting them know how lucky you feel to work with them. Our ePraise cards are free to send and – just for St. Patrick’s Day – all green!

Samples of free St. Patrick's Day ePraise cards.

- St. Patrick’s Day Lapel Pins. We’re big into lapel pins at Baudville, and I’ve already spotted a few Clovers Character Pins and green lapel pins decorating staff’s lapels.

How is your office celebrating St. Patrick’s Day? What kinds of fun activities or events are you throwing? Let us know!

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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.

Our friend Ben Eubanks over at UpstartHR.com recently asked for contributions to an ebook about employee engagement. Several knowledgeable HR professionals answered his call, and the result is a comprehensive ebook with great tips, stories, and advice about employee engagement. Yours truly even made the book! Go over to UpstartHR.com to download the ebook for free.

Here’s what Ben has to say about the ebook:

“Passion. A sense of purpose. Engagement. Studies show that employees that are "engaged" in their work perform significantly better than those who are not. The problem is finding real, tangible ways to make that happen. Good thing there's (now) an eBook for that.

Recently I reached out to a few people to see if they wanted to contribute to an eBook to help HR pros, managers, and business leaders learn more about this topic. The response was a good one, and today I'm happy to share the free eBook with you. It's titled "All together now! A guide to employee engagement."

There are personal stories about engagement and what it means, tips for companies on communication and culture, and some really great, specific how-to content.

Special thanks to Shauna Moerke for helping me to promote the guide through the HR Carnival channel. I also want to thank the contributors for offering up some great, useful content: Nathaniel Rottenberg, Chris Ferdinandi, Paul Smith, Laura Schroeder, Dwane Lay, Dave Ryan, Krista Francis, Jennifer V. Miller, Lisa Rosendahl, Keith McIlvaine, Karen Seketa, Tamkara Adun, Cori Curtis, Lance Haun, Robin Schooling, and Tanmay Vora, . You can find links to each of these contributors' websites within the guide.”

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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.

Retirement and healthcare benefits have dominated the discussion on total rewards lately as public employee benefits have been scrutinized. But benefits aren’t the only component of a total rewards program that is significantly impacting the workforce right now.

Employee engagement surveys have revealed that employees don’t feel appreciated in their current roles. In fact, as many as two thirds of employees are actively looking for a new position right now, and one of the primary contributors to the discontent is a lack of appreciation. More than half of respondents in an Aon Hewitt survey said being appreciated would motivate them to stay at their organization.

We all know that recognition can improve employee engagement, yet many organizations and managers fail to implement more appreciation into their routines. And it’s so easy to do! Here are five strategies that every manager, supervisor - even employees - can practice to improve employee engagement.

 Feedback
Employees desire feedback about their work. You can implement weekly one-on-one or team meetings to add regular feedback to your schedule. These are great opportunities to review work, projects, or goals and give advice. Be open to receive feedback, too. Your employees are very familiar with your work, and listening to their feedback will likely make you a better manager.

  Thank Yous
This is the easiest way to improve employee engagement, and it should be a natural part of any management strategy. Say thank you! Every day! Common courtesies like saying thank you can have a huge impact on employee engagement and make employees feel more appreciated.

To make your thank yous more memorable, write it down. Handwritten thank you notes are often saved, displayed, and reread. Some people even make their thank you note collections official by naming them, such as Bravo File or Feel Good File.  

 Fun
Don’t be afraid to have fun at work. We spend a lot of time at work, but it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves! Having more fun at work can be as simple as celebrating birthdays, incorporating team games, or having a team mascot. Peer recognition programs can also add fun to an organization and increase team member interaction. We’ve had some pretty creative peer recognition notes passed between team mates! When employees enjoy their work environment, they’ll be more committed to staying.

 Time
Show employees you truly appreciate their efforts by rewarding them with the gift of time. Give hardworking employees a pass to leave early or extra paid time off to make up for long hours. Our employees even love receiving casual days during busy times because they don’t have to spend as much time worrying about what to wear to work. When you respect employees’ time, they’ll reward you with increased effort (and engagement) during work hours.

 Gift
When you recognize employees, give them something to remember the recognition. Non-cash recognition continues to out-perform cash recognition in performance and recall indicators. Check out our non-cash recognition white paper for more stats to back this up. If you want your appreciation to stick and engagement to increase, give a gift with your recognition!  

Employee engagement has a significant impact on any business, but thankfully it can be impacted with simple strategies and sincere appreciation. What are you waiting for? Start retaining your high performers today!

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