Today is my first day back in the office from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference in Las Vegas. While at the conference, I had the opportunity to meet with some of the human resource bloggers I follow all year on Twitter and through my RSS feed. Since these individuals are known for their expertise on everything human resources, I asked them each to share their employee recognition advice for HR professionals and managers. 

Rachel Salley (@rachelsalley)from the Career Anarchist blog stopped by the Baudville booth twice to complete her interview! Thanks for your dedication, Rachel! Visit the Career Anarchist blog to read her musings on the SHRM Annual Conference, employee engagement, and more.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (@blogging4jobs) also stopped by twice to chat with me about social media, HR, and employee recognition. Jessica is well-known in the HR industry for her blog, blogging4jobs.com. She’s apparently also one of the most popular SHRM attendees. She confided that she had six parties to go to on Monday night!

Matthew Stollak (@akabruno) of the True Faith HR warned us that as a professor, he would give us an academic response to our question about employee recognition. We didn’t mind! We thought his answer was great.

It was wonderful to finally meet Sharlyn Lauby (@sharlyn_lauby)in person at the conference this year. Sharlyn is president of Internal Talent Management Group and blogs at HR Bartender, so we talked about how to use recognition to make training more effective. We were able to give her an exclusive sneak peek into some exciting new products we have coming out in September.

Finally, we see the “Pin Man” every year at SHRM. Since we’re big proponents of lapel pins, we had to interview him to learn more about his impressive collection. Naturally, we added a new piece to his collection!

Overall, the bloggers all echoed the same sentiment: that employee recognition is important and is most effective when it is personalized to the recipient and sincere. What’s your piece of employee recognition advice for HR and managers?