I have a couple of co-workers who rarely check their email. For those of us who rely on email to convey information to the rest of our team, this is really annoying. This forces us to get out of our chairs, walk 12 steps over to their cube (they share a workspace—hmmm, maybe there is something in the air over there…?), and have a conversation with them.

This week, the latest edition of our Trophy Catalog is hitting mailboxes all across the country. Throughout its pages you'll find hundreds of trophy and award solutions to commemorate the big achievements in your workplace. Here's what you need to know…

In the last couple of months, we've talked a lot about retirement. It was a topic of conversation in our booth at this year's SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition and it has also come up as a workplace event our customers want to hear more about. Enter the concept of a Lifetime Achievement Award!

Public figures and private-sector individuals receive Lifetime Achievement Awards to honor their contributions to their fields or to society/humanity at large. Their work spans a great number of years and an abundance of different endeavors. Sounds kind of like the lifetime of experience your retiree has (and has shared eagerly), doesn't it?

Earlier this year, when we learned we made the West Michigan's 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For™ list (yet again!) we had a big hurrah—and there were promises of an ever bigger one (cookout style) once summer rolled around. Well, if you live in Michigan, you know that this summer was not exactly the best example of what summer is supposed to be like. Meaning: boo, no cookout! Good thing we got some more good news and another reason to celebrate—during a full week of "abundant sunshine" in the forecast!

If you are regular followers of our blog, then you know we have been working on our workplace wellness program for the past several years. This year, we felt we had enough initiatives and results under our belts to apply for the Best and Brightest in Wellness™ designation—and we were right!

A couple of months ago, I created an internal task force to help me stay informed of all the business-related happenings that occur outside of my rather small sphere of influence. The group consists of Andrea and Tiffany from our sales suite (who talk to multitudes of customers every day), Krista and Jenny from our web team (who interact on social media and monitor trends on our site), Denise from our acquisition team (who helps us reach new customers), and Cindy, our HR Manager (who does way too much for me to put inside parentheses). And I'm there, too, but I try to just be a fly on the wall while they roundtable about what's going on in their worlds. It's a great gig for me, actually!