The average American spends way over 50% of their weekday waking hours at work. And guess what, many of us just aren’t lovin’ it. At Baudville, employee happiness is sort of our thang. We make employee recognition products designed to get people geeked about coming to work and we do a pretty good job owning our message. After all, Baudville’s been one of the 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in West Michigan for years running!

This past year at the 2015 SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition and WorldatWork Conference, we talked with more than 2,000 HR Managers about employee recognition, engagement, retention, and culture.

Research and experience tells us that the way your employees interact with one another has an enormous impact on company culture and retention. And, based on what we heard from the attendees, 59% of HR Managers reported positive employee-to-employee relationships. Of those (and we we’re particularly surprised) 40% have a peer-to-peer recognition program in place!

Guess what? 2016 is coming! And, with it, a feeling that it’s time to make a fresh start. If you’ve got “new” on your mind, but don’t know quite what to focus on, here are my best ideas to get you going!

As the year is quickly coming to a close, you may be evaluating your recognition programs for the year ahead. What's working, what's not, and what needs a program refresh?

Many workplace core values include working together as a team to achieve a common goal. And if you're following recognition program best practices, you will want to align your programs with your organization's core values for the best business results. While you may not think of Employee of the Month as one of those programs that brings people together, we've got an idea to change things up a bit!

What if I told you that your Employee of the Month program could also serve as a high-performing team building tool? As you look to re-evaluate your current program, try this: