I love when I find examples of employee appreciation in pop culture! I can always count on scenes from “The Office”or Dilbert comic strips for comic relief. Both do an excellent job of making fun of some pretty outrageous appreciation blunders. 

I recently learned about this scene from Seinfeld, and I’m certainly going to add it to my video library! In the clip, Jerry and Kramer both give Elaine birthday gifts, but one of them completely misses the mark. Can you guess who made the faux pas? 

This week is National Backyard Games Week, and I love my backyard games! I’ve built up a decent collection of them in my garage. At my house, we’re always ready with a game of bean bag toss, ladder golf, badminton, Frisbees, and even bubbles for the neighborhood kids. It’s common to find me outside on a beautiful summer evening playing a game with neighbors and friends. Backyard games provide an opportunity for camaraderie, fun, and enjoying the outdoors – all things I love!

I’ve noticed that my time spent playing backyard games has improved my friendships (and my sweet game skills!), so it makes sense to me that we should bring games to work. If playing games at home is energizing and improves relationships, imagine how it could influence your team!

Next week, we’re celebrating Spring Break in the marketing department. It’s become an annual tradition to make work fun and exciting for employees who aren’t traveling for spring break. Each day, we have games, food, and fun as a team.

Annual holidays and events are an important part of the culture at Baudville. Our management and SPIRIT Teams  plan outstanding events for Employee Appreciation Day, Customer Service Week, and milestone days in between. Employees look forward to those events, and it infuses a welcome dose of fun and competition into our goal-driven days.

We’ve created our Recognition Event Calendar to help you do the same! Located in our Recognition Resource Center, the Recognition Event Calendar has a holiday or event for every day of the work week. Regardless of the time of year, you can find a fun holiday to celebrate as a team – just for fun!

For instance, coming up in April is National Cherish an Antique Day. Ask employees to bring in their favorite antique and display it at their desk, or have them share a short story about it in a meeting. Then there’s National Siblings Day when you can encourage employees to bring in a childhood picture of them with their siblings. There’s also Scrabble Day. Host a scrabble tournament at lunch or start a team-wide game of Words with Friends.

And that’s just one week!

 Celebrating holidays and events as a team is a fun and easy way to build camaraderie, engage employees, and foster loyalty. Today, you can sign up for Recognition Event Calendar reminders. Each month, we’ll send you an email highlighting some of the upcoming holidays and ideas for celebrations. It’s an easy way to make fun a priority for you and your team. Sign up today by visiting the Recognition Event Calendar.

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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. 

What better way to end a short week following a holiday than to celebrate with doughnuts?  

The first Friday in June is National Doughnut Day, a holiday started by the Salvation Army in 1938. National Doughnut Day was created to honor the young women who volunteered during World War I and World War II to feed and encourage soldiers with hand-made doughnuts. These women took their doughnuts onto the battlefields of France to simply offer some comfort and cheer. The tasty treat was so popular with the soldiers that they demanded doughnuts when they returned to the states. And an industry was born! 

This week is spring break for most of the schools in West Michigan. While several of our employees have migrated to warmer climates, we brought fun to work with our own spring break festivities.