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. 

It doesn’t seem possible (time flies when you’re having fun!); but just about exactly a year ago I wrote about an outing that the creative group and I took to a letter press studio. You can read about that here, if you’re interested.

I was thrilled with the experience and the value it brought to us as a team and as individuals. And, ever since, I’ve been scheming new ideas for our next big adventure, preferably an activity of equal or greater value. That calling came one day when a little bird landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. OK, actually it was our VP of Product and Merchandising.

And she wasn’t whispering, she was raving—about a charity event she’d attended the night before that benefited a local organization called Kids Food Basket, which does a pretty amazing job of fighting childhood hunger in our city. What she was so impressed with is that this operation somehow manages to supply free, nutritious “sack suppers” to more that 4,600 kids in need every weekday. Wow, right?

In our Summer Team Event Ideas eBook, we have several team building ideas that are centered on community involvement and charitable giving. Volunteering, fundraising, and other community-centered activities are a great team building technique. Your team comes together for a cause that is bigger than them and focuses their attention on an organization beyond their job parameters. 

We received so many great ideas from our customers in our Summer Team Event Contest that we wanted to share them all! We’ve compiled all your wonderful game, theme, and outing ideas into one eBook full of things to do with your team in the summer. 

You can download the “Team Building: Summer Event Ideas” eBook now from our Recognition Resource Center. 

At Baudville, our culture is typically described as “work hard, play hard.” We are focused on our work and our goals, but we love to stop and have fun, too! And that is especially true during the summer when we can enjoy the beautiful Michigan weather (it’s currently 80 degrees and sunny!). 

One of the most anticipated summer team events at Baudville is an annual company picnic where employees can bring their families to enjoy dinner, activities, and prizes. It’s a lot of fun, and we look forward to it all year. In the past, we’ve held our picnic at a zoo, farm, ballpark, and amusement park.