Hello everyone! My name is Kimberly, and I am part of the Spot On team that is working very hard to keep the SpotOnBaudville.com website updated with new downloads, fresh content and tools to help you succeed with your Spot On Program.

One of our team's first initiatives was to create a Getting Started video to help new buyers implement the Spot On Peer Recognition Program into their departments. This video offers an instructive overview of the contents of the program, how to set it up and communicate the program to your participants. Go to the SpotOnBaudville.com homepage and click on the image shown at left to view the video.

It doesn't take much to get the Spot On program started, but maintaining the momentum after the program launch can be a challenge.  Make sure to keep checking SpotOnBaudville.com for new additions to help your program and become a Facebook fan of Spot On Baudville to share ideas and tips from other Spot On users!

I want to hear from you! Share your comments and thoughts on what you'd like to see available at SpotOnBaudville.com through this blog entry or on Facebook!

One of the fun elements of the Spot On Peer Recognition Program is the save and redeem rewards. The save and redeem part of your program gives all employees the opportunity to earn rewards. Although Spot travels from employee to employee, not everyone will earn Spot as their trophy. Instead, the save and redeem part of the program recognizes each individual’s accomplishments, both big and small. 

The key to an exciting save and redeem reward program are great prizes. When we were using the Spot On program in the sales suite, our employees saved their tokens to earn Stupendous tote bags. It was a popular reward! We also recommend including Spot gifts in your program like the coffee mug, key chain or Character Pin. These themed rewards help maintain momentum and enthusiasm around Spot. You may also want to include gift cards for popular lunch locations or small snacks to appeal to your more practical employees.

If budgets are tight, you can include popular employee rewards that have little or no cost. Casual days are one of the most popular rewards around Baudville. They don’t cost us anything, but the employees always feel like they’re getting a special treat! A few extra minutes at lunch or leaving a little early are coveted awards, too. 

Tip: Add new rewards to your save and redeem program on a regular basis to keep employees interested and motivated to earn recognition from their peers.

Once you’ve identified what rewards to include in your program, create a structure that outlines how many tokens each gift will cost. By communicating this ahead of time, employees will establish personal goals to help them earn specific rewards. For instance, at Baudville we gave each token a $1 value, so the Stupendous tote bag cost employees 10 tokens. Create rewards available at various values - both high and low - so employees feel the rewards are achievable. 

Tip: To avoid a lot of unnecessary administrative work collecting and distributing rewards, limit token shopping to one day a week. And keep a small inventory of all your rewards on hand so you can quickly fulfill reward requests!

Now your save and redeem program is ready to go!

These little tokens can make a big impact on your peer recognition program! 

How are you using the save and redeem element of the Spot On Program? What are the most popular rewards with employees? 

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Brenda has been a Baudvillian (a.k.a. Baudville employee) for over seven years and is currently the Customer Service Supervisor at Baudville. She loves spending time with her overweight dachshund, Teddy Bear, and Spot. She regularly blogs about her experience implementing the Spot On recognition program in the Baudville sales suite.

The Spot On Peer Recognition Program has been a huge success since it launched in July 2009! Over 250 peer recognition programs have been sold, and Spot has traveled the world with his favorite Baudvillians, telling others about his program.

We want to continue to share Spot’s awesomeness, so we created a video that puts him in the spotlight. The video gives a brief overview of how the peer recognition program works and showcases all the products that arrive with Spot.

We hope you’ll find this video helpful whether you’re currently using Spot or just investigating peer recognition program solutions. If you’re already using the Spot On program, you can share this video with a manager or supervisor to help him or her better understand your program. Or use the video to brag to other managers about the great things your team is doing. If you’re looking for a peer recognition program, this video has all the details you need! It’s a great tool to use when getting manager buy-in and support.

If you're having difficulty viewing the video, you can also watch it on Baudville's website, YouTube or Spot's Facebook page. 

Getting your peer recognition program started on the right foot is important. You want your employees to be excited about the program, understand all the procedures and be eager to earn some great prizes!

We’ve talked about throwing a Spot On Kick Off Event once before. Now, we’re able to share our experiences from the program kick off with you in a complete event guide. The guide has lots of information and ideas to help you plan a great event.

You can download the PDF guide in the Downloads section of our website. You must be registered on the site, but registration has all sorts of great perks! It allows you to download all the materials available on the site, like our user guide, epraise cards, printable certificates and Spot On clip art.

Once you’ve used the guide to throw your own Kick Off event, tell us about it! Become a fan of Spot On on Facebook. On the Facebook page, you can upload pictures and videos of your program and share stories of unique ways you’re using Spot. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

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Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional at Baudville and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her daily Employee Appreciation Day tips and weekly deals by becoming a fan of Baudville on Facebook.

The month of December is a popular time of year for company employee holiday parties and formal recognition award ceremonies. How does your peer-to-peer Spot On recognition program fit in? You can honor the participants and key contributors of your program during the holidays by creating your own Spot awards.

The key to peer-to-peer recognition program longevity and momentum is keeping the program interesting and exciting. Activities and celebrations are a great way to keep your team pumped up about Spot. Your award ceremony also serves as positive reinforcement of your employees’ participation and will encourage and motivate them to keep recognizing one another into the New Year.

For year-end, host a small award ceremony in the office to recognize key program participants. You can create your own awards that best fit your culture and team. Here are a few of our suggestions:

Nominator Award for the individual who has completed the most ballots.

Top Dog Award for the employee who has received the most notes or tokens from peers.

Sure & Steady Award for the individual who consistently recognized peers week after week.

Star Trainer Award for an employee who trained others to use the program.

Create a Participant Award for everyone who participates in the Spot On program with our free downloadable award certificates.

Celebrate your Spot award ceremony by creating award certificates and giving the winners a Spot On gift, like a key chain, coffee mug or Character Pin. The gifts are all less than $10 each and the certificates are free, so you can afford to go wild with recognition!

What other awards can you think of? Tell us how you’re celebrating the Spot On program this month on the Spot On Facebook page.

One of the challenges of any recognition program is keeping the momentum flowing as the newness of the program wears off. Here are a few fun employee recognition ideas that you can incorporate into your peer recognition program on a monthly basis or for special events.

- Have pet show and tell. Encourage employees to bring in pictures of their dogs and talk about them.

- Reward employees for using the program by awarding an extra token to those who submit a ballot for a peer.

- Have Spot pose with company leadership. These pictures will let your employees know leadership notices and supports their program.

- Encourage employees to take Spot home with them. Ask them to take a few pictures of Spot doing one of their favorite activities. Share these pictures in the office and with other Spot users on Spot’s Facebook page.

- Place Velcro on the token keeper doghouses so they can be displayed on a cubicle wall.

- Recognize multiple people at the end of a month with dog-themed giveaways, like Baudville’s paw-shaped sticky notepads.

- Take pictures of Spot in fun places and email them to all staff or post in a public place.

- Create a newsletter that shares Spot updates. Share stories on submitted ballots to give extra recognition to special individuals.

- Dress Spot up for special holidays like Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day.

Keep your recognition program up with these fun employee recognition ideas! 

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Brenda has been a Baudvillian (a.k.a. Baudville employee) for over seven years and is currently the Customer Service Supervisor at Baudville. She loves spending time with her overweight dachshund, Teddy Bear, and Spot. She regularly blogs about her experience implementing the Spot On recognition program in the Baudville sales suite.

When we created the Spot On Recognition Program, we made sure it came with everything you needed to start recognizing peers right away. But we don’t stop there. We’re dedicated to helping you motivate, engage and retain your workforce, so we’ve added extra tools in the Downloads section of the Spot On website to complement your program.

Recognition programs often start off to a bang when the program is new and exciting to employees. However, as time goes on that excitement can wane. It’s important to continually add fresh ideas and activities to maintain program momentum. For ideas on how to keep your peer-to-peer recognition program thriving, visit the Baudville blog for an article on the subject.
 
When you register on the Spot On website, you receive access to several exclusive downloads that add interest to your program and assist in communications. New to the Spot On website are printable certificates. We created four different certificate options, and all you have to do is print, write in the recipient’s name and present. Use certificates to pass out praise to employees who don’t earn the top Spot award, but have a high level of participation or are a close runner-up.

You’ll also find special Spot On ecards to use as part of your program communications, internal flyers to help spread news about Spot, extra user guides and clip art. All of these resources are available for free when you register to use the website.

We hope you find these resources valuable, and we know the only more valuable is to learn how other Spot On program users are using them. So tell us how it’s going! Post a comment on the blog or add a story to our Facebook page. We know these handy downloads will help with you program, but we know the best advice comes from peers who are using the same program as you.

One of the new Spot On certificate downloads.

Spot has become quite the icon around Baudville. Not only is he hard at work in the Sales Suite, but he's also one of the best traveled members of the Baudville team. We've been having fun taking pictures of Spot in all his travels: Mall of America, Florida, New Orleans, and lately Italy! The pictures of traveling Spot are fun for the whole team and add a little extra positive mojo to our day.

The traveling Spot is a great way to add some fun and interest to your peer recognition program, too. In the Spot On Recognition Program, an employee is awarded Spot for meeting certain program criteria, such as receiving the most tokens or ballots over a certain period of time. While Spot is in the employee's possession, encourage him or her to take Spot home and snap a few pictures of Spot with the family dog, Spot watching the big game or Spot participating in a favorite weekend hobby. Post the pictures internally and on Spot On's Facebook page.

The traveling Spot will help your employees to grow closer as a team as they learn more about their peers. Peer recognition is about encouraging behaviors and building relationships. When you add this interactive element to your recognition program, you'll quickly see the positive impact it can have!

Spot the Gladiator in Italy!!!

Spot has been running successfully in the Sales Suite at Baudville, and it’s thanks to thorough peer training. Instead of having our staff sit in a conference room and listen to a manager talk at them, we thought a peer-to-peer training session would be perfect to get our peer-to-peer recognition program off the ground.

I purposely paired people who did not usually work together to help build that team atmosphere and made a schedule for our staff. Each employee was assigned a 30 minute interval: the first 15 minutes, an employee was trained on the program; the second 15 minutes they trained a peer. The training was well received by employees. People love to interact and learn on their own in small groups, and it's less intimidating than a large group.

We set up the training area and dubbed it the "Dog House." We displayed all of the Spot On products, included a training checklist and made sure the computer was connected to spotonbaudville.com. We expected our employees to have lots of great ideas for Spot during the training, so they were asked to write down all their ideas. We'll share those ideas soon!

A peer-to-peer recognition program can only be successful when all the participating employees understand the who, what, why and how. Whether you choose to follow our peer-to-peer training model or create your own, make sure you answer these questions for flawless program implementation!

Who can I recognize?

What do I recognize with?

Why are we recognizing peers?

How do I do effective recognition?

The Spot On Dog House Training Area

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Brenda and Cori are co-authors of the Spot On blog. They have nearly 10 combined years at Baudville! Brenda is the Customer Service Supervisor at Baudville and is using the Spot On peer recognition program with her team. Cori is a Certified Recognition Professional and also contributes her recognition expertise to the Baudville blog and Twitter.

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Dear Mary Jo,
Thanks for your "Spot On" support. For years my Residence Life Staff (that's right, higher education loves Baudville, too!) had been using a similar recognition technique utilizing a stuffed animal named "Lucky."

At each staff meeting we would go around the room and tell everyone one "High" and one "Low" for the month. Then someone would receive "Lucky" who needed an extra boost. We started to see that the same people kept receiving "Lucky" and some of our staff members who really needed a boost or who deserved a shout out were not receiving recognition. When I saw "Spot On" I jumped at the chance to change things up a bit. When "he" was on back order I was disappointed but I could see how everyone wanted one. Despite being on back order, Spot On arrived quickly and now I can officially start the year off right focusing on positive attitude and employee recognition.

I'm already utilizing the link you sent and I talk up Baudville to everyone outside of my department (my department is already reaping the benefits of the "Attitude is Everything" package and recognition cards!). My staff is excited for the "Spot On" program and I know we'll be utilizing Baudville in the future. I'm already a fan on Facebook, too! Keep up the great job of encouraging employee recognition!

Meredith Beebe, Director of Residence Life
College of St. Elizabeth
Morristown, NJ

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