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.

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.

Spot is IN THE HOUSE!
 
Spot officially entered the Baudville Sales Suite yesterday, and he left his paw prints all over! We had a kick off event to start the Spot On recognition program, inform employees about the program, and get everyone excited. Of course, we did a few special things to make the kick off a fun and motivating event.

Starting a recognition program with a kick off event is a great way to get staff informed about the program and excited to use it. We used the event as an educational opportunity to improve team building and have fun together as a group. We incorporated our training into the event, and I’ll write more about that next week.
 
We first gave each employee an introductory hand-out with information about the program. It was really easy to create with the downloads section on spotonbaudville.com. The pre-designed format made it easy to place our information and print off copies for everyone with the Spot On theme artwork.
 
Because you can’t have an event at Baudville without delicious food and snacks, we brought in a few treats for our staff. Our Spot On Specialist, Mary Jo, made a large batch of Puppy Chow for the entire team to enjoy. If you’re not familiar with this treat, you are missing out! We highly recommend making it for your kick off event, and we’ve posted the recipe below. 

Since the Spot On recognition is all about rewarding positive behaviors, we gave small bags of bone-shaped candy to employees once they completed their training (more about training coming soon!).  Because our employees are working with Baudville products everyday, we wanted to make our Spot On program extra special and unique. We customized our Spot dog, so he barks when you push his ear. It’s already a big hit with the employees!

We’ve posted more pictures about the Baudville sales suite kick off on our Facebook page. What are you doing for your Spot On recognition program kick off event? Let us know! Post a comment on the blog or Facebook! Send us pictures and we’ll add them to our photo albums. We can’t wait to see what Spot does!

Our Spot On Specialist, Mary Jo, serves  up some delicious Puppy Chow!

Puppy Chow
Ingredients:
½ cup peanut butter
¼ cup butter
1 cup chocolate chips
½ tsp. vanilla
9 cups Chex cereal in the flavor of your choice
1 ½ cups powdered sugar

Instructions:
Combine peanut butter, butter and chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for one minute then stir to blend all ingredients thoroughly. Add vanilla and mix well.
Place the 9 cups cereal in a very large bowl. Pour the peanut butter-chocolate mixture over the cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into 2-gallon resealable food-storage plastic bag.
Add powdered sugar. Seal bag and shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool.

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I am - BIG TIME. I love dogs (especially my overweight dachshund), cats, pretty much animals in general. When our new Spot On peer to peer recognition program was introduced, I thought "Great! He's so cute!" But I really didn't think about how to use the Spot On recognition program in a business environment. I wondered, "Would Spot be taken seriously?"
 
Just a few days ago, I was given the challenge to begin our own peer to peer recognition program in our sales suite of about 25 people. My only instruction was to use Spot On. My boss, Kurt Carlson, Director of Positive Mojo, was quick to help as we both decided to introduce MaryJo Chicklon as our Spot On Expert (you can email our Spot On expert at spoton@baudville.com!). MaryJo has been a customer service star at Baudville for four years. With her experience, great rapport with customers and awesome attitude, I knew she would be a great liaison for our customers.
 
MaryJo and I met and quickly had some cool ideas based on SpotonBaudville.com. We ordered the program, put all the pieces in front of us and brainstormed how we could begin using it as soon as possible. Then, we discussed some of our concerns. We already have a peer recognition program at Baudville; we knew we didn't want to detract from its success. How do we make Spot On just for our department?

Another challenge we talked about were all the various positions in our suite - inbound calls, outbound calls, artists, eCare specialists, Tech Support - how are we going to meet everyone's goals?
 
MaryJo and I wanted to encourage teamwork, helping each other, and also thanking others for what we sometimes take for granted every day. We decided to incorporate our corporate value "Nurture.” It seemed a perfect fit.
 
We also wanted to have all of our sales and support professionals know as much about Spot On as MaryJo and I do. Why not have peer to peer training instead of the typical "boss up front and showing slides" training, we thought? I immediately LOVED this idea from MaryJo and, after a few tweaks, the training will start on Wednesday with a fun Kick Off day in our suite. We've set up all the parts of the system in our Coaching Area so two people can log off the phones, get away from their desk and learn about the Spot On program.

 Employees earn a token for being trained and a token for training the next person! We've paired up our trainees so that they are training people in areas other than their own - again reinforcing the team attitude in our suite. Within 2 days, everyone will be trained and talking about Spot On with our customers.
 
It's only the beginning, but already the ideas are flying around our department: using paw prints or Spots as visuals to hang around our cubicles, tokens for helping someone, token for hearing someone talk about Spot On with our customers, turning in tokens for prizes, fun dog "treats" to go along with the Kick Off (have you heard of Puppy Chow? it's really a people snack made of cereal, chocolate and peanut butter- YUM). We often get more attention when there's food around an event!
 
We're finding Spot to be very accommodating to our needs, our suite, and as a great complement to an existing program. I'll let you know how the Kick Off goes next week!

Brenda and her dachshund, Teddy Bear.

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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. Her two favorite dogs are her overweight dachshund, Teddy Bear, and Spot (naturally!). She regularly blogs about her experience implementing the Spot On recognition program in the Baudville sales suite.