National Employee Appreciation Day 2010

National Employee Appreciation Day occurs on the first Friday of the month of March. This year, it fell on Friday, March 5, 2010. But don't worry, the entire month of March is also Employee Spirit Month - so it's not too late!

We're all about fun here, but showing appreciation to your employees is serious business. Companies should try harder than ever to retain and reward their best employees.

If you need National Employee Appreciation Day ideas, gift certificates are a good place to start. Most any drug store or supermarket will sell a wide range of gift certificates in any price range. Even Amazon.com has gotten into the game with a huge variety of gift certificates to choose from.

Look for gift certificates with wide appeal. While Starbucks may not be everyone's cup of tea (or coffee), almost anyone can enjoy a popular restaurant or bookstore.

Here are some additional Employee Appreciation Day ideas:

• Gag Gifts for Under $10
• How to Choose Employee Award Winners
• Awards Show Presentation Tips

And remember: show your employees that you care. And not just on National Employee Appreciation Day, but year-round.

Certificates of Recognition - Download Free Recognition Certificate

Searching for a quick and easy certificate of recognition? We offer printable certificates of recognition in PDF format. Unlike Microsoft Word certificate templates, our templates are pre-designed and offer limited ability to change their look and feel. But the advantage is that it's super-quick and easy to do.

Available in PDF format, "Funny Employee Awards: Your Complete Guide to Organizing a Humorous, Entertaining, and Rewarding Recognition Ceremony" contains 101 Printable Funny Award Certificates, such as the free printable certificates of recognition pictured below:

Download a certificate of recognition for free

These examples come pre-filled with funny phrases for recognition certificates. The PDF also contains 6 Awards Templates for adding your own certificate of recognition wording. The templates are really just blank versions of the awards pictured above. So imagine the second example without the wording "The Loch Ness Award" and "For Least Likely To Be Found". The templates include:

• Recognition Award Template
• Appreciation Award Template
• Excellence Award Template
• Leadership Award Template
• Teamwork Award Template
• Achievement Award Template

Again, these are not Microsoft Word templates. You can not change the design or colors of the awards. You can not change the fonts using the Free edition of Adobe Reader (but you can change the fonts and save changes with Adobe Acrobat). The best way to understand the template is to try it out for yourself:

Certificate of Recognition Sample

Be sure to download the free sample employee recognition certificate to make sure the PDF is right for you before making a purchase.

Funny Employee Awards: Your Complete Guide to Organizing a Humorous, Entertaining, and Rewarding Recognition Ceremony

Low-Cost Employee Recognition Ideas

The Chicago Tribune praised the benefits of employee recognition ideas like the funny awards found on this site in their article, "Improving employee morale with incentives a challenge in tough economic times".

The article explains that recognition and prizes - no matter how small - tend to pay off when they reflect a positive work environment.

"When budgets become tighter, you have to become more creative and we have creative people," said Jennifer Zuri, a marketing communications manager at Aquascape. Zuri resurrected a dormant committee in charge of boosting employee morale.

Zuri has planned no-cost employee recognition programs like a "wallyball" tournament and office Olympics. Prizes range from bobbleheads bearing the likeness of the company's founder, to certificates she printed and framed.

"It can be very shallow stuff..." said Tom McMullen, an expert in incentives at management consulting firm Hay Group. But even hanging a picture of an employee of the month can be meaningful if it contributes to a healthy workplace. "If that picture on the wall is part of a bigger thing -- a work climate -- it's very powerful," McMullen said.

As we've said on this blog before, employee recognition doesn't have to break the bank. If you have a positive work environment, even the smallest of employee recognition can pay big dividends.

When is National Nurses Day 2009?

Nurses Day, also known as National Nurses Day or National RN Recognition Day, always occurs on May 6 in the United States. National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6th and ends on May 12th, the birth date of Florence Nightingale, a pioneering nurse. For jettsetters, International Nurses Day is always on May 12.

To make matters slightly more confusing, National School Nurse Day is celebrated on the Wednesday during National Nurse Week. This year, National School Nurse Day does happen to be on May 6, 2009. But National School Nurse Day 2010 is on May 12, 2010. There's also a Certified Nurses Day, which was held on March 19, 2009.

Popular Google searches for the holiday include nurses day, nursing day, nurse appreciation week, nurses day gifts, and "when is nurses day". With all the variations, it's easy to understand the confusion.

Typical Nurses Day gift ideas include flowers, gift certificates, lunch or dinner, and gift baskets. If your nursing staff has a sense of humor, you can always bring a few laughs into your recognition ceremony with funny awards.

Download 101 Funny Awards Certificates! PDF download includes 101 Hilarious Printable Certificates + 6 Award Templates for making up your own Funny Nurses Awards! Download now and start using right away!

Administrative Professionals Day Ideas for 2009

The holiday formerly known as Secretary's Day, now known as Administrative Professionals Day, occurs on the Wednesday of the last full week of April. This year, Wednesday, April 22, 2009 is Secretary's Day. If one day isn't enough time for you to celebrate, the entire week is known as Administrative Professionals Week (formerly known as Secretary's Week).

According to Wikipedia, the National Secretaries Association, now known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) created the unofficial holiday in 1952  to recognize the work of secretaries, administrative assistants, receptionists, and other administrative support professionals. You may also know them as "Executive Admins".

Despite the push for the name change, the top Google searches for this holiday are (in order) secretary day, secretary's day, administrative professionals day, secretaries day, administrative professional day, secretarys day.

Typical gifts for Secretary's Day include gift certificates, lunch, and gift baskets. Some companies cater lunch because hey, somebody has to stay in answer the phones (sad, but true). Best of all, bosses clumsily attempt to plan their own office party.

If your ExecutiveAdminProfessional-etary has a sense of humor, you can always bring a few laughs into the office with these funny awards:

	Raisin Pay Appreciation Award Given to the employee who is Most Deserving of a "Raisin" Pay. Download this free Certificate of Appreciation
	Selective Hearing Impairment Award Given to the employee who has excelled at the skill of Only Hearing What they Want to Hear. Download this free Award Certificate
	Bermuda Triangle Award Given to the employee who has excelled at the skill of Always Losing Paperwork. Download this free Printable Certificate

 

Need more ideas? Celebrate Secretary's Day 2009 with our eBook of 101 Funny Employee Awards. It will give all of you non-admins the tools you need to throw a fun recognition ceremony for your staff.

Employee Appreciation Day - Ideas

Employee Appreciation Day occurs on the first Friday of the month of March. This year, it falls on Friday, March 6, 2009. The month of March is also Employee Spirit Month, whatever that means.

We're all about fun here, but showing appreciation to your employees is serious business - especially in this economy. Now more than ever, companies need to retain and reward their best employees.

If you need Employee Appreciation Day ideas, gift certificates are a good place to start. Most any drug store or supermarket will sell a wide range of gift certificates in any price range. Look for certificates with wide appeal. While Starbucks may not be everyone's cup of tea (or coffee), almost anyone can enjoy a popular restaurant or bookstore.

Here are some additional Employee Appreciation Day ideas:

• Gag Gifts for Under $10
• How to Choose Employee Award Winners
• Awards Show Presentation Tips

And remember: show your employees that you care. And not just March 6, but year-round.

Employee Recognition that Doesn't Break the Bank

Wells Fargo & Co. made news this week by blaming the media for having to cancel all "major employee-recognition events."

The bank that took $25 billion in federal bailout money ranfull-page ads in Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post that read "one-sided stories lead you to believe every employee recognition event is a junket, a boondoggle, a waste or that it's for highly-paid executives. Nonsense!"

The bank's sentiment is partially understandable.

One one hand, companies that receive government bailout money should both expect and receive more public scrutiny. Public outrage over exorbitant executive salaries and private Jimmy Buffett concerts are understandable.

On the other hand, Wells Fargo is correct in defending the practice of employee recognition. In fact, such recognition is vital to any company that expects to recover in this economy.

But perhaps Wells Fargo executives have lost sight of what employee recognition really means. It can be as simple as a pat on the back or a "job well done". Not only does it not have to break the bank, the best employee recognition can be low-cost or completely free.

Download 101 Funny Employee Awards Certificates!
If you're looking for low-cost employee recognition ideas, be sure to pick up our 101 funny award certificates eBook. These awards are perfect for any worker at any type of business - even Wells Fargo executives. Download now and start using right away!

How to Choose Employee Award Winners

Your office party is coming up and you've settled on an Employee Awards Show theme. You've even decided to include some funny awards to make sure the presentation isn't a drag. So how do you decide who’s going to get an award?

• First, put together a selection committee of 2-3 people who know most everyone in the office. The key is not to do this alone. You need a group to suss out the recipients’ vulnerabilities and personalities. Something you might consider hilarious, they might consider offensive.
• When choosing your award recipients, make sure you have the biggest characters in the office covered. The awards ceremony will only be as good as the winners, and an event filled with boring acceptance speeches won’t be much fun for anyone.
• Only give the funny awards to those with a sense of humor who don’t have any problem poking fun at themselves. You don’t want to turn into Michael Scott from The Office.
• It works well to make of list of those you’d like to give awards to, then find one that’s suitable from the list of options.

If you’re worried at all that your award may embarrass the winner, you can always tip that person off ahead of time. It won’t ruin the presentation. Remember, the idea is to create an entertaining presentation for the entire audience – not just to surprise one person.

Telling the winner ahead of time will allow that person to voice any objections, and will give them time to prepare a funny speech if they choose to do so. Everyone else will still be surprised and entertained when the award winner is announced, and you won’t have to worry about any potential awkward moments!

When picking awards, remember that the intent here is to have fun — not to embarrass.

For more tips, download our Funny Employee Awards eBook.

Unique Employee Awards

The Employee Awards Ceremony is a classic office party theme. Here are a few tips to make sure you have an unforgettable evening.

Before the event, line up an emcee to keep the show flowing. If your budget allows, hire a professional comedian to host the awards ceremony. Have the comedian perform a short stand-up set before handing out the Awards. It will be just like having your own Oscar party!

If you don’t want to hire a professional comedian, ask someone who’s personable from the office to handle the duties. Or ask each department head to give out the awards within his or her department.

Awards Show Presentation Tips

• Keep everything, from the opening remarks to the acceptance speeches, short. The event should move along at a crisp pace.
• A customized PowerPoint presentation with the winners’ photos makes a big impact.
• Hook your laptop into the sound system and play music as people come up to accept the awards.
• Get a photographer to take pictures of all the winners as they accept their awards. Everyone loves pictures of themselves!
• Make sure your ceremony isn’t dry and boring by handing out creative and funny awards.

It's easy to make your awards ceremony as grand or as modest as you like. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about getting together and having a good time.

Use End of the Year Awards Year-Round

Most people who buy funny awards do so for end-of-the-year celebrations. But humor in the workplace should be used year-round, not just in December. Here's an excellent case study of using our funny recognition awards year-round sent in by Cindy Collver:

Having a fairly new sales department (we got rid of the old "barnacles" that were clogging us up), I needed something to use as an on-going way of keeping my reps motivated and laughing (because laughter is the best motivator and medicine).

Contrary to how probably many companies use the Funny Employee Awards (once a year…most likely around Christmas – when after a few cocktails everything’s funny anyway), I’m choosing to use these awards when the opportunity presents itself in the here and now….

• Could be in a sales meeting;
• Could be an impromptu "YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!" moment;
• Could be taped to the ceiling – just to see how long it takes them to notice;
• Could be just because it’s 4:34 p.m. on Wednesday.

And with 101 options to choose from, it’s a better deal than the House of Flavors 50 choices of ice cream.

- Cindy Collver Sales Administrator JTV, Inc.
Anytime. Anywhere. Live program streaming 24-7

Thanks Cindy! We'd like to hear how your company uses our awards. Please let us know by submitting a review or case study.