Happy New Year

It's been a fun year for us at Your Baby's Ugly, we feel that we've achieved our goal of giving folks a candid look inside the incentive and recognition industry. By what's happening in the industry today, there will certainly be ample material for us to report on next year with the mind of keeping an industry that is known for the smoke and mirrors, as transparent as possible. 

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I'm off for a little vacation to be with the grand kids over the holidays, so no bloggin' from me until after the first of the year...if of course I survive the chaos of the little loved ones.

I'm leaving you with this poem by Nicholas Gordon. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and safe, healthy, prosperous and Happy New Year.

Christmas is a time for love and fun,

A time to reshape souls and roots and skies,

A time to give your heart to everyone

Freely, like a rich and lavish sun,

Like a burning star to those whose lonely sighs

Show need of such a time for love and fun.

For children first, whose pain is never done,

Whose bright white fire of anguish never dies,

It's time to give your heart to every one,

That not one angel fall, to hatred won

For lack of ears to listen to her cries,

Or arms to carry him towards love and fun,

Or friends to care what happens on the run

To adult life, where joy or sadness lies.

It's time to give your heart to everyone,

For God loves all, and turns His back on none,

Good or twisted, ignorant or wise.

Christmas is a time for love and fun,

A time to give your heart to everyone.

Nicholas Gordon

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone!

Why Penalize Your Best Employees?

Would you really want to unknowingly penalize your best employees? Of course not, but many companies do, especially at this time of the year.


Because of my many years in the awards industry, I was recently invited by an old friend from the Human Resources field to attend a meeting to discuss employee award programs and the various types of awards to use to drive those programs. The only caveat was that I had to remain completely neutral in my thinking and not try to sell the audience into a bias toward the awards I sell, mainly gift card award systems. Of course anyone who knows me realizes that is very difficult for me to do. Heck we’ve all got biases formed over the years from many different perspectives, cultures and experiences. And I’m certainly no different in my bias toward gift cards. They are the #1 undisputed award in the industry, nothing else even comes close. My bias toward gift cards resides mainly in my desire to provide the actual winner with the best possible value they can receive for the budgets their company has. In my opinion, anything less than that, is just not right. If you’re going to ask your employee for their best performance, you should give them the best value for what they have earned. Don’t just give them limited numbers of items to choose from at prices that are double the price the item sells for at retail.

So, I went through the litany of just about every conceivable kind of award I could think of and we discussed the features, benefits, positives and negatives of each. When it came to value and choice, all agreed that gift cards were the best. But from there, things became a little theoretical. Subjects like “it’s not a gift or an award if its dollar denominated. It’s better if you hide the value of the item from the winner.”… Really, and you think the employee can’t determine that value online in about a minute or less. Or “gift cards are so impersonal, we would rather give them something tangible”... Isn’t that kind of like saying I want to give them what I want them to have even if they don’t want it?....a tad arrogant wouldn’t you say? Or “we want them all to receive the same thing, with the company logo on it.”… I won’t even comment on how myopic and obtuse that idea is! Or, “I don’t want them to have to shop for their award.” Now that’s a classic, to that I might say go out to the malls at 4:00 A.M. on Black Friday and see how many folks hate to shop! Or my favorite, “Let’s just give them all a turkey?”… Didn’t that go out with the buggy whip?

When employee satisfaction is so important in today’s business world, using gift cards in an award program just makes sense. With the right gift card program like the Award of Choice, your employee is guaranteed to get the item they want at a substantial value over items in a traditional merchandise program. With gift cards you will never be penalizing your best employees.