I meet many business owners, and entrepreneurs; the question that we cannot help but ask each other is “How’s business?” People tend to be circumspect with his or her answer however the conversation usually moves on to “how did RedBalloon become a ‘Great Place to Work?”. I have never shied away from sharing with anyone the pivotal moment when we added to the team an HR professional. We only had about 25 people back in the day when we made this commitment. I knew that I wanted RedBalloon to be a great employer – I just did not have the technical HR skill required to make it happen.

Colleague Megan Bromley who has designed the RedBalloon “Employee Experience Framework” (she has won awards for her work) says that “celebration” is key to the framework’s success. “This does not have to be the big ‘end of year party ‘celebration” she says “It is those small moments of recognition – regularly that have people feel great about his or her contribution.”

Most small business owners when I say “HR was critical to our growth” look at me with fear – thinking “what will that cost?” But what does it cost NOT to look after your people – with half the population always on the look out for a better job – one of the few things that we can do – that costs almost nothing is to recognise our people – and it does not take a professional HR person to put that in place.

We have decided to preach what we practice – and we have developed RED (recognise every day) Toolkit – perfect for small business. It is a boxed solution – with everything you will need to have a consistent recognition program. The RED Recognition Toolkit contains more than 200 different instances of recognition which will get you into the habit of saying ‘thank you’ all the time – in addition we urge you to encourage your team to recognise each other – peer to peer recognition is amazingly powerful. 13 years of our RedBalloon learnings packed into one box – for $89. We just want to see other businesses thrive like we have.

I believe that everybody is entitled to a great day at work – and being recognised will make someone’s day. Join our Happiness Revolution.