4 Tips to Engage Customers & Employees

When a business is able to hire and engage with the right people, they will be able to operate better. And, as we are nearing the holiday season, businesses are looking for necessary holiday help. Part of this includes quickly identifying employees so customers and clients will be able to locate who can help them. Simply provide each employee with a name tag to help them communicate with your customers.

Name tags create a personalized experience as they make it quick and easy for customers to quickly see employees. These tags play an important role in developing effective communication between employees and customers for several reasons. From helping with employee visibility to increasing business approachability, name tags are an essential tool for any business to have.

Using custom ribbon rolls, custom plaques and engraved signs in a retail business to inform and engage customers and employees.

Engage Seasonal Workers with Name Tags

For many businesses, seasonal help is necessary to handle holiday demands. Not only are seasonal employees cost effective, but they also help your business remain flexible in adjusting the size of your workforce. During peak holiday times, these temporary employees are often necessary to have around to help keep full time operational coverage. Without these crucial employees, you couldn’t keep your business running the way your customers and clients are used to.

Adding seasonal and temporary employees to your staff has huge benefits for your company. It makes it easier for full time staff to enjoy the holidays while they maintain work/life balance, and you can keep your business steady. You will also have enough people to cover any increase in hours or demand for products and services.

So, have you already started the process of hiring your seasonal employees? If not, now is the time. Of course, you will need to make sure you train them thoroughly before your holiday rush hits! With that being said, as a business owner, you should also be concerned with how well your new help will be able to work with your customers.

Tip #1: As always, name tags help to engage employees and customers.

When employees wear identification, they help to enhance the overall customer experience. This, in turn, will make customers feel more valued. When a customer knows an employee’s name, they can quickly establish a level of trust with them. Name tags humanize interactions and help customers feel more comfortable when shopping or doing business with your company.

Name tags also express a sense of professionalism and being organized. When employees wear name tags, it shows that the company takes customer interactions seriously and is committed to providing a higher level of service. Employee identification also holds them more accountable for their actions and behavior. Name tags encourage staff to provide excellent customer service and uphold your brand’s reputation.

Tip #2: Decorating is easy with custom ribbon rolls.

Custom ribbon rolls with holiday messages and themes are great for helping to decorate any business.

Be creative in your store or shop by using custom ribbons to promote sales and products. Ribbon rolls are eye catching and will help with displays and packaging. Use these ribbons in a variety of ways, such as wrapping around products, decorating packaging or creating displays. Their versatility allows you to showcase your business creatively.

When using custom ribbons for promotions and sales, make sure that you consider how the design works. Always provide messaging that aligns with your branding and the purpose of any sale. Remember to consider the placement of the ribbon rolls and make sure that they are easily noticeable to customers.

Decorating for Success: Business 101

The key to a successful retail business is product presentation. No matter what your company sells, whether it’s furniture or cookies, product packaging and store design play a key role in how well your business performs. Take some time right now to learn about an easy to use tool that will help you decorate for success: RIBBONS.

Tip #3: Custom signs engage your holiday helpers.

Using custom engraved signs helps communicate clearly with employees and customers.

Begin the season with the early fall holidays by keeping your store current with up to date signage. The signs can be customized or simple office signs. From holiday hours to indicating entrances and more, engraved signs are your customer’s best friends.

Offer special promotions or discounts that are tied to the early fall holidays. Then, use signs to communicate these sales so customers can take full advantage. Or show off products that are relevant to any holiday or season. Use your creativity to promote Back to School, Halloween, Thanksgiving and other holidays or special events.

PRO TIP: Extend your signage efforts to social media by customizing signs with a QR code, helping your customer base find your channels and interact with you. This will help create an online buzz and attract a wider audience.

Tip #4: Making award plaques work for you.

Create award plaques to help employees feel like they are making a difference.

Keep your holiday momentum going by awarding your staff and teams as they achieve their goals. You encourage improvement by consistently recognizing your staff and helping them set well defined goals. Custom award plaques help you provide meaningful rewards for a job well done. And by acknowledging your employees’ success, you influence your business’s success.

Custom Plaques & Employee Recognition

From promoting accomplishments to motivating employees, custom plaques are a unique and personal way to connect with coworkers and other colleagues. Motivating employees to stay on track while at work can often be problematic. Use these custom plaques to go beyond highlighting someone’s achievements and help them see just how useful they are to your company.

Engaging with Employees and Customers

By strategically incorporating these tips, you can create a memorable and engaging shopping experience for your customers during the holidays while keeping your business’s atmosphere current and exciting.

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How Name Tags Step Up Your Branding

You see them everywhere: restaurants, grocery stores, retail establishments. Employees wearing name tags can be found nearly every place you need to go. And it doesn’t stop there! You can find name tags at conventions, conferences, meetings and more.

Someone putting on a name tag makes them immediately more approachable. A name tag connects your name with your face, so customers feel more comfortable where you work. A business’s best asset is its employees. Customers who interact with employees wearing name tags are more likely to have a positive experience. With these experiences comes customer loyalty.

As Scott Ginsberg, the Name Tag Guy says, “Your name tag is your best friend for several reasons. First of all, a person’s name is the single context of human memory most forgotten. And people are less likely to approach you if they don’t know (or forgot) your name. Secondly, it’s free advertising for you and your company. Third, name tags encourage people to be friendly and more approachable.”

Employees wearing name tags while traveling to and from work.

Logo Name Tags and Branding

Your employees can help with branding and customer retention by wearing their name tags outside work. Think about this: as your employees travel to and from work, if they still have their name tags on, you get free advertising! And, if they leave them on during off-campus lunch breaks, free advertising!

When employees continually wear name tags, your brand becomes more visible. The more people see your logo, the more they will know your business and what you do. So, when purchasing name tags, make sure to add your logo to make the most out of them.

Typically the power within name tags is acknowledged as a professional and friendly way to identify a company or personal identity. Many companies use name tags for branding and employee recognition. And this employee communication helps to improve customer care.

Name tags also provide confidence to those at a conference or meeting. Even if everyone doesn’t know each other, their names are visible, making introductions less intimidating. In addition, people can confidently call each other by their names.

Providing balance and uniformity is what name tags do best. When your business succeeds, your employees feel they are a part of that. So, having them help with your branding (by wearing logo name tags) is an essential part of your marketing.

Wearing name tags can help create an inviting atmosphere, making the employee feel more approachable. In addition, when your customers come into your business and see a face and can immediately associate with a name, it makes them more apt to stay and do business with you.

Custom lanyards designed with a business logo that are worn during a conference with identification.

Custom Lanyards and Networking

Everyone can use lanyards; seriously, you can find them everywhere. Schools, office buildings and even sporting venues use them daily. In addition, lanyards are commonly used during conferences, conventions and other events. Remember, every detail counts for any event, including branded lanyards for every attendee and presenter.

Not only do custom lanyards help in branding on the job, but they also help with networking at events. And, when you design your lanyards to have a business logo and name, it makes your marketing efforts more effective.

Keep your employees branded at all times. Add your logo and company color to a lanyard, and you won’t be able to give them out fast enough. Or, use a slogan or motto on branded lanyards to promote your business. These tools add recognition and identify not only the wearer but also the company. Often, lanyards are a requirement for access to a building or meeting and can be used this way as advertising.

While lanyards are commonly used for displaying badge holders or name tags, they can also be useful for other daily activities. And, they make for great marketing tools as well as providing security for events. Use branded lanyards for keeping track of keys and other personal items.

Lanyards are incredibly versatile due to their custom nature. Add text, logos, graphics and more to promote any brand. The text can be a phrase, a date or the name of an event or business. In addition, wearing a lanyard makes ID or credentials more accessible to show to others or for security proof that you can be in a building or any other typically private place.

The Power of Names (and how to help others remember yours)!

Whenever you put on a name tag, you become the face of your purpose, whatever that is. Your name tag represents this purpose to everyone around you, which benefits you and others. It can quickly help the people around you put your face with your name. We have all heard that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So, tell that story simply and quickly with your smile and a name tag.

Planning for Summer Activities

(Products to Help and Tips for the Perfect Event)

Whenever people gather together, whether it is for a wedding, a business conference or a summer festival, the most important part is making sure people participate. Start with employee engagement for your summer activities, and ignite your team’s spirit with refreshing activities such as BBQs, bowling and more.

Corporate summer events are the most successful when the activities are things that employees want to do, and the more fun, the better. Foster goodwill among employees and give people a chance to mingle with people outside their regular work contacts by hosting a summer event. But don’t forget that someone is always needed to oversee the event’s details to ensure that it happens and is a success.

Organizing a seminar, conference, brand promotion, or product launch is not as easy as it may seem. However, paying attention to small details is essential and will impact the participants at your event. They say the devil resides in the details, and it is this devil you need to cater to when planning a summer corporate event. All events need a lot of planning and proper execution to avoid losing out on participants. So, make sure that you start well ahead of time and get everything in order before the big day.

10 Things to Keep In Mind While Planning Your Corporate Event

The most important point to consider when planning an event is to decide on the theme. This means that you need first to conceptualize your idea. You also need to bear in mind the targeted audience for the particular event. Based on these two main aspects, i.e., the audience and the theme, you need to plan and execute the corporate event accordingly.

It pays to know your resources well, and it will only help you delegate the responsibilities well in advance. Remember, it is always best to have designated people to do their respective jobs rather than taking it all on your shoulders. Distribute the work evenly, and keep backups just in case there is a last-minute slag. Most importantly, collaborate on the event with them at all times.

A day before the event, make sure you have everything in place. You could visit the venue a couple of hours before the event and check the sound and light system. Ensure that the arrangements are proper and everything is looked into. Handing out programmed brochures to the guests will make the event seem more organized. Remember, the first impression will leave a lasting impact on your guests.

To do this, you would have to ensure that the entry management is efficient and well-organized. Last but not the least, ensure there are no snags and delays in your event that will put off your guests. Also, remember to place your guests’ safety and satisfaction at the helm of all your efforts. By keeping all these things in mind, you will leave your guests with a smile, translating your event into a huge success.

Personal identification products that can be customized to use at any summer activity your business is planning.

Team Building and Employee Summer Engagement

Teamwork is critical to any business’s success, both large and small. So, when employees can connect over common interests, goals and ambitions, they will work better together. And when you have a team that builds up each other, your business will constantly succeed.

Keeping your team motivated takes effort, especially during summer activities. And as a business owner, you need to help your team members develop their bonds to collaborate and communicate effectively. Enter team building!

Team building activities and games are supposed to be educational and enjoyable. They help the team learn about each other — how each person thinks, works, solves problems and has fun. So whether you want to do some icebreakers or just bond your team, there are inventive ways to do this.

Badge Holders and Lanyards to Spice up Your Summer Activities

Badge holders with printed inserts and colorful lanyards used during a company summer event.

Nearly every organized event requires attendees, volunteers, and others to wear name badges. So, hand out customized badge holders and lanyards to everyone at your summer event. Also, make sure to keep extra badges just in case you need them during the day of the event. With printable inserts, it’s easy to get someone’s identification quickly.

Once everyone is identified clearly at your summer activities, it helps ease introductions. That way, those in attendance can move on to more important things, such as business discussions and networking. Badge holders are one of the easiest (and most affordable) ways to identify large groups of people. Add in lanyards for extra branding and recognition.

So, get your employees involved this summer at your office shindig (and color coordinate your teams for better participation). Having fun this summer at your office party is even better with fun titles! Print them on inserts in badge holders for your summer activities.

Conversations About a Lanyard

As lanyards are an easy way to display name badges and other personal identification, they are used every day by various people. College students, teachers, employees in retail stores, office workers and even government officials wear lanyards to show IDs or security reasons.

When everyone at the company is wearing the same lanyard, it creates a sense of unity. Colleagues work together with camaraderie and respect. Whether your employees or in the office or on a corporate retreat, company lanyards instill the reality that everyone is a part of the same team, including upper management.

Networking is also an essential aspect of trade shows and summer events. Lanyards identify you and your colleagues by carrying name badges and advertising your company name and logo imprinted on the material. Also, lanyards work with nearly any dress code. Professionals can wear lanyards with their suit, dress shirt or blouse without compromising their appearance. Lanyards also allow people to carry their identifications or credentials without damaging their clothes with pins or other fasteners.

Employees should wear a badge holder for summer events to help create unity and elevate the security. Leaders need to be able to identify each participant at the event, and having each employee wear a lanyard and a name badge will help identify those who belong. They also aid in remembering people’s names.

Name Tags and Badge Ribbons for Your Next Summer Event

Black engraved name tag with colorful custom badge ribbons designed for use during summer activities.

From company summer festivities to family reunions, name tags and badge ribbons are perfect for every event. You can tell people more about each other at first glance with a highly personalized ribbon attached to their name tag. Likewise, if you have VIPs or other prominent members at your event, set them apart with a ribbon that reflects their importance or position.

Networking with Name Tags

Here’s the scenario: “You’ve just arrived at your weekly, cookie-cutter networking event. After walking up to the registration table, you search across a sea of identical plastic name badges with tiny print for the one with your name and company printed on it. You’ll affix this name tag to your shirt at the least awkward angle you can contrive and proceed into a crowded room of people all arching their necks to scope out the people worth chatting to while trying not to stare at someone’s chest for too long. (And most likely many have chosen to position the name) tags to be hidden in the folds of jackets or flipped around entirely, making them impossible to read. Good luck with that one.”

We’re here to offer that perfect solution. We offer a product that facilitates networking and promotes making those critical connections. In addition, our name tags and reusable badges are ideal for use with our lanyards and other fasteners.

Stand out from any crowd with bright, fun and festive badge ribbons.

Each ribbon helps make an initial introduction when worn with a name badge. They help break the ice for those attending social meetings and a get-together. And, it is always fun to think outside the box to come up with unique ways to personalize these badge ribbons.

While name badges are the usual place to find a badge ribbon, these identification tools are perfect for imaginative uses. From group identifiers to getting-to-know-you games, these ribbons help add flair to any event or function. However, use your imagination and create fun things to add to these promotional ribbons. They don’t always have to be professional. Instead, add silly things that will make them memorable such as Coffee Fiend or Here For The Food. Also, let attendees pick out something that describes their personality so others at a conference or corporate meeting will feel more at ease.

Ribbon Tools for Employee Engagement

Badge ribbons are the perfect tool to engage your employees, especially during summer events. With many different colors to choose from, and you can add any text and small graphics, these ribbons are incredibly versatile. Use them to inform your employees about your next event. Or, use them for event games, fun summer-themed titles and more.

No matter your event, you can make these ribbons work for you! Whether it’s an employee-only event or a summer get-together that your business is sponsoring, badge ribbons can do most of the work for you. First, include messages of dates, times and locations for each of your events. Then, use them to help employees and customers stay engaged with your business.

You can also use custom top ribbons as awards, reminders and souvenirs at your next company summer event. These ribbons are just as versatile as badge ribbons but a bit fancier. Sometimes the best way to keep your employees continually engaged is a simple reminder of the fun they have with your company. Summer events are the perfect reminder. So, create unique and engaging ribbons to give to your event guests as a reminder of the fun they had celebrating.

Custom Signs Designed for Summer Activities

Custom sign designed to show daily schedules for summer activities.

The best part of custom products is personalizing them for every event or need, including planning office summer activities. Informing your customers upfront about business hours and policies builds customer trust and keeps them coming back. Adding professional signage to your business (and event) will help your employees and customers understand your company goals. After all, helping your customers is your number one priority, so make sure they know by using classy engraved signs.

Finding a way to let your customers know where things are just got easier with stock engraved signs. Welcome everyone to your lobby by providing instructions on how you handle business. Help your customers find their way around your facility with easy-to-read stock office signage. Make your business more welcoming with custom and stock signs featuring messages that help your customers.

Signs also play an important role at your summer events. Add daily schedules, include information about the event or simply display a fun summer message. No matter what, make sure your message is engaging for everyone in attendance at your event.

So, what are the benefits of throwing company sponsored summer activities?

Hosting any company summer activities is one way to keep employee morale boosted, which can often dip up and down quite often. It’s almost seen as a perk, just in the same way that a Christmas party is. Giving your team the chance to interact outside of the office is one way to boost their morale. In addition, it provides the team with an opportunity to get to know each other better, and differently.

Learn even more: 5 Tips for Planning a Conference

Improving Your Customer Service

Helping your customers is what your business does, right? When you focus your priorities on your customers’ needs, you are actually doing your business a favor. As you meet your customer’s needs, you can better your business and better your customer service. In the long run, focusing on who is doing business with you will help you in your client retention as well as finding new customers.

Whether small or large, every business will always benefit from improved customer service practices. So how can you, as a business owner, help your employees and customers feel more valued? Here are several steps that you can take to improve your customer service.

Improve Your Customer Service by using name tags (relatability), name plates (approachability) and reusable badges (versatility).

Understand Your Customers’ Needs

According to several studies, service is vital in a customer’s brand loyalty choice. However, each customer will have a different view and opinion of excellent customer service. To provide this excellence, you need to determine your customers’ needs. Once you find out these needs, you can better train your employees to meet them.

Listen to (and Implement) Customer Feedback

You should also listen to customer feedback. Sometimes reading customer feedback is not the most exciting thing to do as a business owner. However, whether you are a small business or a large one, customer feedback should be a critical point in running your business.

Even if it’s negative, customer feedback will keep your business running up to par with what your customers expect. Part of being a business owner is listening to your customers. When you listen to your customer feedback, you can improve the customer’s experience. Once you improve this experience, your business can better help meet your customer’s needs.

Take all customer feedback constructively. Remember that most customers only provide negative feedback when something needs to be fixed. Therefore, even when dealing with positive feedback, find a constructive way to implement any changes that you need to your business.

Pay Attention to Your Competitors

Yes, even your competitors will influence your customer’s needs. For example, if consumers have a bad experience with a competitor, they may turn to you to meet their needs. So, you should always pay attention to your competitors to better help your customers.

While it is not prudent to stalk your competition, you will find it necessary to understand how your competitor runs its business. Then, you can identify possible shortcomings in their business and find ways to improve your business by building on what customers need.

Provide Open Communication

One of the best ways to improve your business’s customer service is by communicating openly with clients and customers. Find ways to communicate directly with customers about what services and products you offer and how they meet their needs.

Use every available means to communicate with your customers. Whether it is online and social media or in-store surveys, make sure you keep in contact with your customers. No matter how you communicate with your customers, make sure you use consistency in that communication.

Communicating with your customers is a crucial component of running a business. When you have an open line of communication, customers’ needs will become readily available to you. From the feedback received via surveys or messages sent through emails, customers will be happy to let you know what they need when your business is transparent.

Helping your customers remember your brand will also help you retain them. You help customers remember your brand and business by constantly providing them with your best business practices. This consistency is one of the best ways to accomplish customer retention.

Following Up with Your Customers

There are so many different ways that you can get in touch with your customers. From in-store surveys to social media postings, customer communication is easier than ever. Following up with your customers after completing a service or transaction is an excellent opportunity to understand their needs.

Once you understand these needs, you can follow up with your customer to ensure that they are satisfied with your business dealings. One of the easiest ways to reach out to your customers for a follow-up is an email. Make sure that when you send out emails to customers, you fully represent your brand. Your voice still needs to remain consistent so that your customers will keep coming back.

Promptly Handle Complaints

Part of listening to your customers is also taking their complaints. While taking complaints may not always be an easy part of doing business, it is vital that you allow your customers an opportunity to speak their minds. In addition, when you let customers complain about poor service or poor quality of product, you are also gaining their trust.

It is an important part of this step to follow up after receiving a complaint promptly. Remember, most customers do not complain unless there is an issue. And as a business owner, you want to make sure that there are no issues between you and your clientele.

No matter the kind of feedback you receive, you can always learn from what your customers tell you. So, always encourage customers to express and share their feelings about your company. Stay as transparent as you can during this process, and customers will continue doing business with you.

Meeting Your Customer’s Needs

One of the keys to excellent customer service is understanding and meeting customers’ needs. To make this happen, several steps must be followed. Keep the following in mind while dealing with your clients, and excellent customer service is sure to follow.

Offer Reasonable Solutions

Knowing your customers’ needs is only half the battle. The other half is to offer solutions to any problems that may occur. Find ways to explore how to improve your business continually. One of these ways is to listen to your customers’ needs and then respond with a way to fix any issue.

One key thing to remember is that the solutions need to be simple. Keep an open mind when responding to customer issues, stay as transparent as possible and actively keep your customer in the loop as you offer any solution.

Keep Listening to Your Customers

Just because you found one customer’s need does not mean that you found them all. Constantly keep listening to everything your customers say about how you run your business. Remember, your goal is excellent customer service. Without listening, this goal is unattainable.

And, don’t just listen but actually hear what your customers are saying. Take into consideration everything they say, no matter how unimportant it may seem. While sometimes it is hard to admit that a customer may be right, you may have a broken system (especially if more than one customer complains about the same thing). The only way to stay in business is to keep listening.

Be Honest and Transparent

It does not matter what type of business you run, honesty and transparency are two of the most important things you need to remember. Keeping your customers aware of how you are running your business will keep you in business.

Unhappy customers are not repeat customers. After all, a happy customer is your greatest asset as a business. Remember that a happy customer is also a buying customer. Whether it’s goods or services you offer as a company, your customer is there because of how you make them feel.

Honesty and transparency are just good business practices. Stay honest in your dealings, and your business will increase. Keep transparency as part of your brand, and you will continue to have excellent customer service.

How To Connect with Your Customers

The H2H experience should be available to all customers. What we mean by this is human to human connections. Connecting with customers should be the focus of every business. Over the past while, we have become disconnected.

As humans, we crave experiences that connect us with others. Those connections have turned online throughout the last year and have become a little less human. So, how do we revert to that constant human interaction we naturally crave while still existing in our ever-changing world?

Part of the solution to this issue is becoming more approachable. While you and your company may have already been in a position of trust, people need to feel that they can still trust you and your services. Now the question is, how do you gain that trust and become more approachable.


Tools for Improving Your Customer Service

NAME TAGS

With an extensive line of tags available, we have everything to meet your needs. Name tags are guaranteed to improve your customers’ experience and improve your customer service.

Communicate and relate better with your employees and customers easier with the help of name tags. While we are slightly biased, name tags are just a good business decision. They provide identification, security and so many other benefits.

There are significant benefits to wearing name tags in any retail establishment (grocery store, boutique, department store, etc.). Some of these benefits include the use of identification in marketing, providing security, identifying employees and other staff, and many other positive benefits.

REUSABLE BADGES

These versatile reusable name badges help your customers even when you have a high employee turnover. Your customer service will improve when everyone has identification. Reusable badges are perfect for volunteers, seasonal employees and even visitors.

And, with printable inserts, you can quickly provide identification for everyone at your company. Our reusable name badges are simple systems that can either be written on or printed and still look professional.

NAME PLATES

Be more approachable by using personalized name plates around your business. These name plates can include employee names, directions to find offices and other amenities, identify conference rooms and even provide an uplifting message for your customers.

Team Building and Employee Summer Engagement

It’s simple: having fun while working keeps up employee engagement. The happier the employee, the better work they will accomplish. And, to make employees even happier, remember to make sure they work well as a team. Team building is a necessary component to your business success.

While teamwork is critical, you also need to find the balance between work and fun as a business professional. Allowing your employees to get to know each other through fun filled team activities combines their strengths and helps them finish work faster.

“Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie

Teamwork is critical to any business’s success, both large and small. So, when employees can connect over common interests, goals and ambitions, they will work better together. And when you have a team that builds up each other, your business will constantly succeed.

Keeping your team motivated takes effort. As a business owner, you need to help your team members develop their bonds to collaborate and communicate effectively. Enter team building.

Name plates, award plaques and name tags will help employees in their team building efforts and establish your business goals.
Providing new name plates and name tags for employees help them to keep engaged with coworkers. Award plaques also help with encouraging strong teamwork.

What is team building?

It is a way of describing different activity types used in a learning or working environment that enhances social relations. These actions in turn define roles within teams and often involve collaborative tasks to help people work better together. When teams are put together, they are expected to understand their roles and responsibilities and to get along.

A team that works well together is more effective, more productive, and more successful — not to mention happier and more fun to work with. But team building at work can be tricky, especially when typical team building activities tend to induce more eye rolls among teammates than high fives.

Studies have shown that businesses with engaged employees pull in more sales and services compared to competitors how have low employee engagement levels. The bottom line is that it is essential for every business to find a way to keep their employees engaged and to work on their team building.

How to build a better team

Do not underestimate team building games, but do not overestimate them either. Make sure that if you are going to be adding games to meetings and other team activities they are something that will keep the attention of your employees.

Team building activities and games are supposed to be not only educational but also enjoyable. They help the team learn about each other — how each person thinks, works, solves problems and has fun. Whether you want to do some new hire orientation icebreakers or just bond your team closer together, there are inventive ways to do this.

Interactive Team Building Games

From inside around a board room table to outside while relaxing in the shade, keep your games moving. By using interactive games, you will keep your employees’ interest longer and have a more meaningful situation.

Gift Exchange

If you want to have a different activity this year, there are several games you and your coworkers can play with blank name tags. Have each person draw a picture of something that represents them. Then, have everyone guess which picture belongs to whom. Or, write a question on each blank tag and give it to each person to pin on their shirt. Everyone then has to answer the question pinned on the person they are talking to while they socialize. Be careful which markers you use as some markers may be permanent.

Exchanging white elephant gifts at your (next) party? Name tags make it easy to draw a person’s name to see who gets to choose a gift first. And unlike with paper strips, you will not have to rewrite their names again next year.

Grab That Badge!

One person should be chosen as the group leader and has everyone form a circle. They will then pass out adhesive name badges and pens to each participant. The badges should still have the backing on them so the sticky side is not exposed. Each person then writes their name on the badge. After everyone is done, the group leader collects all the name badges and mixes them up.

The group leader will then give each person an adhesive name badge and tells everyone to peel off the backing and place the name badge on the back of the person sitting to their right. The members of the group must then wander through the group and search for the name badge with their own name. Once they find it, they will take it from the person wearing it. The game becomes extra entertaining if someone’s name badge ends up on their own back.

Crack a Joke (Seriously)

Research shows that humor not only makes work fun, but it also increases productivity. So, give your employees something to laugh about by customizing badge ribbons with work appropriate humor. Use clever puns, dad jokes and funny pop culture references. If you and your team have inside jokes, stick them on a badge ribbon too. Wearing funny badge ribbons around the office will reduce stress levels and keep your employees smiling. The more your employees are in a good mood, the more productive they will be.

What other activities and ideas can you come up with for your team building activities?