Julie, Crystal and John from our team are working our booth at the 2011 SHRM Conference and Expo (booth 2952). SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) is a fantastic organization and the show is always a big hit. Each year we have a different promotional tote bags to give away (here’s a link to the one for this year) – and as you can tell from the photo below, we go through a bunch of them!

Just a quick congrats to Brian at Fairwinds Credit Union in Orlando – he was the winner of our drawing for $500 in free promotional items at the SHRM Conference & Exhibition. Thanks to all who stopped by and registered. It was a great show – we’re already putting our 2010 ideas together!

All the great conversation and thinking about topics related to people/business/culture inspired by the SHRM Conference prompted me to pull together this quick list of several Blue Papers (which are our version of white papers, but if you’ve seen our Blue Boxes around, you’ll know why we chose blue instead!) we’ve published.

These papers will get you thinking – and maybe even implementing – which is a good thing given the critical nature of the topics involved!

• The Power of Recognition
• Teamwork Matters
• Employee Recognition
• Employees as Brand Stewards

The SHRM Annual Conference and Expo is THE event in Human Resource Management – it’s the world’s largest exposition dedicated to the HR profession.

It’s a huge show – but to me its size is proportional to the importance of human resource management to every business. 

My first exposure to this show was last year when we were named one of the Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America (7th on the 25 medium sized companies) – honestly one of the most thrilling days ever – an honor for our team and an honor to represent them. It was wonderful to meet and be surrounded by so many people who truly recognize that people make the difference, and therefore professional, thoughtful and strategic human resource management is a fundamental building block of success.

This year, not only do we have folks from 4imprint attending the show as part of their professional development in HR, we’re also displaying at the expo for the first time as promotional products work in a variety of HR applications – recruitment, recognition programs, wellness programs, safety programs, corporate events and community outreach and much more. We got the booth set up yesterday (which always takes longer than you think it should!) with plenty of samples to look at and many more to giveaway (if you’re going to the show we’re at booth 3346-3348). I’ll be there when the expo opens this afternoon, and will be there tomorrow as well. Mary (our HR leader!), will be there from time to time (when she’s not at a seminar or checking out other booths) and John and Guenevere will be there throughout (thanks guys!).

I’ll be posting any additional thoughts (not only on the HR side of things, but also the trade show marketing side as well) while I’m here . The show atmosphere has also inspired me to pull together all of the HR/People/Culture papers we’ve published in one nice, handy post. We’ll get that out a bit later. 

I’ll get updates out via twitter as well if you’re interested. You can follow me @4imprintklt 

We’ve been making plans for our booth at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) show later this month. Part of that process includes the questions  ’what logo’d apparel should the team wear’ and ‘what color combination should we use for the embroidery of our logo’?

Given that some of the team will be there for a few days, we have a couple of different combinations of colors and designs.  One of my favorites in the mix is ‘tone-on-tone’. That’s where the embroidery is the same tone/color as the shirt.  I know, seems a bit counter-intuitive, but it looks very polished and works well on custom polos, promotional dress shirts and even heavyweight T’s or sweats.

Tone-on-tone stands out by not ‘standing out’ – know what I mean?

Tone-on-tone embroidery for a polished look.