They have turned gift giving into a fine art, selling you experiences. The name for the company originated from the movie of the same name about a boy and his adventures with a balloon. In 2001, Naomi Simson left behind a successful marketing career to start RedBalloon with a clear vision to change the gifting landscape and has built the business into one of Australia's most successful online gift retailers.

The company and its founder have shown up on our radar for being and creating a great place to work at, having garnered ninth place on the BRW 50 Best Companies to work for, this year. They've also received numerous awards over the last few years for a variety of reasons including most visited website in the flowers and gifts industry. Naomi recently won in 2008, the National Telstra Business Women's Award in the Nokia Innovation Category and RedBalloon was also a winner in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific award for achieving the fastest rates of annual growth in Asia Pacific over the last few years.

Naomi who shared her journey in her first book, in 2007, I Want What She's Having is also a regular blogger. As we look around at ways that we can create and foster enduring, effective and wonderful places to work, let's hear from Naomi as to how she's made this a reality at RedBalloon.

ABOVE : THE RED BALLOON TEAM. IMAGE COURTESY : REDBALLOON

It's really wonderful to be acknowledged in the last few years, with all these awards and by so many people because quite often, you just keep your head down and get on with the job. This sort of recognition is an absolute honour. To me, I see that the place we're at right now, as having started with a clear vision ie to change gifting forever.

We want to create gifts to talk about and to share stories. Our team understands and believes in this. It comes down to having a clear vision, articulating it and staying true to it. That, I believe, is what unites us all. You asked about other opportunities and whether we move with these situations as they crop up and yes, the short of it is, other opportunities do come along but RedBalloon is absolutely aligned. We look at these other opportunities with other vehicles. Sometimes though, its just as important to say no as it is to say yes. Sure, we can sell consumer goods, that's fine. In fact, some of our customers have asked us to do so but it's not unique and it's not what our business is about. I worked at Apple years and years ago and they never played the 'me too' game - they stayed absolutely true to their vision. You've got to be able to say no and have the confidence to do so and have a team completely aligned to that.

What do we do to create passion at work? What do we do to create this culture of commitment and happiness even? You know, when I walk down the street with a bunch of balloons, invariably someone will stop me and make a comment, so balloons do evoke an emotional connection. But it's really not just about the environment. All fun makes it a kindergarten and all work, a boot camp. So a happy middle is about being aligned to what the business is about. How will we know when we get there? We've got a big scoreboard on the wall, where we write our vision. Things like by 2015, we will have 2 million Australians having had a red balloon experience, things like that. We're not there yet but it does update by the minute and this so completely keeps everyone on the ball. People are heard, they give their feedback. We have imagine boards much like vision boards. And it's about authentic leadership. We get the whole company together once a month. People really do appreciate knowing what's going on, whether it's good or bad, there's certainly no sugar coating here.

ABOVE : THE RED BALLOON TEAM. IMAGE COURTESY : REDBALLOON

In a blog I wrote earlier for the Ruby Connection on Employee Engagement, I talked about the five key drivers to our success. One of these was recognising and then working towards meeting the team's needs by maximising the elements that they love and minimising the parts that they loathe. Some ask how this works in real terms when there are always parts of a job that are unavoidable or things about a function you loathe despite its relevance. Well, firstly, its the commitment to what has to be done. Some say its pretty boring to write cheques or issue an invoice. Well, what about a system that gets the bank to automatically make a payment when the information goes into the system? Or say that some of us don't want to collect money. Flip it, I say. What happens if they pay before you deliver? You've got to take a good hard look at things. Some sales people don't like to chase invoices. Look at their strengths then - they woo and persuade. And then there are others who are more analytical who perhaps may not mind doing that sort of thing. You need to recruit people on the basis of what they love to do. It's about having a rigour about the process and the issue and being prepared to do it differently.

Crafting a situation where you can pull tremendously high employee engagement from your people is about the usual table stakes, for example, performance reviews, job descriptions, reward and recognition programmes. But people also want to be nurtured and developed as individuals and when that happens, it has a massive impact on them. If I had to give HR two tips that you can start with immediately, let me say this. Firstly, look at your recognition programme and flip it. Make sure its all about the participants. Look at the level of commitment. It's really not hard to notice and recognise contribution and this is something HR can account for right now. Secondly, talk to your leadership team. Now, more than ever, you are asking your people to give their discretionary effort and it won't be given if they don't believe in what they're doing. So, you've got to have a really straight chat about it and this needs to come from the leadership.