It was April 2014, and I had just started my new job as the Work/Life Balance Manager at Qualcomm in San Diego.

More than a few people questioned the pivot. I had come from a director-level role in higher education, by way of a stint in real estate investment, into an individual contributor role at a tech company with what I will generously call a "light" title. Colleagues helpfully informed me that this job was widely perceived as a Julie-the-Cruise-Director kind of role: ping pong tables, snacks, bands on the lawn, and the annual Take Your Kids to Work event.

I saw it differently. My years in co-curricular education, surrounded by brilliant students and faculty at UC San Diego, had convinced me that connection and community are not soft extras. They are the substrate of high-performing cultures. A role focused on helping people balance their work and lives felt like a blank canvas. This was before "Employee Experience," "Employee Engagement," and "the whole employee" became fixtures of every HR conference agenda.

So I jumped in. I managed social clubs, reimbursed gym memberships, planned events, ordered t-shirts and taco trucks, and yes, made sure the ping pong tables were in working order.

On the wall of my office, I hung a framed quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that captured what I believed the work was really about:

"A community should be judged good not because it is technologically advanced, or swimming in material riches; it is good if it offers people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible, while allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater challenges."

Enter the Qualcomm Cup

My first big cross-functional project was a leader-initiated global "World Cup" for Qualcomm employees. The concept was ambitious: hold a worldwide contest to surface the best soccer players from our employee ranks at every level of the company, fly them to San Diego, and stage our own version of the World Cup. Because everything at Qualcomm got a "Q," we called it the Qualcomm Cup.

We had a big budget, a bigger mandate, and 90 days to pull it off. HR, communications, soccer experts, and the global events team were all working overtime.

The response was overwhelming. Applications poured in from offices around the globe, revealing a depth of love for soccer we had not fully appreciated. It became a mad dash to select players, confirm they were in good standing, fly them in, coordinate housing and food, sort them into teams, kit them out, and choreograph every match.

There were buses. There was a rented polo field. There were dragon-themed team names (a nod to Qualcomm's Snapdragon brand). There were meals, dorm rooms, and the very real logistical question of how 40+ employee athletes were going to get their uniforms washed between games.

Other duties as assigned

Perhaps because I was the new kid. Perhaps because I volunteered a little too readily. Either way, I agreed to project manage the laundry.

The theory was elegant. Every player would get a mesh camping-style bag for their uniform, tie it shut, and leave it outside their dorm room each night. I hired a member of the dorm cleaning staff, recruited my 11-year-old daughter as jr. helper, and built a spreadsheet of every player, their uniform size, and their room assignment. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, while had landed a job in tech - I am not definitely not an engineer. I had done zero preparation and even less testing. And the mesh bags, it turns out, do not stay tied during the drying cycle. All 40-plus of the bags came undone. Every player's uniform, plus whatever bonus items they had snuck in (more than one pair of Disney boxers made an appearance), emerged from the industrial dryers in one large, colorful commingled pile.

I sent my assistant home, kept the kid to help and stayed up most of the night sorting jerseys by size, cross-referencing my spreadsheet, and trying to make sure the right gear ended up on the right floor for the right player. My daughter, perched on top of a washing machine, exhausted and teary, kept asking, "This is your new job? Why do you have to do all of this laundry?"

I remember thinking: this is the most literal interpretation of "other duties as assigned" I will ever experience.

The moment that changed how I thought about recognition

Fast-forward: the players found their (mostly correct) gear, the event went off beautifully, and Qualcomm VPs from Italy played alongside junior engineers from China. We capped it all by inviting players, families, and employees to watch Germany defeat Argentina on a giant screen at headquarters. I came out of those weeks with several close friendships I still cherish today, including one with a current colleague. Fun, as it turns out, is hard work but also makes deep connections.

Shortly after the event, I received an unexpected invitation to breakfast with the CEO. The CEO. He gathered the Qualcomm cup event team, thanked us personally, and spoke about culture, teamwork, and the global cooperation that fuels real innovation. We all left with a paper certificate and a follow up monetary award sent via email that we could redeem in an online catalog.

I had never experienced an employee recognition platform before. I sat down to redeem my award (a genuinely generous amount) and I laughed out loud when I saw that one of my catalog options was, I kid you not, a brand new washer and dryer set. (I told you it was generous.) Since I was renting at the time, I went with the Visa gift card. But the experience stuck with me.

The breakfast. The CEO's words. The gift that felt like it actually matched the effort. Timely, personal, from the top brass, and tangible enough to matter. That combination was powerful in a way I had never quite felt before, and I have never forgotten it.

Why I do this work

Today, I work in employee recognition and rewards as part of the Awardco Center of Excellence, helping organizations design recognition programs that move the needle on culture, engagement, and performance. When clients ask me why I believe so strongly in this work, I can trace the answer back through every chapter of my career, but most vividly to a work/life balance job, a belief in fun and flow, and one very long night of sorting soccer jerseys.

Recognition done well changes how people feel about their work, their leaders, and each other. It does not have to be elaborate. But id does need to be timely, specific, sincere, and matched in scale to the effort it is honoring.

And occasionally, if you are very lucky, it comes with a washer/dryer.