Ruby is Saving Puppies, One Cupcake at a Time!

By Sarah Sackett | 05.15.2012 |

Ruby Happenings

The Ruby Doggie Dash team!

This weekend, a team of Rubys descended on Portland’s Waterfront Park to take in some sunshine, hang out with some cute dogs, and most importantly raise funds and awareness for a cause that is very near and dear to my heart: the Oregon Humane Society. This was the 4th year our “Ruby Rascals” team has participated in the OHS Doggie Dash, and this year was just as fun and adorable as ever!

Rubys at the starting line!

Virtual receptionists Stephanie C and Erin B

Stephanie and Erin are excited to show off their new Doggie Dash shirts!

Leading up to the dash, we put on a bake sale in the office to help our team raise funds and support the cause. With the help of some of our amazing bakers and generous teammates, we raised enough to feed all the animals in the shelter for one day and enjoyed some sweet treats in the process! We’d like to think we are saving puppies, one cupcake at a time!

My dog, Ellie, got a little tired and ended up spending the last half of the dash in my Ruby laptop bag!

Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to our team! And special thanks to Barbara Nelson with Successfully Solo who contributed all the way from New Jersey! We already can’t wait for next year!

Ruby Celebrates Success with Dress For Success Oregon!

By Sarah Sackett | 04.30.2012 |

Ruby Happenings

Ruby Celebrates Success

On Friday, a group of our fabulous virtual receptionists stepped out to celebrate with Dress for Success’s annual fundraising dinner and fashion show! We we were thrilled to sponsor a table at the event, and we enjoyed meeting some extraordinary people, hearing lots of heartwarming stories, and checking out some out fashion from local designers.

As a company primarily made up of women, Dress for Success is an organization near and dear to our hearts. Not only that, our own receptionist extraodinaire, Emily B., came to Ruby two years ago through the support of Dress for Success, and we could not be more proud to have her as part of our team! She’s wonderful to work with, a delight on the phone, and is a large part of what got us involved with this great organization!

Virtual receptionists Erin and Emily

This was our second year sponsoring a table at Celebrate Success, and recently our CEO, Jill Nelson, was honored to speak at their “Going Places Network” series about keeping a positive outlook during the job search.

To learn more about Dress for Success or make a donation, check out their website!

Happy Secretary’s Day!

By Sarah Sackett | 04.25.2012 |

Ruby's virtual receptionists celebrate Secretary's Day

Our staff decked out in their Secretary’s Day best!

Today is Ruby’s favorite holiday: Secretary’s Day! It’s actually the 60th anniversary of the holiday, also known as Administrative Professionals’ Day, recognizing the work of those “Directors of First Impressions” on the front lines of businesses. As an office of virtual receptionists, we are really proud and excited to be able to celebrate!

Our break room was flooded with delicious homemade treats, lovingly made by our team (seriously, cakes, cookies, casseroles, and finger foods took up almost all the counter space!). We continued our tradition of dressing up in our favorite old-fashioned secretary attire, and we treated the team to goodie bags to recognize their hard work. The office was filled to the brim with treats and smiles, and we had an amazing day!

We hope you also had a great day, and we want to wish a happy day to the other 8.9 million administrative professionals worldwide! Keep up the great work!

We’re at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago!

By Diana Stepleton | 03.29.2012 |

Ruby Happenings

Ruby CEO Jill Nelson, Sales Associate Ashley Fisher, Director of Marketing Kevin Gillam, and I are in the Windy City for the annual ABA TECHSHOW! Delighted that many of our clients are in attendance — a few are even on the faculty — and we’re thrilled to be able to finally meet them in person after speaking on the phone so many times!

Diana and Ashley

Ashley and I are the friendly faces at booth #513 in the Exhibit Hall if you’d like to stop by and say hello! Or message us on Twitter — we’d love to meet up!

We’re at the Great Place to Work Conference in Atlanta, Georgia!

By Sarah Sackett | 03.28.2012 |

Ruby Happenings

Paddy and Sarah at the Great Place to Work Conference

We’re always looking for more ways to make our virtual receptionist service a great place to work and keep our receptionists and staff happy — so much so that one of our Core Values is Foster Happiness! With this in mind, Ruby’s Director of Human Resources, Paddy McCaffrey-Allen, and I (as Director of Culture) traveled to sunny Atlanta, Georgia to attend the Great Place to Work Conference.

We’ve already heard an inspiring keynote address from John Mackey, Founder and CEO of Whole Foods. He observed that these days aggressive competition is the standard in business, but things like empathy and helpfulness are starkly missing. He noted, ”[p]articularly as we see women move into higher roles in business, we will see love take its rightful place in business.” As a woman-owned business full of cheerful, compassionate women (and four cheerful, compassionate men), we hope we can help with this change! And we can’t wait to see what else we learn from the other speakers!

We’ll be in Atlanta today and tomorrow; if you’re attending the conference or are in the area, let us know if you’d like to meet up or follow us on Twitter for more news from the conference!

Happy Valentine’s Day from your Virtual Receptionist Team!

By Sarah Sackett | 02.14.2012 |

If you are an avid Watercooler reader, I am sure you know by now that our team of virtual receptionists needs no excuse to celebrate and share a little happiness. Lucky for us, today is Valentine’s Day, and it is the perfect reason to celebrate and share a little sweetness! To spread a little love to our coworkers, we hosted a Valentine’s sweet treat potluck. Our kitchen is overflowing with amazing baked goods and candies made by our multitalented staff, and one of our wonderful local clients brought in some goodies for our virtual receptionist team, too! A few saccharine snapshots from the Ruby office:

Tasia, Ang, and Jewel share a laugh over a dinosaur cookie

Monica D, Ashley, Ash, Suzi, Ang, and Kristin enjoy the sweet treats!

Much love to our clients and staff! How are you celebrating Valentine’s Day this year?

Ruby Makes Oregon Business’ 2012 List of “Best Companies to Work For!”

By Katie Wilson | 12.28.2011 |

We’re thrilled that we’ve made Oregon Business magazine’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work for in Oregon” for 2102! Since one of our Core Values is Fostering Happiness and the ranking is dependent on employee surveys, this is a particularly meaningful award for us.

This is our third year to have made the list, and last year we were overjoyed to be named the #2 “Best Company to Work For” in the medium-sized business category. In fact, almost forty Rubys attended, and we gave a raucous roar when our name was announced; our virtual receptionists may have soft, friendly voices when answering phones but we also know how to cheer with the best of them!

100 Best Companies to Work For 2011 We were also named #1 in Performance Management, #2 in Career Development and Training, and #3 in Benefits and Compensation among medium-sized businesses. Our Star Service & Receptionist Cultivators are extremely committed to their receptionist teams (appropriately named the “Riveting,” “Radiant,” and most recently the “Gems”), and it felt great to recognize all their hard work.

Feel free to check out our Facebook album for pictures from last year’s awards dinner. We can’t wait to attend Oregon Business’s annual event in March and find out where we rank for 2012!

Around the Ruby Office: A Secret Snowflake Gift Exchange!

By Sarah Sackett | 12.22.2011 |

Our virtual receptionists celebrated the holidays this week with a secret snowflake gift exchange. Not only was it a great chance to Foster Happiness and Create Community (two of our Core Values) but it was lovely to see some Ruby talents shine through! Rachel S. made a beautifully knit hat for Pennie, Clarice baked some fruit loop cupcakes for Kendra (to honor her love of all things cereal), Kendra and Holly both made some dazzling earrings for their giftees, and there were lots of homemade sugary treats flowing in the office! Others handpicked some amazing and thoughtful gifts that definitely made their coworker’s days a little brighter.

Here are a few photos from the festivities:

Ruby's pink tree with a bounty of gifts!

Desi was so excited that Pat was her secret snowflake!

Ang was almost moved to tears by her scrapbook kit!

Katie was delighted by her restaurant gift cards from around the globe!

The Ruby Book Club Reads Contagious Leadership!

By Katie Wilson | 12.16.2011 |

Ruby Happenings

A few months ago, our Client Services Director, Ashley Hampton, started a Ruby book club. In the spirit of Innovation and Practicing WOWism, each month we read a new business book about delighting customers, team-building, and other inspiring topics. It’s a great way for us to come together, have some fun, and invigorate the team with new ideas.

Recently, award-winning speaker and CEO of Contagious Companies, Monica Wofford spoke at our staff meeting and energized our virtual receptionist team. We thought her book Contagious Leadership would be perfect for the Ruby book club and indeed it sparked some spirited discussion! We were especially intrigued by her point that different people are motivated by different things (recognition, monetary rewards, etc.), and we will definitely be thinking more about this when we design our quarterly incentive campaigns!

The Ruby Book Club discussing Contagious Leadership

Ruby Celebrates 2011 with Our Annual Holiday Party!

By Katie Wilson | 12.12.2011 |

On Saturday, our virtual receptionist team gathered together at our annual holiday gala to celebrate 2011 and Create Community with each other outside of the office. 2011 was a big year for Ruby_®, and as our Founder/CEO Jill Nelson put it: We found out what we’re made of. In the first half of the year, we launched a brand new, completely customized communications platform, adding several new features and making our virtual receptionist service even better. We also were named one of Oregon’s Fastest Growing Companies and moved into larger quarters in the LEED-certified Lovejoy Building. And then there was our crowning achievement: nabbing the title of #2 Best Medium-Sized Company to Work For in Oregon.

We are incredibly grateful for all of our employees, clients, and vendors for your support during this epic year and for making Ruby such a wonderful place to come to work! We can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!

Here are a few photos from the night, with even more to come on the Ruby Facebook and Google + pages!

: And then we danced the night away!

Special thanks to the folks at Holocene — everyone was so nice and helpful and the space was perfect! Also, a huge shout out to our Director of Culture, Sarah Sackett for organizing this faulous bash!

The Watercooler.

Keeping it personal in a virtual world.

Tagged with: Ruby Events