About Jenifer Jurden

Employers Leverage Employee Innovation to Battle Economic Woes
Jurdy Character Provides Motivation and Comic Relief in the Workplace

As companies face one of the most depressed economic climates since 1927, daily news trumpets employee cutbacks and corporate budget trimming to meet the challenges. Employers are scrambling for innovative ways to keep employees motivated by leveraging their human assets’ knowledge, skill and experience to reduce costs, improve morale and sustain customer relationships.

Enter Jurdy, the alter-ego of Wilmington-born cartoonist, Jenifer Jurden. Move over Dilbert, there’s a new kid in townor in the officeand it’s a sassy green, gender neutral cartoon character. Jurdy puts a positive spin on workplace woes, shoring up thewe’re all in this together office cultural alliance and producing bottom line results for business.

Jurden, a veteran advertising executive and cartoonist, launched Jurdy in 2007, and Jurdy quickly became a source of comic relief and a spokes-being for companies to utilize in employee communications. Now Jurdy toons are popping up on company intranets, E-newsletters, workplace greeting cards, posters andway to go e-mail messages.

Jurdy is a compassionate, human-loving character with a friendly, wise and witty sarcasm about work, says Jurden of the character.And Jurdy really gets what it’s like to be overworked, overwhelmed and a little dismayed when the workplace gets frantic and tense. Jurdy first made the workplace scene when Jurden need a way to calm her own stressed-out production team when the office got frenzied, and quickly saw Jurdy’s ability to keep teams motivated and productive. They generated more ideas and got more creative about problem solving when Jurdy toons showed up on their desk, says Jurden.

We’ve received over 500 ideas in less than 60 days, says a Jurdy supporter and HR Director for a long-standing financial institution in Delaware with a successful customer service track record. Its employee innovation team met with Jurden to define ways to encourage employee participation in the bank’s operational revenue generating and cost-cutting measures, and wound up with a wildly successful Jurdy idea generation program.

Now we’ve assigned a manager to the Jurdy program, the HR Director adds,and we can already see how the Jurdy idea program pays for itself with cost saving ideas plus our employees have a new ally in Jurdy.

To kick off Jurdy Biz, Jurden published a pithy book for the corporate masses:but why should I hire a human? featuring tips and pointers on how to get workplace results that areout of this world.

And while Jurden is thrilled to see Jurdy hit intranets and cubicles in the world of business, she’s also quick to point out that Jurdy has a few other causes to attend to:We’re on a handful of green web sites (greenbang.com and ecostreet.com) and Jurdy is a great spokes-being for green initiatives at work and everywhere, says Jurden as she whips out her environmentally correct shopping bag featuring a Jurdy toon with the statement:Yeah. I’m green. Got a problem with that? Jurdy has also become an ally to the autism community, featured on the website of Autism Speaks, and publishes an educational e-newsletter for international distribution to subscribers.

Jurden accolades include featured Cartoonist of the Week on www.cartoonworld.org and Female Entrepreneur of the Week on www.divatoolbox.com.

For more information on Jurdy and creator Jenifer Jurden, please visit us on the web at www.jurdy.com, shoot us an e-mail at: info@jurdy.com, or call 302-383-5582.