Oliver was recently chatting a recently retired General Manager about the importance of Company Culture in motivating teams. His discussion lead to the use of Team Building as a way of communicating this culture and the importance of consistency.
When did you first use team building and did you find the expense valuable?
Our first program was in Halley and Mellowes 20th year with approximately 20 people. It was a considerable expense, but we justified this by collaborating the Team Building with sales training. We found consistency in using the same Team Building company annually for five years, this had the added advantage of having the same facilitators, to get to know our people and build our culture. The experiences were always new and exciting and the immediate benefits were enormous.
Since starting Team Building how would you say the company has changed?
In the five years following the first Team Building program the company grew significantly, tripling in size, and thus we found it even more important to maintain our unique fun loving culture. A positive note and significant result from this was that very few people left the company on their own volition.
What is the importance of culture to you?
In our eyes culture of a business is of paramount importance and in some cases the synergy of our culture is more important than the individual skills of an employee.
What is your best memory of team building?
It was in the early stages, either my first or second program, we had a group of 12 employees in a weekend session down in the Southern highlands, after abseiling down a cliff we constructed a rope bridge river crossing in which we had to then utlise. This forced us to put faith in our ability to work together and trust each others skills. The result and sense of achievement was truly satisfying. As a manager watching all the employees working as a team in different environments pointed out individual skills that I would of never recognised.
Does Halley and Mellowes still participate in team building?
Over the past 25years and even today with 200 employees Team Building is still being used, now however it is broken down by divisions and management teams, with an overall team builder running through all groups to replicate the consistent culture throughout the company.
