We came into work yesterday bursting with pride for #teamlaird following our summer meeting last week. The day was an outstanding success with everyone getting stuck in and celebrating in style in the evening!
Our day started off with all the Engineers undertaking some specific training and getting to know each other a bit better – working across the country, some were meeting for the first time! Then at lunchtime, all the office staff arrived to continue the day. All new staff in the last 12 months introduced themselves and the positive comments re our culture were fab:
“Breath of fresh air”
“Hoping to Progress here”
“Love the Laird culture”
“As close as it gets to working for Carlsberg”
Nik, our MD, then stood up and his opening line was “ I want us all to have loads of fun, help our customers and be a great place to work”. This pretty much sums up the theme of the day. Very much centred around offering a quality service and enjoying it along the way!
We then reviewed the values we created last year and gave examples of how they have shown these values in their day to day life. One of our new in-house engineers explained how everyone has been more than willing to stop and show him things when he’s needed it – highlighting our value ‘Investing in Each Other’.
The next part of the day was ‘Building Bridges’ – not because we’d all fallen out, but a team building experience designed to bring us together. Every team was given the same task – build a bridge complete with a draw bridge and they were all given the same amount of money to purchase materials to build their bridges. Watching from afar, everyone worked really well together and you could spot the Engineers in the teams! After some harmless rivalry and healthy competition, the winner was announced – the team that had Laird branding all over their bridge and a self-opening draw bridge made from empty cider bottles filled with water!
Then came the Netflix announcement – UNLIMITED holidays! The idea behind this is to develop a culture of EBO –Everyone Better Off. We want to produce a product not have people just ‘do time’ here. Netflix have a no clothes policy, as does Laird, but we don’t come to work in no clothes. So, no, everyone can’t suddenly all go on holiday! We are trying to develop an attitude of using best judgement and allowing staff greater responsibility to their working day. As long as productivity and service levels increase, then staff have the freedom to take holidays as and when works for the rest of their team. Team work is obviously central to this idea and on the whole, it was received extremely positively!
At Laird, we don’t agree with the phrase – “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Instead we prefer – “Leverage what works, and transform what doesn’t”. We also don’t want to hear people saying ‘Thank God It’s Friday!” – Whilst everyone loves a weekend, we want our staff to enjoy working here and be happy coming to work.
We ended the day with a glass of fizz and a cheers to the next year ahead! Exciting times for #teamlaird