‘It was amazing, I can't really explain it’ said Silvy when we got on a zoom call a few weeks after she got back to Switzerland from a week with her team at the Workation Village. And yet, she does manage to tell me all about the week the Customer relationship management team spent at the Italian Nature location.
As Head of Marketing and Communications at Ambit Silvy works with Nicole Scheidegger on HR topics such as employer attractiveness as well as the Great Place to Work survey project. She was part of the team that put together this workation experience.
THE RIGHT MINDSET
After going through a reorganization that brought about a lot of changes at Ambit in the earlier part of the year, a management team colleague came up with the idea of a workation week. Thierry Walt, CEO, immediately supported it.
Silvy explains how much she believes this type of ‘outside the box’ gathering in the workplace happens in places with the right environment and mindset from the get-go. We are a very team-oriented company, with CEOs eager to try new things. She explains how it is a very democratic and informal hierarchy company where it is easy to feel you have an impact and a say in the way things are done in the company. ‘I am happy here’ she adds.
ACTIONS LOUDER THAN WORDS
We talk briefly about the Employer Value Proposition, something Ambit is actively working on. ‘EVP is something that you live rather than something you put on your wall and show off to the world’ adds Silvy. ‘It is togetherness, it is the right processes in place. Actions are always louder than any words you can write’.
This is obviously music to our ears at Campfire Company as we focus so much on the experience itself to relay the right kind of message and culture.
‘This was an amazing event, the best professional event I ever did’ Silvy shares. ‘You can pay for the fanciest party but you can't beat the workation week itself because it was imperfectly perfect as Luca the owner says’- You can book a 5 stars hotel but you cannot recreate this atmosphere that helped so much with us bonding’.
RELATE DIFFERENTLY IN A DIFFERENT SPACE
It was the company’s first time doing something like this, going away for a whole week. There were, of course, a few concerns around productivity and tech setups. When a small group including the CEO came to visit a few months before the retreat they had a bit of a shock. The Workation Village is very different from the traditional Hotels and conference centers and they were worried this was not a place for professional team building. They went forward with it nonetheless and in the end, they concluded it was one of the best things they had ever done for their company culture.
As the 60 team members, ranging from 20 to 60 years old, gathered in this tiny, Italian village they found opportunities to talk and get to know each other in very different contexts.
Not only did they get to work and brainstorm in different spaces, inviting everything to think differently and try new things, such as the pop-up workation radio a few team members aired every morning from 9 to 9:30 sharing news, interviews, and schedule for the day. All of these little moments created a lot of stories and shared memories and experiences that are not work-related but will for sure help with working better together. Cooking and presenting the food they had created together had a particularly strong impact on Silvy. Food seems to be the glue that brings us and keeps us together after all.
Their program allowed for personal work sessions as well as co-working ones in addition to the planned workshops.
If Silvy could give one piece of advice to anyone planning their next retreat it would be to not jampack the schedule: ‘Take the courage to leave some space. The magic happens in between’. The advice she herself received from our co-founders Johannes and Leo during the planning calls.
THE AFTERMATH
It was such a needed thing to do after COVID, to get back into the idea of working together, reminding people how nice it can be. Silvy adds that she mentions that she actually noticed the impact back at the office after they got back, more people are showing up and they have more to share.
‘We considered launching official office days, but have not done it. It turns out, if you do have the right magnet, people will come back. People come back for the people…. The workation week ignited that’.
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Thank you so much Silvy and the whole Ambit team for the time spent with us at the Workation Village.
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