Workshop: #bestpossibleyou

It’s not easy to stand out in such an environment. Even if a recruiter may succeed, it’s worth considering whether the interest of the new prospects is for the long-term or is it an infatuation merely resulting from the momentary desire to get some minor, superficial plus  in comparison to all the other options available. Shall the latter be the case, unfortunately, it hardly has any retaining power for the future. At delaware, we believe that mutual long-term engagement can only be reached when we all share the same values and utilize them to make our  vision come true. 

At delaware, we believe that mutual long-term engagement can only be reached when we all share the same values and utilize them to make our  vision come true. This, however, is not only crucial when hiring someone new, but, from time to time, we also feel the  need  to take a step back from our daily routines, sit down and  reflect on where we are.  Are we at the right place? Are we going at the right pace? Are we aligned with our values?   At delaware, we believe that engaging our employees and retaining them is essential. Hence we wanted to create an informal event where we, as a team, can think through together and discuss what we see as delaware’s  most important values and what it is that brings us to the office day by day. We intended to use this friendly forum to see whether there is any difference between how managers and employees see these, and if so, what they are.  In order to gain our objective, we organized the very same workshop with the two groups separately. We believed that with this event that is outside of our normal routine, we all can  gather our thoughts and consciously see what actually provides our daily motivation.

Company culture

Following a short silent contemplation, everyone grabbed a pile of yellow post its and noted down all those factors that motivated them. These papers were then  categorized. It  was an intensely satisfying realization that in most of the cases we were thinking very much alike, which was all the proof we needed to reinforce for ourselves that in our case, the magnet principle works just fine .  TEAM has come out high on the ranking is with all the related drivers, such as atmosphere, community and team spirit. Company culture also placed outstandingly, as according to popular opinion, it is built on TRUST,  OPEN-MINDEDNESS and FLEXIBILITY  — values that  were said to be perfectly mirrored by our managers on a daily basis. For me personally, it was a great pleasure to hear our colleagues’  approval for our executive actions and  efforts to hire people who fit in with our values and with our efforts to retain our committed delawarians. Lastly, without doubt, LOCATION and WORK ENVIRONMENT also weighted a lot in the motivation of our employees.

All the above play crucial roles in  engaging our employees. These, however, would hardly be enough, without the professional connection, challenging projects and  long-term objectives that serve the individual development as much as the company’s growth. I was proud to witness that a  considerable amount of yellow post-its accumulated under the category “career” as well.  Most colleagues agreed that one of delaware’s main advantage is that we are delivering end-to-end  projects, which also means that our scope of our responsibility can change and vary. We are looking at our projects in a holistic way and we feel ownership over all its beauties and challenges. This environment drives our inner motivation to dig into fields that we are not entirely  familiar with or even to start something completely new from scratch.  These aspects of our unique work environment all come down to the added benefit of us being able to develop and grow professionally  as well as individually as we are continuously inspired to learn and to give the most of ourselves (#thebestpossibleyou).

Our values

In a somewhat alternative manner, we also analyzed the 5 delawarian values that serve as the pillars of our company culture. We were curious to evaluate how our colleagues see the importance and the presence of of  #care #teamspirit #commitment #respect and #entrepreneurship in our everyday life. It was a unique opportunity  for everyone to step out of the world of various and complex code matrixes and SAP modules and use a completely different mindset to prove that we can think and work together outside of our comfort zone as well. The workshop had a great flow of remarks, opinions, arguments, agreements and disagreements, examples, philosophical questions and  contemplative sighs.  There were of course some differences, but we fortunately found that not that many. And this was the purpose. To see the gaps clearly in order for us to dig deeper during our next forum to understand and to be able to act upon these differences, if needed.

Delivering tomorrow today

A mere 60 minutes for the workshop was not a big sacrifice in terms of time and effective utilization, however, the output was far more worth than we could have ever expected. Our supposition about the importance of such discussions got confirmed and it shed the light on the fact that these forums are constructive and has the ability to take us further towards our vision. We got strengthened in our belief that the good example and shared values are attractive. Feedback showed that our management truly lives by the delawarian values in our day to day office life as well and it is for a fact that nothing is more powerful, than leading by example. We believe that if everyone of us use their strengths the best possible way and that we all unite with the  insatiable hunger for learning something new, this combination will continue to lead us to what drives „delivering tomorrow today” for our clients.