Who wouldn't want to be rewarded by their company for their hard work and dedication?
There are different ways people would like to be rewarded. Some would be happy and satisfied with a simple pat on the back while others would prefer an experience such as a dinner in a fancy restaurant, a day at the spa, a trip to a nice location, etc... But I think most would gladly accept a cash bonus so they could spend that money any way they wish.
This multi-part post is all about the way my company recognized its most performing employees.
A few years back, Gunnar, the CEO of the company I was working for had great ideas and ways to bring people together in order to ensure efficiency in the way we worked. Check out my previous post to get an idea about one of these ways.
Being an outdoorsy and adventurous person, his idea of an incentive was always related to outdoor physical activities which suited me fine.
One day, upon arriving at the office, several of my colleagues were told that they would individually meet with the boss in his office. No one had any idea what this was about, but soon after the first few meetings happened, the only thing everyone could talk about was the upcoming team building incentive company trip. About 15 people from different departments were selected for this experience because of their performance and achievements within the previous year.
Sadly, I didn't make the cut.
Obviously there were mixed emotions and feelings at the office. The joy and happiness from some of the selected few, the fear of the unknown by some of the same people and then the deception or jealousy or indifference from the rest. I was disappointed for not being selected but the person from my department who definitely deserved it more than myself.
A few days later, as this was still the main talk at the office, I was asked to go the boss' office. To my surprise and delight, my friend and colleague had declined the invitation for personal reasons and I was selected to replace him. I was now part of the trip. Yay!
Preparations
One person from the office had the task of arranging everything for the group of 16 (including Gunnar) who would be participating in this trip. She was in charge of taking care of visas, booking the plane tickets, accommodations, etc... We tried to quiz her many times, asking her for details but she never revealed anything, not even the destination. Her orders were clear, no one gets to know anything. The only thing we knew is that it was about team building, it involved going abroad since she'd asked for everybody's passports and the planned departure was in 3 months.
As the preparations were ongoing, Gunnar arranged a meeting with all the participants and explained that we were all going to be tested on our physical fitness. Our place among the group was not secured yet, if we failed the test, we would be disqualified.
From, that we understood that it wasn't going to be a relaxing trip and seeing how serious he was about our fitness, we kind of got a bit scared wondering what we were getting ourselves into.
For a couple of weeks, we would all meet at the beach and exercise together under Gunnar's guidance. A bit of running, cardio exercises and swimming. And then the test came, only one of us failed and was sadly told he would not be able to go on the trip. We felt bad for him because he was hands down one of the best achievers in the company at the time. He was later replaced by another person.
A few months later and the departure day finally arrived.
The week before the departure, we had been given a list of items which we needed to have in our backpacks such as a first aid kit, a cycling helmet, water shoes, waterproof clothes, etc... So we knew there would be some cycling involved, some water activities but that's about it and we still didn't know where we were going.
We were all trying to guess as we huddled in the conference room with our backpacks as we had been instructed to to do. The company provided lunch while waiting for the bus to take us to the airport. You could feel the excitement and nervousness in the room.
At the airport and no more secrets.
The bus dropped us all at the airport and we were asked to get together for a last picture before being handed over an envelope and our plane tickets. This was it, we finally knew our destination.
Malaysia, here we come!
The front of the envelope had our name on it and said "Situation Report - To be opened only once your flight has taken off and you are in your seat!" while the back had a big sticker over the opening which said "No More Secrets ". The content was a lot of information about Malaysia but not so much about what we could expect from our trip.
The flight was uneventful and we were greeted by a big "Welcome to Malaysia" signage at the Kuala Lumpur airport.
This brings us to an end for part 1. Thanks for reading this far and stay around for part 2 soon where you'll discover what was in store for us.