Planning day

After an incredibly busy Q4 and Christmas season, the team enjoyed a well-deserved recharge and rest time in January. 

To re-engage everyone and help us prepare for the year ahead we knew it was key to get the team together at the start of February, have a feedback and planning session. Rather than the usual boardroom style power points we wanted to invite the team to bring their own thoughts to the day and have a creative forward ‘How we move forward for growth’ session. Also, so needed after the busy period is a chance for all the teams across the business to come together. This is not so easily achieved in the busy times, but so good for sharing ideas and offering support for one another.

Engaging with a past client, Michelle Moreno who has recently moved from an operations background into training and coaching worked fantastically. So often recruitment trainers are out of touch with the pressure points that our teams feel also the patterns of the hospitality and temporary staffing. Michelle is a font of knowledge and just gets what we do. Bringing energy and positivity with a real pinch of reality, was a great mix to get the team engaged and thinking together. 

The plan for the day was to get everyone thinking about what we do next, who we want to be and how we are going to collectively achieve and what that means to each of us. Covering what has gone well, what is holding us back, how we can change our actions to be an impact player and the importance of feedback and how to give it and kind, this is key to who we are and our values. It’s important to recognise that for many that sign up to work with Appetite4Work, it is a first step into work. Feedback and guidance from us are crucial to upskilling our people.

Hearing everyone’s individual and team successes and evaluation of what had gone well or not so, was a great conversation starter. Some reflection and thoughts of how we can adapt and achieve better outcomes for the year ahead. 

As a fun interactive element, we decided to add in a Vision Board activity, with the aim of everyone expressing through pictures what our values mean to us and who we are. It was brilliant to see different groups of people sharing ideas and positively creating a picture of what they perceive we are and can be. As well as everyone enjoying an hour of cutting and sticking, taking us back to our school days.

The takeaway from the day was a recharged and refocused team, we will repeat again next year and possibly throughout this year as a realignment each quarter to ensure each person has all they need to achieve.