Building a Better Future Together – Hounslow Homes

The Brief 

Bernadette O’Shea, the Chief Executive, approached Yellowfoot to put some ideas together for ‘an all hands event for about 500 staff that would take place offsite and had to encompass business briefings as well as help build a sense of purpose and ownership throughout the organisation and be relevant, memorable and fun and be delivered to a very strict budget!’  It would also be an opportunity to recognise and reward some of the Hounslow Homes Employees with their annual awards presentation…no mean feat!

The Solution

We knew that to have maximum impact the event had to engage individuals at all levels of the organisation from maintenance personnel to office workers and encompass a number of different activities to give the employees an opportunity to network and get to know each other a little better.

Having decided on a suitable location, The Renaissance Hotel at Heathrow, that was both large enough to accommodate the group and in a location accessible by all staff. Yellowfoot worked with a small group of the team who would form the planning committee for the event.  Bernadette was happy to divide up the agenda with a number of short team based activities that would help to bring alive the key messages and to encourage team members to work together.

The event was to be entitled ‘Hounslow Homes – Building a Better Future together’, we were keen to put an agenda that encouraged everyone to get involved and was fairly informal, as such we decided to limit the number of chairs available at the event to encourage individuals to be able to move around more freely and socialise.  

After a short welcome introduction by Bernadette we launched straight into an activity called ‘Balloon Chaos’.  This involves everyone blowing up balloons and trying to get them to specific places in the room without them touching the floor. Any balloons that landed on the floor could be popped and as a consequence many participants immersed themselves in popping balloons rather than trying to get them to the collection points.  Following a discussion, individuals quickly came to realise that they had become preoccupied with preventing others from trying to achieve their goal instead of working collectively as a group to ensure that everyone met their targets. The exercise was then repeated and this time hardly any balloons were popped.  We then used this exercise to demonstrate how easy it is to loose sight of your objectives and either consciously or unconsciously behave in a way that could be unhelpful to others.

This experience suitably ‘warmed’ up the audience and following on from some business messages we proceeded with our next activity, teaching 500 people to juggle!  We used juggling as an opportunity to introduce some concepts around behaviour and how it is possible for good behaviours to become habits! We gave everyone the knowledge they needed to juggle, they then developed their skills through practice but we make the point that being able to juggle successfully will only happen if there is a desire!

Finally, using ‘Building’ as the main theme of the event we delivered a learning experience entitled ‘Coral Banks Construction Company’™, an excellent program to encourage teamwork and cooperation in which small groups work together to build various aspects of a giant bridge out tiny pieces of plastic. At the start of the task it seems impossible however as individuals start to put pieces together they can quickly see their structures start to take shape. At the end of the program each team constructed a piece that when all fitted together measured approximately 60 meters!

That took us up to the final part of the day: the awards ceremony.  After the Oscars-styled acceptance speeches the day came to an end the productive day came to a close.  We thoroughly enjoyed the event and from the feedback it sounds as though the client did too!

The Results

Hounslow Homes CEO, Bernadette O’Shea shared her thoughts on the event:

‘The event truly helped us to achieve our aim of bringing the entire Hounslow Homes workforce together to participate in a stimulating and fun day.  Our diverse staff were able to work along side individuals that they may never have worked with, this strengthened staff morale overall. 80% of staff attending thought the event achieved its objective. The other benefit of the day was in the new insights it has given me and my management community about ‘how we are’ as an organisation.  How organisations play together really exposes the stuff below the surface about culture, values and relationships.  We are now drawing on this experience to help us think about how we develop our organisation further. Many thanks to Simon and the Yellowfoot team for a great day.’

If you are considering an event similar to this or if you would like us to deliver something different for your team, please don’t hesitate to give us a call!