February is one of our busiest times of year. That’s because it’s the month we host our annual company-wide Collaboration Week and Awards Gala.
During Collaboration Week, our global teams come together in New Zealand to talk, learn and strategise together. The week culminates in a spectacular evening gala, where we can relax and celebrate the achievements of our peers.
COLLABORATION WEEK
Though we’ve held Collaboration Week for the last few years, this was our biggest one yet. With Geosoft recently coming on board, we had around 70 individuals fly in from our global offices to our head office in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Dion Blair, Global Sales and Channel Director, Mining & Minerals, explains the importance: “The really great thing about collaboration week is it allows us to create a blink response in our business. To pause, think about what’s going well, think about the areas we want to be better… and basically to hypothesis the things we’ve never thought about.”
We kicked off the week with a company-wide exercise – the infamous Marshmallow Challenge. We challenged teams of staff members to create the tallest free-standing structure they could out of marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, string and tape. All in 18 minutes. The catch? The marshmallow had to be on the top of the structure. We had some inspiring and hilarious results.
After the Marshmallow Challenge, we all headed to our respective daily workshops, held by all the different workstreams across our company. For some groups, it was a chance to get all the right voices in the right room, while for others, it was a chance to invite the whole company to come and see what they’re working on.
There were prototyping workshops, product demos, and strategic planning meetings – to name a few. And we capped off our days of hard work with meet & greet evening events, which included a beer tasting with Emerson’s brewery.
To sum it up:
- over 120 workshops & briefing sessions were held
- over 200 individuals participated
- 12 countries were represented
Lorraine Godwin, Global Business Director, Near Surface & Marine Division, says: “It’s been an amazing experience. Lots of energy, lots of passion and enthusiasm. The level of activity I see going on, the initiatives we’re working on together now – it’s very cool.”
And Alexander Tyunyatkin, Regional Director of Russia & CIS, sums it up nicely: “Each of us has a unique experience. And the more we share, the stronger we become.”
AWARDS GALA – ONE COMPANY, ONE WORLD
Seequent is a truly global organisation, with offices in over 12 locations. This year we had individuals visiting from offices in Canada, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, South Africa, Russia, Australia, and the UK.
To celebrate our diverse culture, this year’s gala theme was ‘One Company, One World.’ The event was held at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, which was dramatically transformed to Seequent Airways for the evening. (Highlights included a comedic safety briefing, security check and ‘in-flight’ service from our wonderful flight attendants, courtesy of acting company Epic Entertainment.) In the spirit of the theme, we encouraged attendees to dress in travel attire; and here are some of our favourite costumes of the night:
We had the pleasure of having the fabulous Jackie Clarke, New Zealand entertainer, singer and comedian, MC the evening. She had us laughing and clapping the entire night, with her well-timed commentary and an incredible singing performance after dinner.
At the gala, we also acknowledge our peers for their contributions to Seequent, and their embodiment of our values. This year, all nominations were peer-driven, meaning we all had the opportunity to nominate those we felt went above and beyond this year. And from those nominees, a panel of staff members across the company voted on who the winners should be for each award.
THE WINNERS
OVERALL VALUES AWARD – CLARE BAXTER
What we said about her… “Clare is our Technical Sales Advisor – Energy – Europe and Africa, based in the London office. She exudes the Seequent culture, and is our first cross-sector transfer in the sales team. Clare took on the challenge of moving from the golden streets of Perth and the mining industry to the uncertain and new pastures of the geothermal industry. Clare has done more than could have ever been asked of someone moving to the other side of the world. She has upskilled technically into a new domain, shifted her life and opened a previously uncharted territory for the Energy sector. Her results have been incredible.”
TEAM AWARDS – FINANCE TEAM
What we said about them… “I can’t think of a team more deserving of an award. They actually embody many different values of Seequent. Commitment to excellence, they take pride in their work and want to produce the best work they can. Not only do they work hard, but they are genuinely wonderful people who are a complete pleasure to work with. We could all learn from their unfailing positive attitudes.”
INDIVIDUAL AWARDS
Values awards – Penny Swords, Courtney Babott, Leigh Burgess, Peter Joynt, Chris Lang, Zak Hynd
Mentor award – Paul Griffin