COMPANY AWAY DAYS: THE SIREN WAY!
Whilst company away days are nothing new, here at Siren, we like to think that we do away days a little differently. Step aside awkward team building exercises and pipe down external ‘team motivators’ here’s how Siren tackles the Quarterly Away Day.
Escape The Office!
We love getting our team outside of the office, but we realised early on in Siren’s history that asking your team to get involved in crazy trust exercises out in the woods guarantees that your team comes to dread your away day, rather than look forward to them. For our team, we hold our quarterly away days close to the office, at the perpetually cosy Albert’s Schloss, where we can take a break from our typical office environment and grab a coffee without changing our team’s commute, or forcing ourselves to take part in fun activities… For instance, we’re yet to send our team out to learn survival skills in the rain to build team cohesion!
The Plan of Action
Our quarterly away days are a great place to update our team on exciting plans and projects happening within the business, but without a structure bits and pieces will always be neglected! Once we’re all settled and we’ve had our first (of many) morning coffees, we lay out the agenda for the day. This follows a concise plan which typically includes:
- Big news within Siren (such as our emergence in the UAE)
- Team transparency, where we talk about how our business can be improved
- Upskilling and exposure: We often use our QAD to offer short and snappy training sessions to our team.
Training is heavily encouraged here at Siren, as is supporting interest and promoting growth in areas our team members may know less about. These QADs help diversify our team’s broader knowledge surrounding digital marketing and increase the skill base of our staff.
Celebrating Success
Who are we without our team?! At our QAD, we always take time to celebrate our team successes, both personal and professional. In fact, celebrating success is an absolutely essential part of the day. Included in this part of the session: The Siren award for outstanding achievement, team shout outs, client wins and of course, any work anniversaries we need to catch up on.
Within our Quarterly Away Day, celebrating success follows our team ice breaker (more on that down below!) and is almost the last thing we do before wrapping up our session and heading downstairs for a lunch and early finish! Head over to our LinkedIn account to see our team shoutouts!
Breaking The Ice
Although we spend a lot of time working together, it is always surprising how little we can know about our colleagues. As a part of Siren’s ongoing commitment to employee wellbeing, ice breakers are coordinated by our Head of HR, Kully Sohal who creates fun getting-to-know-you activities to break up the day. Although this element has a wellbeing aspect to it, we do our utmost to avoid being a wellbeing washing business. Through these activities we have learned much about each other in a fun (and thankfully not at all awkward) way.
Feast Like a Viking!
Once our session has wrapped up, it’s time for team lunch and a drink or two! We usually conduct our QAD sessions from 10 until 2 and so as we are wrapping up, stomachs are definitely starting to rumble! With our QADs taking place on the last Friday of the month, finishing the afternoon with a slap up meal served at Albert’s Schloss’ Viking table is definitely a rewarding and well earned way to kick off our weekend.
More than just a quarterly treat, grabbing food outside of the workplace with your colleagues also lets our team talk about something – anything – other than work. As the working day has officially ended, drinks and food can be enjoyed without the weight of knowing that there is a desk and work waiting for them once the plates have been cleared away. Whilst in recent months Albert’s Schloss has become our venue of choice, as a team Siren has had some fantastic team-building experiences at other Birmingham venues… In fact, we’ve even compiled a top 5 list of our favourite spots!
An Early Finish
As above, we understand that after a massive team session and a team meal, the last thing we want to do on a Friday afternoon is return to our desks to push through emails until the clock ticks down to the end of the day. It’s not only unproductive, but it’s also no fun for our team! A quarterly away day here at Siren always finishes early, with a 3pm clock out so that we can all beat the traffic and kick off the weekend that little bit sooner!
It’s not just Quarterly Away Days which gets the team up and out of the office, in fact, we have a team lunch in Birmingham every month! Read about our memorable experience at Rudy’s pizzeria, Flight Club and more on our blogs page!
