Creating a great company culture isn’t easy. You have to think about hiring the right team members, creating processes everyone can support, promoting an open environment with respect for everyone and without judgement, and fostering a sense of accountability. The Cimetrix Leadership team is always looking for ways to improve the company culture and develop an environment of trust and great communication. Giving everyone a voice and making sure everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts is key to employee engagement and maintaining a great culture.
When many members of the team work remotely, however, a great culture can be difficult to form, maintain and share. Remote employees spend most of their time working without seeing the other members of their team face-to-face. While there are teams that travel frequently between the global offices, it is a rare opportunity to gather the entire company to work, learn and grow together. By meeting in person, our teams can create a sense of personal connection and trust that carries on long after returning to the remote office. That’s just what Cimetrix did by organizing our 2017 All Company Gathering.
With the theme of “Growth – Business and Personal”, we started the week getting inspired to focus on each individual’s personal and professional growth. We learned about goal setting, reasons many fail to meet goals and a few secrets on how to make and keep effective goals. We were reminded that it’s important to recognize each other and ourselves when great things are achieved. Cimetrix recognized Crystal Glenn, Client Relations Specialist, for her outstanding contributions above and beyond her daily workload in the form of the Cimetrix Super Charged Award – an award that is rarely given and only to those who display the highest achievement in keeping with company values.
The next day began with a very interesting discussion led by the individual Country Managers from China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea about the direction of the company, the international growth achieved in 2017 and the growth expected over the next few years. A panel discussion including Q&A was highly engaging and fun as everyone got to know the Country Managers and their respective cultures a little better. A team building experience at a series of escape rooms followed by a discussion and analysis of leadership, teams and communication gave everyone the chance to get to know each other better and work together in a new capacity.
After a morning of working in teams, day three was dedicated to learning how to more efficiently use our time, specifically with regards to meetings. Everyone knows that unproductive meetings can be a drain on time and resources, but all too often we sit through too many of them anyway. Learning when to have meetings and how to make them as effective as possible is a skill that everyone should learn, and we look forward to implementing these new processes at Cimetrix. The evening brought a banquet dinner where we were privileged to hear from Mike Thompson, a shareholder, board member and great friend to Cimetrix.
The All Company Gathering ended Friday afternoon with a company meeting recapping all that happened during the week and a celebration for birthdays, anniversaries and new employees. Interspersed throughout the week were opportunities to get to know employees from different departments and different parts of the world. Many continued to meet into the weekend for more in-depth training and education.
The All Company Gathering requires weeks of organization and planning, but in the end, it’s worth the effort to bring the teams together for a few days as we seek to get to know each other better, build trust between team members, have discussions about company culture and core values and improve teamwork skills. Good relationships are key to maintaining a successful company culture, and the entire Cimetrix team enjoyed this time to recharge and reenergize.
