COMPANY NEWS

Maritz' IT team improves painting and team-work skills at Longridge

7th September, 2007 - On Thursday 6th September, the 24-strong IT team at business performance improvement specialists Maritz, enjoyed a team-building day with a difference at Longridge.  Located close to Maritz’ Globe Park, Marlow office, Longridge is a charity-run water sports and activity centre, providing world-class training opportunities in a wide range of challenging water and land recreational activities.

Maritz’ IT team wanted to give something back as part of their activity day and volunteered to help paint one of the boathouses. Initially tasked with painting just the front, the team finished painting the whole building during the morning.

Lisa McKenzie, Application Development Operations Manager at Maritz said: “We wanted to take the team out of the office and put them in a totally different environment to help us communicate and cooperate better, but we were also keen to give something back to our local community; Longridge offered us the perfect solution.”

The IT team also took part in land and water-based team challenges, including dragon-boating and climbing, designed to help them get to know each other better and work together more efficiently.  The challenges included the mysteriously named ‘sheep dog trials’, ‘building a millennium bridge’, ‘pulling the plug’ and ‘pot pot’. All required trust, teamwork and effort, but were good fun.

Enzo Zecca, IT Director at Maritz commented: “The land and water-based activities all required trust, teamwork and effort, but were great fun, and I certainly learned a thing or two about working preferences of team members.  It was also very satisfying to know we were genuinely helping out by painting the boathouse.”