For months, aided greatly by Lee Durham’s excitement, everyone at durhamlane was looking forward to the annual and ‘legendary’ TEAM building away day. Several emails and itineraries later, the much-anticipated day had finally arrived. One team member from the newly opened Southampton office had even travelled up for this one! Three venues, three changes of clothing and 26 enthusiastic sales people raring to go.
We began by meeting at Daisy Chain, a truly amazing charity in Stockton that helps families and children that suffer with Autism. Although helping businesses and people is in durhamlane’s DNA, we rarely get the chance to dedicate our time to community projects for a great cause.
After splitting us into four separate groups, we were told what our duties for the morning would be. Path laying, painting, gardening and the festive addition of helping to put up a gigantic Christmas tree.
After only two hours of work, it didn’t feel like every individual contributed an awful lot, but Lee really put it into perspective when he calculated 26 people working for two hours equalled 52 hours of labor, which is longer than the average working week. And the result verified impressively that 1+1 DOES equal 3, when you work in a great team.
Making a measurable difference is one of durhamlane’s core values, but we had to ungrudgingly acknowledge that the honourable workers and volunteers at Daisy Chain implicitly put this value into practice every day.
Thoughtful and ins
pired, the team set off to Durham where we were greeted by the team at Infinite Air. The brotherly love from the morning at Daisy Chain had now drained out of us all, and we were ready to fight to the death whilst playing dodgeball on trampolines. Team Lee Durham was by a country mile the worst at dodgeball, whilst Team Richard Lane took away the title.
After a beautiful contrast between altruism and action the team let the day pass review in a convivial setting, admitting that Together Everyone Achieves More.
On behalf of the whole team I want to express my gratitude to Richard and Lee, who make durhamlane one of the best places to work. It cannot by any means be taken for granted to work in an environment where every team member feels inclusive and valued.