This month was a momentous one for everyone at Operance. We held our first in-person ‘Team Retreat’ in Birmingham to connect and discuss important topics regarding the year ahead. We follow a modern work-from-home protocol which makes these events even more exciting. It is safe to say that it was a brilliant event full of enthusiasm, passion and laughter. We saw 14 people attend out of our total of 23 staff working for the business, 25 next week, with even more recruitment planned throughout 2023. With this in mind, we are already looking forward to the next retreat. Can you imagine how excellent the attendance will be?!
The retreat was well thought out, with many team exercises and activities planned to promote creativity and team building. Culture is essential to Operance because we believe that the right culture breeds performance and results. There is nothing better than a closely-knit team with the common appreciation that happiness brings success. Find out more below.
CEO Key Note Speech
Taking advantage of everyone being together, our CEO Ian Yeo, delivered a radiant Keynote speech, highlighting our current strengths as a business and how much progress we have made in the last twelve months. It was inspiring to hear about the journey the founders have been on, from initially operating as Bimsense Ltd, a popular BIM consultancy business, to becoming Operance: the world’s first purpose-built golden thread solution. No small feat for anyone in the industry, as I am sure you can imagine!
Golden Thread Updates
We discussed the Golden Thread and recent updates surrounding its upcoming legislation, which is one of the most important topics for our business as we are the world’s first purpose-built golden thread solution. Further information on the Golden Thread can be found in our article here.
Furthermore, we also provided an overview of the Building Safety and Fire Safety Acts for all employees who attended because education is invaluable to team progress and overall success. Being topics of utmost importance, we wanted to ensure that our company values and priorities were communicated and understood across all departments. Our motto is straightforward but crucial to helping improve the safety of buildings all around us: We have a vision for managing the World’s Building Information for safer, more harmonious places for everyone.
OKRs Introduction
After discussing the Golden Thread and having some additional time to socialise, we moved straight onto OKRs, to ensure everyone had the same common business goal. Now some of you might be wondering, what is an OKR? An OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, where we focus on ambitious goals and measurable results that cascade across departments and individuals. These help us track progress as a business, create alignment, and encourage engagement and are an excellent asset for any business with a remote-working structure.
Setting our objectives and key results across departments and then continuing to break these down into individual objectives with relativity in mind was an excellent method of ensuring synchronicity as a business and assisted in creating an accurate level of forecasting.
Roadmap Review
Looking forwards and into the future of Operance, we discussed our business roadmap! Our roadmap splits into our two modules: Building OPERATIONS and Building SAFETY.
The operations side of our business includes O&M manuals, H&S files, Building User Guides, Building Log Books and more. The safety side of our business focuses on the Golden Thread of Information, HRB Registration, Safety Case, Safety Case Reports, Competent Persons Register, Resident’s Voice, Mandatory Reporting and more.
With all of these different qualities to bring to the industry, it was essential to look at the roadmap and make changes when needed so that we could maintain an agile and dynamic approach, evolving with legislation and compliance.
Overall, our roadmap review was a great session and helped make the most of having everyone in the same room simultaneously.
Q&A Session
As this was the first time we could all get together in one location as a business, we wanted to make the most of it with a Q&A session!
During this session, everyone had the opportunity to be open and honest with each other, diving deep into a discussion about current projects and future ideas. It was great to see everyone open and transparent, leaving no stone unturned.
As a business, we found this time invaluable in formulating new ideas and finding solutions to problems. It was a great teambuilding exercise, and we look forward to doing more Q&A’s in the future… maybe even a public user one too!
Team Break Outs
After a brilliant period of discussion at the retreat, we decided that it would benefit all teams to separate into their individual departments and focus on their OKRs, projects and opportunities moving forward. It was also the perfect opportunity to consider all the different milestones we have achieved in such a short period of time. We plan to break these down into further detail in a separate article, but the list was impressive, to say the least!
All departments were encouraged to do SWOT analysis and then provide any ideas moving forwards, no matter how big or small. Everyone had their chance to have a say and continue getting to know each other, comparing ideas and sharing similar perspectives.
After a year of rapid growth as a business, it was almost mind-bending to imagine what we could and will achieve in the coming twelve months. All this hard work couldn’t go without some great food, and whilst we were out on that adventure, we even got a picture with the famous Birmingham Bull.
Summary
And that brings us to the end of the Operance Birmingham Retreat 2023! Wow, what a fantastic event filled with great vibes and great people. We are already penciling dates for our next retreat; if you look at how far we have come in such a short period of time, it’s exciting to think how far we will have progressed by this time next year.
For anyone reading this article and wondering how they can optimise their remote-working business, we advise developing a strong and positive culture because skillsets, experience and education can always be improved with the right mindset. These attributes enable us to deliver the world’s first purpose-built Golden Thread platform.
We want to take this opportunity to all those who contributed to the success of the retreat and special thanks to Scott Pilgrim, Ian Yeo, Tim Mutlow and Charlie Yeo, for arranging the event and bringing everyone together.
Bring on the next Operance Retreat!
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