Cake and cross-briefs
January 19, 2023
As we continue to grow fast, and find the balance between remote working and getting our teams to meet up when appropriate, we held our most recent Company Wide employee get together in the splendid London campus of the Chicago Booth Business School near St Pauls. Greeted by portrait photos of the 90 or so Nobel Prize winners from the University Alumni community, the venue was great for getting nearly everyone together - and with so many new hires recently it was the first opportunity many of the team had to meet their colleagues.
This was particularly the case for the famous PIT (Product Incident Triage) crew who provide 24/7 monitoring services across a range of environments, and who work hard to ensure that developer time is used most efficiently from a client perspective, through effective triage and escalation processes. Meeting in person rather than on 2am video calls has apparently resulted in a whole new level of banter!
Sir David Capewell, who sits on Aker’s Board, opened with his perspective on the UK Government, and the turmoil of the last year; and ranged more widely across topics including the war in Ukraine, and US and China geo-political competition. We were delighted to be joined later in the day by senior guest speakers from Microsoft and Fujitsu, who are two of our key partners.
The early part of the day was devoted to line manager training for those with specific reporting and management responsibilities, as we are very aware that as a technology company, this may be an area where teams need the the chance to develop and learn new skills. More widely the event allowed the CEO to go through our Vision, Mission, and Strategy, and for individual teams to cross-brief where classification allowed, on technology development in their respective areas. Continuing the theme of corporate transparency we also heard from finance, sales, and HR, and there were opportunities to ask questions throughout, either during the sessions or over a drink later in the day. The next event is being planned for June.
A good day for all. And there was cake!
