A team that plays together stays together

Beverley Hoare, Deputy Director of MARC

In Marcoms we’re very noses to the grindstone and drop everything at a moment’s notice to respond to some urgent press query, an event that we hadn’t been notified about or an emergency update to the website kind of people!

So to get a date that everyone (almost) could attend and in the end to pull themselves away from work for an away day was no small achievement. But the team wanted it, asked for it and valued it. Why?

Celebrating our team
achievements

Superglue - it’s important for team bonding – because we learn more about each other: likes, dislikes, motivations, because we like spending time together and we get to have fun. It gives some light relief from the day to day, a bit of perspective on our challenges and an opportunity to recognise the teams and individual achievements. 

Lots of life happens in the course of an academic year, so we celebrate too – one baby due in October, one marriage, two engagements, two 30^th birthdays and a house move.  We’ve had several losses to the team (fortunately not through natural causes) and two new staff have joined the team, but both worked at Bedfordshire previously – they loved it so much they came back.

Who do we think we are – in a Myers Briggs type approach we completed an online test to assess our personality types.  You might imagine that all marketers are extroverts, but not so, we’re quite an introverted bunch, drawing on our own internal imaginations and creativity.  As a team we are very caring, supportive and sensitive types, so be gentle with your critique – though we’re not looking for glory we do appreciate a well-placed compliment J

The Press team dominated the quiz, 
showcasing an unusual specialism in
animal trivia! 

Quiz master Andy entertained us with obscure questions about how male goats get a mate and the colour of a hippos sweat when it gets stressed – google it.  I may not be able to remember the answers to the serious HE questions but weirdly these have stuck.

It’s wasn’t  all fun and games - we ran some serious activities too, honest – we did some looking back and looking forward, focused on our objectives and the new PDA programme and generated loads of ideas for the question ‘how can we improve our brand, reputation and recruitment through social media’.  If you have any burning desire to give us some ideas please do get in touch.