Excited, I stand behind the curtain with Fabian and Alex. The mike is heavy in my hand. I can feel my heart beating and my stomach tingling. The theatrein front of the curtain is filled with almost 200 colleagues. I am eager to see how it will go today. The final rehearsal was great, which was encouraging. Slowly a gap in the curtain opens, we step into the light and are greeted by loud applause.
Today is a special day: we are back in Cologne for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. Almost all of our colleagues made it to the Odeon Kino in the Südstadt. Meanwhile our team is scattered all over Germany and some even live in Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, since many of them work almost exclusively from home. That’s a big change compared to the time before the pandemic. And we all notice that working primarily remotely also brings challenges: we miss the exchange, the personal contact, the celebrations together – preferably without a monitor between us. We believe that we need this for our collaboration from time to time.
I have the honour of hosting our Company Event today. From now on, we will meet regularly in this form. To celebrate our successes,bond and feel connected as meinestadt.de colleagues. Today, we will focus on highlights from the first quarter of the year. These include implemented projects, learnings or other successes. A total of six highlights from different teams will be presented. It’s great to see how much the colleagues burn for their projects, which are close to their hearts. And especially how many of them dare to stand on the stage. At the end of their presentation, the IT Operations team expresses solidarity with Ukraine. The sales team packs its highlights into a gaming show revival from the 90s: who of you still knows RuckZuck and the Family Duel? And when the colleagues of the ‘mission fe:male’ initiative stand on the stage and one by oneexplain why they personally want to stand up for equal rights in the workplace, I am not the only one to have tears in my eyes.
Seeing these highlights shows me once more that we are working on relevant topics we can be proud of. This gives me a lot of momentum and motivation to continue and stand up for the things that are important to me.
And together we also find a catchy name for our event this afternoon. After creative suggestions from the audience, we decide the winner by applause meter. Even though ‘ms Shakalaka’ or ‘ms quarterly’ were high on the list, the applause is clearly loudest for ‘Homecoming’.
After the cinema, we move on to a cosy corner pub next door. We dance together, we cheer together, we lie in each other’s arms. With colleagues, some of whom we only knew remotely before.
I am not the only one who is blissfully happy about so much praise and encouragement for my moderation. I also read in all the other faces that the afternoon and evening was exactly what we needed. It was nice to experience why we all work and want to work exactly here at meinestadt.de.
Cheers to the next Homecoming!
P.S. As a human resources manager, I can’t help saying: “Have we sparked your interest? We look forward to you celebrating with us next time!” 😉