Last week we as a company experienced something that is immensely important to us. At our annual retreat, all acc’sies met in person for two days to write the next chapter of our story together. What we’ve learned is how much we love our digital mindset, but how immensely important face-to-face interaction always will be. Here’s why.
Numerous studies address the positive benefits of personal interaction and prove the positive physical and psychological effects it provides. Social interactions can help your body reduce stress and increase your cardiovascular health. Furthermore, some research points to a stronger immune system when people can interact and fuel their souls.
Personal interaction is good for your health. As a person and as a company.
During our workshops at Schlosspark Mauerbach, we realized: this is perfectly applicable to accilium. “A company is truly reliant on social interaction and management consulting is a people business. The company, the business and we as human beings all need personal contact with others for exchange, wellbeing and entertainment,” says Christian Schneider, Associate Partner at accilium. A healthy organization will always find room for social interactions to evolve.
Life is rather like a book. Don’t try to get it right. Get it written.
And social interaction was important for the topics we discussed at the retreat 2021. First we looked at the accilium story. And this is one that is still in its early stages. So we looked less at the past but rather dived into our strategic vision: “We have a clear vision, that customer demands in regard to mobility are changing”, said Alexander Hotowy, Managing Partner at accilium. “Hence, all traditional players within the existing mobility ecosystem need to adapt, furthermore new players are going to enter.”
A driver of transparency.
We also learned, how social interaction is a significant driver of transparency, which is a key asset of our company culture. “If you want to represent yourself and what you believe in, it makes an interaction far more transparent and clearer to understand a point of view, when this interaction takes place in person”, says our People Operations team at accilium. When we discussed our company’s culture, or when we talked about specific competency profiles and career paths, it was crucial that this process took place on an equal footing and allowed for feedback in both directions at any time.
accilium stands for a learning culture. And in order to support personal growth in the best possible way and to enable a transparent career development the competency profiles play a fundamental role. “The competency profile describes all of the personal and professional key capabilities of each acc’sie. They are reviewed and assessed regularly with the regarding manager”, says Peter Allan, Managing Partner at accilium. He points out that “in order to align this tool even better and to understand the friction that arises from it, it was important to get the feedback in a direct and personal way.”
And it was also only this way that we could start to explore our corporate culture together and describe what cultural characteristics we want to develop as a company. “We were guided by the fact that corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviours that determine how a company’s employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions,” says Jennifer Duhs, Senior Associate at accilium. Her colleague, Rafael Schmid, also Senior Associate at accilium adds, that “we know now, what the key elements of culture are, because we incorporated all acc’sies in the process. Now we can move on, give the topic importance, work on it constantly and let it evolve.”
We love digital. But we love people, too.
Digital connections are awesome. To be able to work with anybody, anywhere and in any timezone gives us the flexibility we need to address the various challenges of our clients. But still. Personal interaction, as opposed to digital interaction, creates a completely different platform to build a relationship. “Finally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, we have united the entire company around us. And that was the important motto of retreat 2021: Meeting people and entering the dialogue”, says Alexander Rauscher, Managing Partner at accilium. And so, full of euphoria, with a sharpened company-wide strategy in mind and reinforced teamspirit, we are approaching the next chapters of our story.
