Training Day

Lynnhaven Marine's 7th Annual Employee Training Day

    Our 2009 Training Day continued our previous years decision to scale back on expenses while we were slow in boat sales.  What we didn't scale back on was plenty of activities to bring our employees together as teams to work together for common goals.

     We began at 8:00 a.m. by meeting in the parking lot of the Marina and walking several blocks to a local restaurant for breakfast. At this time no one had any idea of what the day had in store. After breakfast each team was given a trash bag and was told to pick up anything they could find on the way back to the Marina that would help them create a picture or collage on a blank white board. It's amazing the things you can find along the streets, parking lots and gutters as you walk around. Everything from bottle caps, shells, twigs, beer and coke cans, food wrappers, and other things most good parents would tell their children "Don't touch that!!".  Once we got back to the showroom each team was given a table to work on and supplied with crayons, glue, and other things we could use to create a marine related model out of the trash we collected. By sorting through the trash we had picked up every team devised a theme or picture and began putting it together. The pictures were then reviewed by a panel of judges and cash prizes were awarded to the top winning teams.

     Another unique challenge was when we walked across the street to the local fitness center and went into their aerobic workout room. They had created an obstacle course using balls, steps, ropes and other things. The idea was for a member of each team to wind their way around and through the various obstacles from beginning to end without touching anything. This may sound easy except that a team member had to do it with a mask over their eyes and were directed along the course by the coaching of their fellow team members. The team with the quickest completion time won. How often during the course of doing business do we need to rely upon fellow employees to help us perform better.  Good lesson learned.

     The remainder of the day was spent in performing exercises and other activities that helped bring employees from sometimes different departments together to not only learn more about each other but to work toward common goals.