Coimbatore: It was an exciting few months in Kovai.co, with various teams either going on or planning their quarterly outings. Some teams traveled out of town to enjoy a dip in a natural lake or a hike through a forest, while others managed to enjoy a sumptuous meal with a lot of laughter, games, and team bonding.
From the company’s inception, when the team was as small as 25-30 people, Kovai.co has always believed in making work fun. As a token of our love and appreciation for their loyalty and commitment to the company, we have always organized team outings, meals, and even a trip abroad every year. We believe that an outing that allows people to unwind with their team, helps them bond better, make special memories, rejuvenate, and thus work better together.
From 2022, as the team grew multifold from 60 to 240, we decided to streamline team outings. We allotted a budget for every person on our team to go on a team outing every quarter. As a result, while discussing multiple work-related issues including budgets, leads, conversions, customers, and revenues, we found our people also rapidly discussing outing options, discussing budgets for the same, vacancies, bookings, transport, and menus!
Because of the pandemic, leisure trips and outings had almost come to a halt for the past two years. Many teams decided to go on an overnight trip, through the weekend, to a resort or adventure camp, while others chose a day out, a movie, and dinner or lunch instead. While the Churn360 team went to Celebrity Resort in the outskirts of the city, Serverless360’s support and sales team went to Ambrra Resort, Pollachi. Serverless360’s engineering team had also chosen to do a weekend getaway at Munnar, a hill station around three hours from Coimbatore by road.
While some teams took nearly a month to decide a date and location, we were able to do both in a week. The next step was identifying the available cars, and bikes, and naming them after movie songs so we could track them,” says Makeshkumar from the Document360 team, which went camping Splendor for an overnight trip. “We decided to do an overnight trip as well since we felt we needed a complete change of scenery,” says Benito from Churn360. “And the trip was everything we imagined and more! We played, laughed, had a blast, and returned to work rejuvenated on Monday,”.
Some teams, including Administration and Operations, Talent Acquisition, People and Culture, among others, chose to spend a few hours catching up over multiple meals, some after watching a movie.
Ezhilarasi from the Serverless360 team says the team has become more comfortable with each other after going on the trip. “Inside the office, interactions are formal and we maintain professional boundaries. But during a trip or an outing, we really get to let our hair down, clown around, play, splash each other with water and just chat for a long time. Our bonding is a lot deeper after the outing,”.
Benito from Churn 360 agrees with Ezhilarasi. “Getting to know people personally helped take away the formality between us. “We feel much more comfortable asking each other for help, filling in at times, etc,” he adds.
