By Hannah Phillips
Back in May, the Glide team spent two days with the British Army Reserves at the Nescliffe Training Camp in Shropshire, as part of the company Away Day.
Each year, we set aside a day to come together as a whole and embark on group activities which are designed to enhance team building skills, as well as develop leadership and management skills.
This year, there was a big emphasis on the word ‘team’ and in preparation for the event, we undertook a Belbin self-perception questionnaire, which profiles individual’s behaviour and skills set within the work place. This allowed us to assign team roles based on the results of where each of our strengths lay.
In-keeping with the military theme, we were rallied into teams of 8-10 troops a few weeks prior to the day. However, plans were kept ‘top secret’ with information being slowly released via cryptic text messages and emails across the company. Things were getting exciting…
Mission One:
We were then given our first mission to put our heads together and come up with a team name and group photos, in preparation for the activities to come.
With the help of our smartphone cameras, some interesting props and amateur Photoshop skills, we completed our first mission and came up with some pretty interesting team names and pictures.
We were later informed that we’d also be ‘sleeping under canvas’ so we all began prepping for our camping experience, which for some of us was a first-time thing.
Let the journey begin…
25/05/2015 07:00 hours:
Our 2 day journey got off to an early start as we assembled at Glide headquarters at Alpha Tower and boarded the coach to make our way down to camp.
09:00 hours:
We arrived at Nesscliffe for registration and briefing and were then issued with army overalls, backpacks and ration packs, which were weighed in at around 20 kilos, and towered above most of us once they were on our backs. We then commenced our 3 mile trek to set up camp, following a map which was navigated by our nominated team leader.
Put to the test…
Over the next two days, we were put through a number of physically and mentally challenging exercises that consisted of command tasks, strategic thinking and planning exercises. These included real-life situations such as crime scene investigation, observation, emergency medicine administration and counsel, gun handling, trust and communication tasks, minefield, supply rescue and more.
Our team-working skills were really put to the test as we pulled together to complete each of our tasks. The whole experience was truly realistic and gave us all an in-depth insight into life as a reserve.
