LINK Days 2021: Culture, Climate, and Creativity
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Even before the pandemic, our company-wide gathering became digital three years ago. We continued the trend this year with over 550 employees collaborating digitally across 18 countries over three days. Learn more about what our LINK Days 2021 involved!
LINK history and future
As a reminder for current employees and an introduction for new employees, we reviewed LINK’s history and future outlook during LINK Days. Founder and Chairman of the Board Jens Rugseth was interviewed about the history of LINK, making us all feel part of the movement. Being able to understand our past and where we came from helps us to plan where we’re going, including our five-year strategy.
We were also treated to a video of our management team talking about their experience with our company strategy and what it means to them – while sharing a personal aspect of their lives, whether that was biking, cooking, or hunting.
Our values were present each day of our digital company gathering: united, dedicated, and enthusiastic. Our external speakers and group activities all related back to our core values and how each and every employee can work by these values to contribute to the success of LINK.
Cultural differences and cross-country collaboration
One of our main themes for LINK Days 2021 was cultural differences and cross-country collaboration. As we continue our growth and expansion, we must think more and more about our cultural differences, how we can use them to our advantage, and how they relate back to our values. Julien Bourrelle, our other external speaker who is an author, TEDx lecturer, and rocket scientist, brought his expertise on bridging cultural differences to present new ways of working and interacting with each other.
This led to one of our workshops: cross-country teamwork to discuss cross-culture communication and challenges and what our values – united, dedicated, and enthusiastic – mean to the different cultures across 18 countries. We also looked at our LINK culture today and where we want it to be, identifying the current culture gaps.
Our globalization may bring some challenges to LINK, but we can celebrate our differences and use them to our advantage.
Climate Action
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LINK Days 2021: Culture, Climate, and Creativity
18 June 2021
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Even before the pandemic, our company-wide gathering became digital three years ago. We continued the trend this year with over 550 employees collaborating digitally across 18 countries over three days. Learn more about what our LINK Days 2021 involved!
LINK history and future
As a reminder for current employees and an introduction for new employees, we reviewed LINK’s history and future outlook during LINK Days. Founder and Chairman of the Board Jens Rugseth was interviewed about the history of LINK, making us all feel part of the movement. Being able to understand our past and where we came from helps us to plan where we’re going, including our five-year strategy.
Check out our interview of Jens Rugseth!
We were also treated to a video of our management team talking about their experience with our company strategy and what it means to them – while sharing a personal aspect of their lives, whether that was biking, cooking, or hunting.
Our values were present each day of our digital company gathering: united, dedicated, and enthusiastic. Our external speakers and group activities all related back to our core values and how each and every employee can work by these values to contribute to the success of LINK.
Cultural differences and cross-country collaboration
One of our main themes for LINK Days 2021 was cultural differences and cross-country collaboration. As we continue our growth and expansion, particularly with our Soprano Design acquisition that now means we are a global company, we must think more and more about our cultural differences, how we can use them to our advantage, and how they relate back to our values. Julien Bourrelle, our other external speaker who is an author, TEDx lecturer, and rocket scientist, brought his expertise on bridging cultural differences to present new ways of working and interacting with each other.
This led to one of our workshops: cross-country teamwork to discuss cross-culture communication and challenges and what our values – united, dedicated, and enthusiastic – mean to the different cultures across 18 countries. We also looked at our LINK culture today and where we want it to be, identifying the current culture gaps.
Our globalization may bring some challenges to LINK, but we can celebrate our differences and use them to our advantage.
Climate Action
Another topic we focused on during LINK Days 2021 was innovation and sustainability. Sylvija Seres, an expert on these two topics, presented and shared new knowledge with all of us all about how we can balance the triple bottom line: people, profit, and planet. She discussed how innovation and sustainability are things that everyone can take part of and aren’t just dedicated to one day a year – they are meant to be a part of our day-to-day lives. This led to another workshop: working in teams to find creative ways for LINK to be more environmentally friendly, either internally with our employees and ways of working or externally with products and customers.
Currently, many of our products contribute to our goal of being more climate friendly. For example, mobile invoice through SMS means that paper invoices are avoided, saving on paper, stamps, and delivery. Retail discounts and offers send over mobile phone also saves on paper as the promotions are digital. When it comes to logistics, ensuring accurate deliveries with SMS and other channels the first time means fewer delivery attempts and less CO2 pollution.
To kick-off our dedication to climate action outside of the products we offer, we signed up for Challengize, a social platform for health and team-building where companies can track employee teams and their workouts. With our LINK Challenge for Climate Action on Challengize, we promised to give a charitable donation to an environmentally-focused NGO based on how much everyone exercised on one day. The charity we chose to donate to is a European NGO that works to preserve and restore forests around the world. We encouraged all employees to get out and exercise for an hour and a half during one of the LINK Days as part of the challenge to raise money. In just this short time, we raised 10,000 euros! Our team challenge will continue over the next four weeks.
Our Incredible Host and Success of LINK Days 2021
Not only did we cover the topics of LINK’s history, strategy, and values, climate action, and cultural differences with our leadership team, external speakers, and group workshops, but we were also led through LINK Days by a host: Jon Ensor, a British magician and presenter who entertained us with tricks and kept the show running.
LINK Days 2021 were a huge success. We gained great insights from our external speakers, reviewed our company history with our founder, and were entertained by magic tricks. Most importantly, we worked together to find innovative ways to be more climate friendly and understand each other’s cultures better especially in relation to our values, with an active wrap-up to end the gathering. We look forward to next year’s LINK Days!