At Bucher + Suter, we actively promote the breaking down of walls and the development of transparency within our teams. But can constructing walls actually help teams to succeed? They can when they’re the non-metaphorical, bricks, rocks, and mortar type – like our Volunteer Time Off (VTO) day in Bensheim just happened to prove.
Earlier this year, we announced the formation of the Bucher + Suter PLUS Program – our corporate responsibility program tied to Pledge 1%. As part of the program – we committed to give all of our employees 2 days VTO per year – to put towards causes close to their hearts. Part of the commitment was also to ensure that we would help organize days for those who wanted to take part in something together with their teammates or wider office colleagues. Last week, we ran our first VTO day in Germany.
On Friday, 18 November, an eclectic gang of our Bucher + Suter Germany teammates headed off on a daring, lengthy (they traveled a treacherous 8 minutes by car), and perilous adventure to the Sterntaler Association’s Dragon Mountain (Drachenberge) in Bensheim. But what became of our fearless heroes? And did they make it back in one piece?
We’re glad to report that there are no fallen heroes in this adventure. Save for some muscle ache and torrid early conditions; everyone made it back to our kingdom with their limbs where they always were. Gaiety aside, the team braved horizontal rain and near-freezing temperatures for the first couple of hours as they helped Volker Beetz, chairman of the Sterntaler e.V. (registered association), build new walls in their magical adventure park. Drachenberge (Dragon Mountain) is a wondrous place designed for local youth that promotes learning through experiences. Combining the centuries-old legends of local knights and dragons, Sterntaler has created a small village’s worth of beautifully designed infrastructure for play and learning. As a not-for-profit organization, they regularly run fund-raising events and host individuals and teams to help them with the upkeep of everything that they’ve built. They have a rich vision of what the organization is capable of, and the Bucher + Suter team members who were visiting the grounds for the first time were blown away by what was available.
The team helped build protective walls and did other maintenance around the grounds – a far cry from their daily lives of providing on-prem and cloud contact center solutions and running projects for our enterprise customers. Later the team shared a beer and reflected on what had been a tough but ferociously fun day. Andrea Exner, Customer Success Manager at Bucher + Suter and part of the PLUS Taskforce, remarked: “b+s is giving us a gift of time for us to pass on in ways which we think can make a difference. There’s no excuse for me anymore! Doing good can be so easy – and as we’re proving through our VTO days – it’s so much fun!”
So the riches of pride, goodwill, a tighter sense of community, and feelings of charity that they collected were, in balance, worth the risks of sore muscles and getting soaked to the bone. We’re looking forward to future collaboration with the Sterntaler team. It’s a fantastic organization doing some amazing work in the local area!
