CURRIE HALL SAILS INTO TEAM WORK 2011

The Currie Hall leadership team are living their Charter through their actions. Under Principal Chris Massey, Currie Hall, the accommodation arm of the University of Western Australia, is moving their student housing to a ‘leading edge’ facility in Australia.

As Chris explained, “by investing in up skilling our leadership team, a cascading effect onto our students will be the result. We want to have the best collegiate community of any University accommodation.” To this end over the past 3 years, Australian Corporate Challenge and the Currie Hall Executive have developed an effective Charter of desired and inspirational values, up skilled staff in management and leadership and practice their new skills through ‘experiential learning’ activities.

To further build the leadership team in April 2011, a half day workshop welcomed the new staff and revisited the Currie Hall Charter, while developing the desired leadership and behaviours of the team.

To reinforce the importance of team training an afternoon of sailing on the Foundation 36 yachts was organised. This highlighted the team work skills required to build a high performance Currie Hall leadership team, which will allow progress towards ‘best practice’ in University accommodation, anywhere in Australia. As Janet Linn, Assistant Principal, explained “we are all so time poor, especially with being on call for the students (24 x 7), to have time like this to talk and interact with each other while learning, will build us into a formidable and caring team at Currie Hall.”

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING IN THE REMOTE NORTHERN TERRITORY ESSENTIAL

With the mercury hitting around 38° Celsius and the piercing sound of the pink and grey galahs in the background, 51 staff members from Ngukurr Remote School and the Katherine Schools District Office met at the outdoor setting of Mataranka Manor 150km south of Katherine. Sports Challenge Australia with support from DrinkWise Australia assembled its CEO Dr Garry Tester, Director Jennifer Clay, Programs Coordinator Jacqui Finnegan and lead mentor and former International Women’s Squash Player Amanda Hopps for a day of Professional Development. In hot and humid conditions with competition from the local bird life the men and women who ply their trade in some of the toughest conditions on this planet were given valuable insight into Corporate Training from personal audit of wellness, personality types, communication skills, team work and experiential learning to benchmark their own skills.

With the Sports Challenge team bringing all their equipment, computer and printers from Perth instant feedback was provided to allow each staff member a suite of paper work and personal evaluations completed before they left the work shop.

At the end of a long, hot day the sentiments echoed by Principal and Deputy Principal Ric Eade and Deb Olle summed up the impact.

“To have the quality of this type of PD in the territory is a unique opportunity for all involved and will assist us all in providing the best possible education to the students in remote schools. Thank you Sports Challenge!”

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Department of Mines & Petroleum Mentoring Program 2009 – Huge Success!

Starting this year, the Department of Mines and Petroleum have partnered with Australian Corporate Challenge in implementing an 18-month Mentoring Program offered alongside the exisiting Graduate Program within the department. The graduates, or mentees, participated first in a one-day workshop focused on the themes of organisational dynamics, mentoring, teamwork, and communication. The mentees were then joined on the second day of the workshop by senior staff within the department, their mentors.

Over the course of the workshop, the mentees and mentors worked together in a variety of hands-on activities and challenges. The atmosphere was consistenly buzzing with positive interaction, communication, and integration between the mentors and mentees. Australian Coporate Challenge serves to facilitate the workshop; however the effectiveness is solely dependent on the mentor and mentee’s attitude and willingness to work together to achieve the desired outcomes throughout the 18-month program. As such, the majority of the program is intended to be self-led, and thus a strong level of commitment and motivation is required from both parties.

This will be no problem for this group, judging by the success of the first two sessions. Thanks to the outstanding organisation by Ms Janice Tan (Strategic Planning) and Mr James Donnelly (Strategic Planning), Australian Corporate Challenge has no doubt that both the mentors and mentess will benefit tremendously from the program.

BankWest Retail Sales Team Excels in Corporate Challenge 2009

In mid-January, the BankWest Retail Sales Division showed off their talents in a teambuilding program held at the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club. The teams were raring to go right from the start, showing a keen enthusiasm to get involved and compete for the final prize for the overall best performance.

In these trying economic times, Retail Sales Manager Phil Colton’s philosophy is to maintain BankWest’s cutting edge position in the banking industry by investing in its people. The partnership with Australian Corporate Challenge will undoubtedly set 2009 off on a positive note with a focus in the areas of change management; an integral focus area for BankWest in maintaining its leading position in this current economic climate.

The teambuilding program was structured around a series of hands-on activities, both indoor and outdoor. The themes of Emotional Intelligence, health and wellness, communication, creative thinking, motivation, relationship building, achieving work/life balance, and problem solving were focused upon. The highlights of the day, as reflected by the participants, included getting to know interstate work colleagues on a more personal level, and integrating in an out-of-office environment.

In the end, it was the competitive element of Australian Corporate Challenge’s teambuilding program that left participants hungry for the challenges to come in 2009.