Team-building: making the impossible possible

Just how impressive the results of a voluntary project can be when employees with both enthusiasm and expertise from different divisions commit themselves to a good cause is evident from our current project of the month. Here, a group of RWE employees on a team-building exercise at a nursery school in Mönchengladbach pulled off quite a feat!

The bathrooms of the Johanniter nursery school in Mönchengladbach-Wickrath had certainly seen better days. The trouble was, the day-care centre had no means of financing the necessary repair work. Which was reason enough for RWE Companius to give the facility a leg-up by including the project in its winter programme. Ultimately, however, is was thanks mainly to the hard work of twelve employees of RWE Power in Bergheim that this project was such a success.

Gerd-Peter Gläser discovered RWE Companius just a short while ago. While browsing the list of projects still looking for helpers on the Intranet, he chanced upon the project at the nursery school in Mönchengladbach and since it is close to where he lives decided there and then to volunteer. Gläser, who is Head of Construction in the Opencast Mining Division, was able to motivate eleven of his colleagues to take part in the team-building exercise. The helpers invested a total of 310 hours of their spare time in the project. They took care of the breaking work, relaid the water lines, removed the sanitary fittings and installed new ones and even gave the bathroom a fresh coat of paint. They even built some new shelves and a changing table in the company’s own joiner’s shop. “What made the project so special was the deliberate reversal of roles, which meant that people who normally work under me could play the boss for once,” says Gläser.
The team even had a solution for the limited budget available to pay for the renovation work. Gläser’s department was able to win the support of some of RWE’s regional suppliers who allowed the Johanniter to purchase the materials needed on very favourable terms. The labour costs incurred for the tiling work were also donated by a tiling company in Grevenbroich.
Looking back, there can be no doubt that the project was an enriching experience for the whole team: “We worked together very well and learned just how much a dedicated team can achieve,” reported Gläser.