As the companies struggle the employees win

With company seniority numbers in the single digits, most companies here is China are desperate to attract and keep their highly trained and skilled employees.  To this end, at our recent management offsite, the company had everyone break into functional groups and come up with ideas on how to lower the turnover rate.  Although there were many novel ideas, the real problem is that there just aren’t enough skilled people available to support the astronomical growth rates, especially in the major cities. 

So my company has focused on trying to make the employees more of a family than of a collection of colleagues.  They encourage company team dinners (for most any reason (we have already been to 5)), as well as team sports and teambuilding activities.  So it is on this topic that I will spend the rest of this article.

This past weekend, Catharine and I were invited to join 49 other members of our work team and their families on a teambuilding outing.  So early this past Saturday morning we all boarded a bus and headed for the nearby seaside town of Ningbo.  This is a popular place with the Shanghai people as the drive is a pretty one and can easily be accomplished in less than three hours.  The route took us across what must be one of the longest bridges in the world; it spanned more than 40 kilometers.  For us our destination was what we thought would be a water park but in fact was an amusement park (small Cedar Point).  As we struggled with the local language we missed out on many things but managed to have a great time in the park and rendezvous with our colleagues at the appointed time.  As you can see from the picture below, I finally completed my list of participation in all the daring sports I care to participate in.  This one being bungee jumping.  The location was not as picturesque as Tommy’s bridge over Victoria Falls in southern Africa, but it was a thrill jumping off a platform from a height of 400 meters.  The real part of the thrill was actually the first 5 feet,  after that the anxiety lapsed and the free fall thrill began; I guess once you know you are going to die, you can relax a bit!!

The rest of the amusement park was fun but soon it got too hot and we spent the last hours lying in the pool at the waterpark portion of the park.  The temperature was in the upper 90s all weekend and the water felt great.  From here we went back to our 5 star hotel in Ningbo and dressed for our “teambuilding” dinner. The dinner was a great variety of Chinese dishes followed by way too much wine which is typical of these events; thus ended the first day. 

The following day we headed for the mountains (we were unaware that the east coast even had mountains) which were in the middle of the national forest.  The views were spectacular and we were all very glad that we were not driving a car no less a bus.  Unfortunately the winding roads got the best of those of us that might have had a bit too much to drink the previous night, but we still enjoyed the scenery.    During the trip we were surprised to see the biggest Bronze Buddha on the east coast.  It must have stood over 300feet high on top of one of the mountains.  Very impressive.

Our destination was the “drifting park”.  What we might call a white water rapids park.  So our group of 50 and what must have been about 300 other Chinese, boarded our rafts and headed down the river.  The river had quite a large natural drop which was enhanced by the “Chinese Builders” .  They diverted the river and added a huge concrete “slipway” where our rafts literally plunged down the rapids while taking on a full boatload of water; a refreshing feeling on a hot day. Our rafts continued down the natural river for some time until we encountered another man-made waterfall where we found that our bailing skills were once again put to the test.  After another series of sharp turns and more waterfalls we finally reached the main part of the river and rejoined my colleagues for a float through town.  We all had a great time and it was nice getting to know some of my colleagues and their families.  From here we headed back through the winding stretches in the mountains and back to Shanghai.  Most of the employees see these kinds of events (which are a bi-annual occurrence) as a reward and also believe it is a real sign that the company values their contributions and skills.  For us it was a great weekend away and a good time to get to know my colleagues.  I hope this will translate into more communication at work and more friends in the long term.