Getting to know the work of your colleagues

As part of strengthening workplace relationships and self-development, our employees have the opportunity to spend the working day with a colleague from another department, even in a supervisory role. This is a great opportunity to see how much influence you have or can have on the work of others. We often don't realise how little things can positively/negatively affect our colleague and how little it takes to make their job easier, simpler or more complicated.

Almost everyone who got involved found out how challenging and complex the work is across different departments. Their feedback shows a respect for the work of the colleagues visited and even, as a result of the visits made, there is already a desire to make colleagues' work easier. An example is the introduction of reporting in PBI on the performance of production staff, which our IT department is now working hard on.

Impressions of some staff from visits to other departments.

Daniel Svoboda (Byuer) tried his hand at Electrical Engineer senior:
"The work of an electrical engineer really appealed to me because of its variety - from counting lumens on a computer to repairs in production to activities in the R&D shop where our products are created. I had the opportunity to see the assembly of our new edge circular luminaire (Rundo24). Finally, I calculated the lumens for our atypical products, which is really challenging, so I prefer to leave it to the experts."

Tereza Hanzlová (Head of Marketing) tried her hand at the position of Mechanical Engineer junior:
„I traveled from our Prague offices to Nové Město nad Metuji to get a glimpse into the secrets of our R&D. Michaela Dubnová was my guide and I found out how difficult and complicated it is to process requirements for atypical projects (which are the basis of our business) or how to create a model of our new Lina45 luminaire. It was a great show and I have to admit that it would take me about two years to train as a designer. So back to my machine. And with respect to the work of my colleagues.“

Veronika Janatová (HR Generalist) tried her hand at the position of Production Supervisor:
„It was definitely a surprise to me how much time he has to spend evaluating and the honesty with which he does it. I purposely wanted to go to Peter on Mondays (evaluation) and at the end of the month (payroll). He can spot time lags on individual jobs. Why a certain employee spent 10 times more time on a job than the designated standard."

Employees' impressions of a visit by a senior manager to their department.

Zdeněk Fluxa (Business Development Manager), tried his hand at the position of Chief Sales Officer:
"Since I have worked in a similar position before and have experience with what the job entails, I was interested to see how it works in our company. At the same time, I wanted to get a sneak peek into the big management meetings where important current topics, visions and other issues that move the company are discussed. Some of the company's processes bother me at times and I can't influence them much from my position. However, through this opportunity, I found out that these processes are being addressed or are starting to be opened up by the management, which was very encouraging for me, just in the context of my position - Business Development Manager. Overall, I found it an interesting and very inspiring experience."

Impressions of the department from visits by other staff.

"Kristina Gainanova (Lighting Technician) visited the Marketing Department through the eyes of Tomáš Kůrka (Marketing Specialist): "Kristina expressed interest in visiting our department and so we got involved in our regular meetings. We touched on topics as diverse as web management, the upcoming extension of the Halla Configurator for Lina45-S and the renaming of the Rundo and Huge luminaires. Kristina also tried her hand at meeting with an external supplier. She was very actionable and always tried to get involved in the issue at hand and contribute her experience or her technical perspective. At one point she even got involved enough with her graphic skills to help us with minor edits to colleagues' photos. If Kristina has any inclination to cut corners with her lighting calculations, we'd love to have her on board."

Feedback shows that absolutely everyone would like to participate again in the future. We were really pleased with this, because you don't see such a consensus very often. So we will continue and start a new autumn round.