Flat Company

Just a quick one today, because I've got a long drive tomorrow, so I'm going to try to get some sleep. However, I did think that I would note that it's currently 12:46 am, and the streetlights have still not come on.

So I went to a sort of corporate retreat thingy today. It was intended to be a focus group environment, with 50 staff from diverse backgrounds within the shipyard (from imported Polish welders through office workers like me, to the head of HR) to talk about ways that the company can make itself into a better workplace.

The project went well, and I think the meeting achieved what it was designed to achieve. That's not what fascinated me. What I found interesting was the period from about 6:30pm to 9:00pm. We were in a neighbouring town, and had taken a chartered bus to get there. So we all had to wait for the bus to return, in order to leave. However, the work was done at 6:30, and the bus didn't come until 9. Therefore, there was nothing much to do, except sit out on the patio (in the sun - the weather's great) of the hotel where the meeting was, and drink/socialize (many of the people had to drive home even after the bus brought them back to the shipyard, so they weren't drinking, but there was still about half who were).

What really struck me was how socially "flat" (not hierarchical) the company is. The idea that a welder would be having a beer with the HR manager for a company is not completely foreign idea in Canada, although it would be rare. However, to watch them talk about the various parties each of them attended last weekend, complete with stories about drunk friends, was not something I would have expected - and similar scenarios were playing themselves out all around me. Now, Ulstein prides itself on being particularly "flat", but I think that it's a Norwegian cultural thing - there is no sense that the seniority you have in the company brings a certain social separation when you're sitting at a table in a hotel bar.

This was only magnified when one of the carpenters started giving out shoulder massages. Now, this is something I did in my first year of university, when I was trying to pick up girls. But here we have a 45-ish-year-old carpenter manipulating the shoulder muscles of, among others, the HR manager. She said it felt good. I believe her. It's still something that seemed odd from my workplace experience.

There were many mentions today during the retreat, of the "Ulstein Culture". I guess this is part of it. Everyone is approachable. Everyone is a social equal, unless you choose not to be. Everyone deserves a shoulder massage.

I really shouldn't generalise without more complete knowledge, so I'll definitely be doing my best to watch around me over the coming months to see whether this phenomenon is for real, or whether this was a bit of an exception because of the fact that we were at an event designed specifically to exaggerate the approachability of the senior staff, and the other positive aspects of the company.

I'll let you know.

Ashley