Zure is a team-focused company. We do not sell our experts as resources to our customers. Instead, we work in teams. The teams have many internal processes that ensure the individuals and teams are doing good.
However, in case we want to become the highest quality problem solver globally by 2040, we cannot just optimize the core teams. And especially in this hybrid era, it’s even more rare that people meet up from different teams. It’s the weak links that are suffering when people from different bubbles do not meet.
We aim to burst these bubbles as often as possible with different kinds of events. This way, we want to make our weak links stronger.
Office events
Zure office in Helsinki is a very important place for us. We have a whole company event at least every second week: Brekkie or Zureday. Both work well hybrid, but I would say most of us are nowadays joining live. Brekkies are – surprisingly – a breakfast alongside a company-level retro. On Zuredays the focus is sharing the information from sales, teams, recruitment, financials, etc. Then we have a company-paid lunch together. So yes, food gathers us most of the time. 😋
On top of these Very Official events, I’m innovating and organizing all kinds of random events to make people come together. We have held kids evenings about every 6 months, like grilling or Christmas party, since we have quite a lot of employees with smaller kids. They have been great successes! And every second Friday we have a ZIF (Zure-It’s-Friday!), where we might share a beer or play board games.
But basically, there is always something going on in our office. Lately there has been surprise chess challenges in our kitchen alongside regular foosball tournaments. You never know when there might be Mistake Donuts available (we want to make it comfortable to fail) or just someone holding a Minicode in the kitchen (internal training about basically anything). It might be puzzles or LEGO building, there is always a fun buzz at the office.
Zafari & Zevents
Zafari is our crown jewel, when it comes to events: it gathers us from all countries to one place for a weekend. The main purpose is to gather the whole community together. Since last Zafari, we had almost doubled our employee amount and kicked off two new countries. So there were quite a lot of excitement for Zafari 2022.
Zafari has always been a trip abroad. The destinations have included cities like Budapest and Dubrovnik. Of course, it was easier to travel when the company was smaller but booking trips for a bigger gang is a welcomed challenge. In 2022, after a couple of years hiatus, we finally got to travel again and this time the whole company headed to Pärnu, Estonia. But it was a great success! We held intense workshops, but also went full-on to waterslide park for a speed contest. Of course, many internal jokes were made. For example, I will cherish the memory of one legendary cheese ball soup.
On Zafari, there was an idea of more organized teaming events once back in Finland. We took that immediately for sketching board, and came up with Zevents (yes we still keep on this naming habit). So the idea is to have a totally not work-related activity with something sporty or creative, or anything people would be interested. This fall it was carting with electric cars. The winners of all teams held a “Masters’ tournament” and the winner of all was Timo Piironen. All hail Timo!
I’m interested to see what kinds of events will be voted for next Zevents!
