This month, we spiced things up by moving the annual kick off/retreat from relaxing Palm Springs, to the fast-paced and fabulous city of Las Vegas. While employees always look forward to the annual retreat, due to the change of scenery, the excitement for this year’s was understandably kicked up a notch. On Thursday, suburban convoys were driven from the Los Angeles, Ontario, and Irvine offices in Southern California, arriving to the beautiful Mandalay Bay hotel later that evening.
Starting bright and early, CEO Brian Fischbein kicked things off with his State of the Union address. Our COO, Bob Steuernagel, spoke about metrics, quality of processes and time management, and 2015 goals while CFO, Matt Fristoe, broke down our company numbers. Brian Burns, Tony Miranda, and Mitch Balzer each spoke on their respective divisions (Creative, Enterprise, and Crescent Allied), while Regional Director, Sonia Petkewich, discussed Recruiter/Sales etiquette and collaboration.
Laura Cooper reviewed candidate process and interaction, Kelley Bengel covered resume formatting, and John Kim presented new and beneficial Talent Rover job categorization and reporting. Closing the presentations out, our Director of Operations, Stephanie Le, spoke on tips and tricks to leverage Talent Rover for time management.
Despite cramming in copious amounts knowledge, Friday proved to be chocked full of bonding, thanks to team building and role-playing exercises. Our team building session, dubbed “Going Deep” was as emotional and “deep” as it sounds. Personal beliefs, stories, and accounts were shared in a very safe, understanding, and open-minded environment. It brought everyone together and was an eye-opening and wonderful experience for all.
After the wealth of information imparted over the course of the day, everyone was hungry and ready to have a little fun. Dinner was devoured and soon followed by our infamous dance battles – which were especially epic this year. Easily some of the best battles we’ve seen to date, given the fact that our CEO seemed to have perfectly choreographed a dance with Crescent LA admin Airrel Watkins. The whole night was perfection.
What’s Vegas without a show you ask? Well we wondered the same thing. After a late breakfast Saturday morning, we split up into 4 diverse teams and made our way to Live Room Escape off of the strip. They offer Interactive Thriller Adventure Experiences in either their “Sherlock Room” or their “Trap Room” and each team had up to an hour to figure out how to escape. While the Trap Room was terrifying at times, everyone successfully beat the buzzer, and one of our “Sherlock Holmes” teams even broke the record for fastest escape!
Needless to say, this retreat weekend was fun, informative, and very successful. Leaving on Sunday, everyone felt ready to take 2015 head on. It proved to be another exciting kickoff to what is sure to be a phenomenal year for Crescent.