Starlight Children’s Foundation prize wands

Congratulations to Team ‘Intrepid’ from GE HealthCare who won the coveted Starlight Children’s Foundation Australia prize wands at the Starlight ‘Sparklers’ team building session that we ran this week!

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions company. Their business is all about enabling clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications, and services and they are committed to fostering an inclusive culture of respect, transparency, and unyielding integrity.

The Starlight ‘Sparklers’ team building event that we ran for them this week was part of an important week-long conference they held in Sydney for staff across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia and they chose this program because they felt the charity was very much aligned with their business. Furthermore, the main ‘Sparkle’ pack activity also greatly interested them as it allowed their 150 staff to collaborate in teams to do the volunteering activity of buying items and putting together a ‘hamper’ of gifts that would be given by the charity to a sick child. Besides being very much in line with their mission to work “to solve the greatest challenges in healthcare that patients and clinicians face today…” the activity was a practical activity, not without its challenges as the teams each had to work to a specific brief and buy suitable gifts for a child of a specific age and gender and they had a limited timeframe, budget, and geographical location to do it.

The results were impressive as the teams delivered well beyond expectations and collated some very impressive ‘Sparkle’ packs that will undoubtedly bring a big smile to the faces of the sick kids’ Starlight support, as well as their siblings and parents.

What made the event all the more special was that the messaging about the charity and the various other activities and tasks set for the teams, very much mirrored and complimented all the company’s five key strategic pillars:

1. Serve our people, patients, and customers

2. Lead with a lean mindset

3. Empower Entrepreneurial spirit

4. Deliver the future of healthcare

5. Win together and have fun

We have found that when our corporate clients collaborate with us and brief us fully by sharing the business goals, the context of their events, and desired outcomes this helps greatly with selecting the best charity program for the occasion and ensuring that we can brief our team of professional facilitators so that they can customise the delivery of the session on the day.

Not only was the session great fun with GE HealthCare, but it touched their people’s hearts and resonated strongly with them, whilst aligning with their business goals and values. Everyone on the team, not only left the session with special memories but a special memento!

To make the session all the more energised and to heighten the fun, the session also fanned the flames of competitive spirit as the group was split into fifteen teams/tables and were competing against each other for points in the various group tasks, creative activities and challenges, which ultimately culminated with a sudden death quiz between representatives of Team ‘Eh, Eh, Eh’ and Team ‘Intrepid’. In a nail-biting finish Team ‘Intrepid’s’ representative got the deciding question right and took home the coveted Starlight wands for their team!

As the day ended and one of their leaders closed the session, the winning team was given the task to use their special wands to spread the message of joy and happiness in the workplace, at home, and in the community.

If that wasn’t already more than enough to come out of our session, there was one more special surprise in store for our facilitator and the representative of Starlight when one of the GE HealthCare staff came up to them at the end of the session and told them that they had been a ‘Starlight’ (sick) kid so our session had very much touched them. We were delighted to also learn that the session content had very much resonated with the truth of their experience with Starlight all those years ago, which is not only comforting but gratifying as a professional team building and facilitation business.