Solterbeck and Optus Australia, South Melbourne, Australia
Optus Australia’s annual Pacesetters Employee Incentive & Reward Program, which in 2016 took place in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, awards employees who achieve exceptional sales results and KPIs and follow Optus’ core values: customer focus, challenger spirit, teamwork, integrity, and personal excellence. Up to 400 front line sales employees from across Australia are taken to a destination every year to experience a five day program to network, celebrate, get inspired, rewarded and empowered.
The 2016 program featured key events, seminars, celebratory dinners and a strong CSR component for which Optus Australia partnered with Habitat for Humanity. Given the varied demographics of the participants, a housing and school project was chosen as the activity that most of the participants would identify with. It took 2 days of working together in 35-degree heat, across all ages, genders and abilities to ensure the building of 6 homes and repairing and painting 2 schools.
Once the work was completed there was a presentation with the all the villagers including the Ben Luc Community Council members. The participants connected so deeply to this activity and as the six families moved into the new homes that the group had built for them, there were many tears of joy and pride. Within Optus, the CSR activity created highly engaged people not only while on the program but also back in the office in the way they drive success to reach their goals by working together as a community.
