Finding Our Voices and Our Mascots

Virtual Payara Day is our quarterly virtual conference!

Virtual Payara Day (VPD) is an opportunity for team members to get to know each other in a way that they can’t day-to-day, as well as getting business updates from the CEO and from other functional teams.

This quarterly event is a consistent opportunity for updates on Payara’s performance in the previous quarter and on its initiatives in the next, ensuring that we have an updated, shared understanding of Payara’s current position and that we are all working towards the same goals.

Finding our Mascots

Before VPD, we all connected from our home offices by sharing pictures in our Payara t-shirts with our event “mascots”. Cuddly toys, pets, an orange and even a peacock lamp gave a personal insight into each team member, or “Payaran”.

GIF War!

For this VPD, we started with a creative challenge, working in groups to bond. This quarter, we had a GIF challenge.

We asked Payarans to find the very best GIFs to meet prompts using the Microsoft Teams GIF Library. We know how much time it is easy to spend searching for GIFs, trying different variations and wording, getting the perfect one – this was the time to put those skills to the test!

CEO Keynote

VPD is a key opportunity for team members to hear directly from the head of the business, understanding what the long term plans are for Payara, and therefore what to focus on. Steve Millidge took to the stage to give us an overview of Payara’s performance against company objectives, highlighting important news and initiatives. We then heard more detail from the Team Leaders in individual team standups.

Guest Speaker – Curium Solutions Decision-Making Masterclass

We use the guest speaker slot at our VPDs as a learning opportunity, choosing an expert speaker on a topic that will be useful for all at the company. For this VPD, change management and transformation experts Curium Solutions gave us a personalised session on decision making, using group work and coaching to empower all in the team to make better decisions and stick to them – covering upwards management, confidence and control over decisions. We worked on trying to understand the blockers that might impact decision making negatively, and ultimately how to take more responsibility and accountability, an intent-based leadership approach.

It was a fascinating session and a chance to focus on an aspect of personal career growth that often gets lost and overlooked in the busyness of working life.

Payaran Pop Quiz

We finished the day with another bonding activity. The pop quiz is our chance to learn more about our fellow Payarans with each other! The quiz asks questions about our team-mates (including some fun childhood pictures!).

Like the sound of our enriching quarterly virtual conferences? See if there is a place at Payara for you:

Topics: Fish Food, NewsroomTagged newsroom, VPD

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