Best of the Maldives: Outdoor Staff Meeting – Grand Park Kodhipparu

Possibly the most off site management off-site in the world. Team leaders have been long taking their teams away from the hubbub of the office to escape distractions and reset the mind sets. But what do you do when your workplace is a remote island in a remote part of the world. Well, get even more remote. Like a sand bank in the middle of the ocean. Or the rooftop of a dhoni sailing along that ocean. This how General Manager Raffaele Solferino of Grand Park Kodhipparu gets his resort team’s focused:

• “Among the activities we do at Grand Park Kodhipparu, Maldives to motivate colleagues and enhance our living together, once per week we do what we call out of the office briefing and we tour departments, facilities and live guest’s experience ourselves to better engage with all what we do and what we want deliver. In today sharing era we do not share only the figures, tools and techniques, but we aim to share our free time on the Island, our living together develops a lifestyle we want share with our guests with dedicated team functioning as best advisor on how to fully enjoy the potential of the Island and the Maldives. The impact is straight on guest and employees satisfaction producing better level of guest’s loyalty and staff retention. The Maldives offer a huge amount of opportunities and inspiring experiences development where the creativity and passion plays a role, putting on offer to customers unique experiences where ‘Making Moments in Time’ is our motto. It’s not always about figures, but the way you want deliver the excellence, a notable fashion house founder once he said: the profit is a consequence of a well done job with passion, quality and creativity. I am still following his vision as inspiration and try my best to influence the team I am leading to deliver a ‘Loving Hospitality’ in line with the company I represent on the market place. Soon we are entering the Environmental Management System where I will be involve directly together with our Marine and Land Biologist, as this is part of my engagement with Maldives and the global Environmental concerns, Therefore we will enter officially the Sustainable tourism practice as a way to look ahead and to the future.”

They say some of the bet ideas come hanging out at the bar.  With Kodhipparu, that bar happens to be a sand bar.  When I was a senior manager at Microsoft, I had a bit of a reputation for pushing the envelope of adventurous off-sites, but nothing I ever did there compares with Kodhipparu’s retreats. Inspired inspiration.