Kindness Week 2018

Each month, our Developing Professionals Group aims to organize a ‘Day’ for colleagues in the office that is aligned with the group’s mission to connect young professionals with each other, development opportunities, leadership and the community. Examples of these have been an International Women’s Day lunch discussion, Earth Day awareness campaign, World Car Free Day push, and Cheesecake Day networking hour. This month, the day that was selected was World Kindness Day.

To celebrate, they initiated a ‘High Five’ campaign over the week of November 12-16 where colleagues were given the opportunity to compliment one another and give thanks for the hard work of others, anonymously. On cards with sayings like “Thank you ____ for____”, “Kudos to____ for ____” and “I appreciate____ because____” colleagues could give small and big compliments that were then proudly displayed on the ‘High Five Wall’ in the common area of each office.

By the end of the campaign, between our Delft and Arnhem offices, the team had written over 200 messages of kindness to one another; equaling our number of employees! In fact, there was so much enthusiasm around the initiative that colleagues have even elected to change the name of the campaign to Kindness Life and asked that the cards be left up longer, so people can continue adding to it. A company-wide employee satisfaction survey revealed that colleagues feel recognized for their work at Stantec, and this goes a long way towards ensuring that we keep that statistic high.

A kind word can go a long way, and the hope is to keep up this culture of kindness, recognition, and appreciation.