XXXLdigitALL hands day 2020
Author: Julia Großbichler, Employer Branding Specialist
On 1 December 2020, we celebrated our XXXLdigitALL hands day with all of our employees taking part virtually and with the presenters and organisers being at the venue of Panzerhalle in the beautiful city of Salzburg. The aim was to bring all XXXLdigital employees together for a one-day streaming event so they could share information, talk, network and simply spend the day together!
To make sure that all our employees stay safe and healthy, all speakers and organisers working on-site at the day of the event were tested negative for COVID-19 the day before the event, on Monday, 30 November.
Kick-off
We kicked the day off with a small task: everyone had to draw a portrait of themselves and post it in our company chat. It sure made us discover some hidden drawing talents among our colleagues. After this little warm-up, everyone opened their gift box and could prepare themselves a freshly brewed organic coffee (more on this coffee specialty below).
First tasks of our streaming event!
Sharing information
Our colleagues Christal Pillat & Tobias Sammereyer hosted us very professionally and made sure to entertain us throughout the day.
Due to our recent growth, the XXXLdigital leaders Udo Gündermann (Chief Information Officer) and Maximilian Rabl (Chief E-Commerce Officer) started the event with a presentation filled with current insights and interesting info.
The whole content was aligned with one of the main goals of XXXLutz Group and the recent statement by Michael Seifert, CEO of XXXLutz, that “No matter if brick-and-mortar or online: we want to be number one!”.
Moreover, they talked about our vision, mission and goals in line with the recent structural changes of our organisation: Starting in winter of 2020, the XXXLdigital department will also include the online stores of XXXLutz (AT, DE, CZ, SK, SE, CH), digital marketing and e-commerce purchasing, which will see a significant expansion. Thus, XXXLdigital will grow to around 477 employees and will be made up of an inspiring combination of our existing workforce and new digital colleagues from the industry. XXXLdigital is now divided into two divisions: XXXLdigital.eco and XXXLdigital.core.
Additionally, Udo shared a great video about his career path at XXXLutz and talked about the future of the digital furniture retail industry.
From left to right: Udo Gündermann (Chief Information Officer) & Maximilian Rabl (Chief E-Commerce Officer)
Welcome to our very first XXXLdigitALL hands day!
Speakers
To introduce to our existing & new colleagues to all of our departments, our area leads prepared fun, informative and creative videos with their teams that made us laugh because some teams sure have a fantastic sense of humour 😉.
A week prior the event, a gift was sent to our colleagues at the office and to those at home. It included a reusable coffee cup, fair trade chocolate by the company Zotter & an organic coffee by Brigantes.
Sustainable gifts for our employees
The reason for these special gifts became clear once our guest speaker Daniel Kravina, CEO of Brigantes, appeared on stage and gave a highly interesting presentation about his sustainable shipping company. The mission of his company is to trade cargo under sail – moving goods only by the power of the wind! He talked about how he transformed this dream, his vision and passion into life by founding his own sustainable shipping company. This served as a very good example for our industry, too. It demonstrated how to restore tradition and renew the way of seeing and doing business. Watch the full video about this sustainable and successful project here.
Sustainability panel talk
Following the presentation of our guest speaker Daniel Kravina, our colleagues Maximilian Rabl (Chief E-Commerce Officer), Sascha Pillat (Chief Purchase Officer), Iris Volkert (CRM Specialist) and Christina Böchheimer (Area Lead Customer Experience) took part in a panel talk where they shared their personal experience and opinion on the topic of sustainability. They tried answering the following questions:
How relevant is the topic of sustainability for our group of customers?
How does sustainability affect the purchasing behaviour of our customers?
What steps can we take as a company in this regard?
Parallel to this discussion, our employees and listeners had the chance to post their opinions in a chat and some of them came up with very good ideas on how to promote sustainability within our organisation. Therefore, we will continue to promote this topic within our department in the upcoming months. Stay tuned for more!
From left to right: Christal Pillat & Tobias Sammereyer, Maximilian Rabl, Udo Gündermann, Yvonne Kleissner, Christina Böchheimer, Julia Schiff and Dieter Prihal
Quiz time
Our colleague Julia Schiff organised a fun game for the whole team: a quiz where we had to guess which movie a certain set of emojis represented (for instance: 🚢❄️👩🏻🦰❤️👨= Titanic). This game showed us the movie fanatics among our employees. The ten people with the highest score won attractive prices like gift vouchers for online streaming companies.
Networking
Some teams virtually shared their meals together during lunch break.
The afternoon continued with an online escape room game. The teams from all our locations were mixed and had to resolve a serious theft. During this game, we had the chance to meet some of our new colleagues for the first time, foster collaboration by working on a common goal together and efficiently distribute tasks among team members. And some of us successfully solved the mysterious theft!
Celebrating success
Celebrating our achievements together is just as important as the results and the products we create at the end of the day. Thus, our leaders mentioned some great milestones reached in 2020, for instance the project of "E-Commerce Warehouse Amt Wachsenburg", which was successfully completed. This new e-commerce warehouse is one of the largest in Europe. The project started in December 2016 and was meant to provide larger storage areas and consequently increase the level of service for our customers. The new warehouse offers significantly higher stock availabilities and guarantees faster delivery times, respectively. It includes 120,000 m² of storage area with 90,000 storage places (height: 32 m) and 58 packing stations. The statistics are quite impressive. For more info on this project take a look here.
Conclusion
This day made us realise that we already have all we need in order to achieve success – we have a great team, we all have different skills, experiences, expertise and mindsets, and that’s simply awesome. Why? Because we need a combination of exactly these elements to create great things together. Even though it was not the same as last year since digital meetings can never be as personal as meeting in person, this event, again, brought us more together and showed us that we are on the right path!
Thanks to our event partner Conventiongroup for filming the event and for allowing us to have a smooth streaming of the event on the technical side, too. Their team included three cameramen, two sound engineers, two people in charge of the mixing console, one director & their CEO.
Last but not least, huge thanks to the XXXLdigital event team for organising such a great event, seven people from different teams. Thumbs up for their great work!
The whole team working on-site at the event!
Next steps
Dear XXXLdigitals and our followers: the next summit will take place as soon as the current situation will allow us to do so. Stay tuned for more details in 2021!
What we know for sure is that that we will keep growing – so if you are interested, we are always looking for curious and open-minded colleagues in Würzburg, Koblenz, Graz, Vienna, Wels and Barcelona who are interested in joining us on the journey to becoming the number one digital retailer in Europe! You can find our open positions here.
XXXLdigital self-portraits :)
Behind the Scenes
*German version to be found here