A few years back before I joined Phoenix Contact, I attended a training course conducted by this reputable company situated in the Central Business District. Right from the moment I stepped into the office, I was absolutely awed by the office environment. It is so spacious, neat and tidy, with full length glass windows, and every cubicle is separated by a piece of beautifully crafted glass.

At that moment, I was thinking, how I wish I could work for this company. Then, I saw my trainer carrying a big pile of training materials, and had difficulty opening the door, so I went ahead to open the door for her, and as I gazed around that office, everyone was so busy working that I believe none of them would even have had the time to open the door for her. That immediately altered my perspective of this company altogether.

Typically, an adult spend an average of 8 hours working a day, and I wondered what it was like to spend 8 hours in a place where the people around you are almost lost in their own world.

Today, one of our guys lost his car keys, and fortunately, the small confines of our office space facilitated the rapid dissemination of news of this calamity. Immediately, a kind soul embarked on an SAR or Search And Retrieve mission.

After several failed attempts to locate the keys and being engineers, they believed that they could find other means to open the car door, and of course, they both failed too since lockpicking and ‘breaking and entering’ were not part of their repertoire of skills. So I thought I should help them in their search effort as well.

As I walked over to his desk, another colleague was already conducting a sweep, so I thought I would go to the reception area to see if his keys would be found there. Guess what? There was another SEARCH TEAM in action there already.

There were at least 5 or 6 of our guys combing the areas both inside and outside our office all searching for his keys! Fortunately, the search effort paid off. with the acclamation of “We found it! We found it!”, the search was brought to a conclusion.

I cannot begin to describe relieve my colleague felt when he got his car keys back! How nice can that be?  Well, I truly believe that it is always the people that makes the office a heartwarming place to work in, not so much how nice the office is decorated.

Would your colleagues do the same if you lost something precious? If not, why not make your office a better place to work in by taking the first step to show concern for the colleague next to you!