Our Annual Meetings
Rincon’s annual meetings are unique in the AEC, and part of our professional platform. They’re our cultural investment to ensure that we have the most knowledgeable and effective team of professionals in our industry. These day-long meetings serve to empower staff to advance their skills, increase their industry awareness, and develop their professional influence. Not surprisingly, our employees describe our annual meetings as a significantly inspirational event that allows them to enhance relationships with co-workers from other offices, reinforce our companywide vision, and exercise our philosophy of being a fully-connected professional team.
THE BASICS
Held on September 12, our event theme was “People Empowered” and served to celebrate our 25 years of success, to inspire, and to connect with our people. We highlighted how Rincon came to be the “platform for professional development” and discussed where we would like to be in 25 years.
CUSTOMIZING THE EVENT
In addition to two “all-hands” knowledge sharing sessions, team members attended service line and department staff-led break-out sessions. This session strengthened each groups relationships by being able to connect in person and brainstorm on important topics to each group.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
While knowledge sharing is a primary strategy, creating ample networking and relationship-developing time is also critical. Morning coffee and tea, freestyle lunches, and even a happy hour back at our Ventura office provided plenty of opportunities to connect co-workers who may have collaborated on phone calls prior to that.
This being my first annual meeting, I had no idea what to expect but can definitely say now that I hadn’t experienced anything like that in my past work. The meeting was casual yet serious and everyone seemed super involved and excited.
The annual meeting actually did make me feel empowered to take more of a leadership role at Rincon and more ownership of my career.
I really enjoyed my service line’s breakout session. The questions/scenarios were thoughtful, and invoked great conversations between staffers from other offices, across all career levels.