January saw the entire UK Cezanne HR team gather in the bright lights of Manchester for its annual Kick Off meeting.
As much of the company’s workforce now works remotely, it gave everyone a chance to get together over two days and catch up on their plans for the year ahead – not to mention have some fun and socialise, too. It was also an opportunity to reflect on the company’s successes of the past 10 years, and our plans for 2023 and beyond. Plus, there were also some exciting updates regarding new system releases.
So, what happened over the two days? Here’s a rundown of what took place…
A look back at 2022
After converging in the beautiful surroundings of the Victoria and Albert Marriott Hotel in the centre of Manchester, we kicked off our get-together with a review of 2022.
Despite the challenging economy, Cezanne HR had a great year: growing by double digits for the fourth year running and adding a number of high-profile clients to our ever-growing customer community. We’re proud to support professionals from virtual every business sector and have a user base that stretches across more than 120 countries, and sees more over 3.8 million logins per month.
2022 also saw valuable additions to the Cezanne HR team: with our headcount rising by 23% over the course of 12 months. And, with ambitious growth plans for 2023 and beyond, we expect the team here at Cezanne HR to grow even larger.
Growing together: themes for the year ahead
With growth comes new opportunities and new challenges. So we took the time to familiarise ourselves with the working methodology and frameworks we’ll be adopting in 2023 to help drive continuous improvement within the business. This included an overview of the Adizes Methodology: a proprietary, structured and pragmatic system for accelerating organisational change within the business.
Celebrating together: our first decade
2023 sees Cezanne HR celebrate its tenth anniversary, and what a journey it’s been! Our Kick Off meeting was the perfect opportunity to look back at how the company has grown and developed over the past decade, and celebrate the achievements of the people who’ve helped make it possible.
It was a great way to round off the day, and kicked off a night of celebrations and fun – along with some questionable karaoke singing…
Working together: developing a shared vision
For the final day of our Kick Off meeting, we split into groups and discussed and presented what we felt were the key traits and attributes that should be reinforced as Cezanne HR embarks on an exciting period of growth.
We also took the opportunity to reflect on what we felt has contributed to business success, what makes Cezanne HR unique, and how we can both maintain and improve those attributes as we change, evolve our processes, and welcome a lot of new starters.
Several hours of deliberation culminated in informative and entertaining presentations – some of which included impressive acting, body coordination and karaoke… again! Themes included how Cezanne HR can support ongoing employee engagement, introducing new ways of working (such as ‘hackathons’) and facilitating open, organic communication and knowledge sharing.
In summary, the Kick Off meeting was a fantastic couple of days for all of us here at Cezanne HR. It proved a welcome opportunity to share ideas, collaborate on new initiatives and simply spend some time with our friends and colleagues. Here’s to an exciting 2023 and looking forward to our next Kick Off meeting in 2024!
