BIRMINGHAM, Mich. – A company in Birmingham is using the Olympics to make the return to the office a little bit smoother.
White Glove, a financial advisor marketing service company, hopes the use of the Olympics makes the return something employees can look forward to.
“I’m an extrovert. I’ve been dying to get back in the office,” VP Product Marketing Lara Galloway said.
The company kicked off a week-long event, the office Olympics.
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“You can only do so much in Zoom. So as soon as we’re able to zoom back in the office we decided to throw our office Olympics and as you can see today -- we got everybody back,” CEO Evan Kramer said.
Kramer said his company did really well working virtually but he wanted everyone back in the office.
“You forget about just the watercooler stuff, or just the collaboration that’s ad hoc, so it really just the -- the memory muscle kind of comes back and I feel like it’s the right direction to go,” Kramer said.
The company’s co-founders came to let the games begin.
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‘We let the dress code go a little bit. Which is, you know, trying to get back into everything and trying to, you know, make it exciting to come back into work,” Co-founder Dean Thurman said.
The competition will last a week while employees take quick breaks during their workday.
“Half the employees here, close to it, hired during the pandemic so a lot of people haven’t really even met each other yet. So we wanted to kind of make it a social event as much as just a collaboration event for the company,” co-founder Mike Thurman said.
Employees must pay $10 to join in the Olympic games. The fee will be donated to the Detroit Dog Rescue.
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