We had the perfect storm of celebrations and gatherings over the past 2 weeks, including some workplace awards and our mid-year all-company meetings (we lovingly call Quails). The meetings were the perfect chance to celebrate these wins together and a great reminder that it’s important to take a break from the daily work to look at the bigger picture – reflecting on what we’ve accomplished so far this year and what’s to come.
Trophies, cakes and cars
For the 16th consecutive year, Rustici has been recognized by the Nashville Business Journal as a Best Place to Work. In honor of this honor during Quail, teams channeled their best ‘nailed it’ skills, decorating cakes to capture the things that make us unique. And we saw it all- from bears and unicorns, to a delightful ‘surprise’ cake featuring D&D dice and Magic: The Gathering cards. In keeping with the sweet 16 theme, we also had some fun at the K1 go-kart track and built and raced remote controlled cars. To make it a little more “Rustici,” we put teams under a time crunch to build cars that had 300+ pieces and even featured a quail egg as a ‘passenger.’ We saw some pretty creative engineering!
Rustici also garnered the #1 spot at The Tennessean’s Top Workplace awards for the 3rd year in a row in the Small Business category (we just missed it in 2022, coming in 2nd place)! We also went home with the “New Ideas” award. This one is really cool as we encourage everyone to share their thoughts and opinions about what we do and how we do it. And that was on full display at Quail with many conversations happening around the office – from suggesting ways we can improve how we do things to imagining what we do next.
Why these awards are particularly sweet
It’s always nice to add another trophy to the mantle, but these are special to us because they’re based solely on employee surveys and feedback. A lot has changed in the past year – we’ve all felt a lot of disruption and uncertainty in our businesses. We’ve also welcomed a lot of new faces here at Rustici. Any time big changes happen, being intentional about culture becomes even more critical.
We can’t always predict what will happen next, but one thing we can do is stay true to our guiding principles – what we think of as our ‘operating system.’ Core to our OS are having empathy for each other and our customers and empowerment to give our teams the autonomy to bring their ideas and expertise to the table.
Each person who works here is responsible for making Rustici a great place to work. While leaders play a role in making sure that our operating system supports the culture we imagine, everyone contributes to keeping Rustici a place to work where people want to show up – for each other and our customers. And finding ways to add in some whimsy just makes it even sweeter.
