This month, I hosted our Team Canada get together in Toronto, where we brought all our global purpose specialists (GPSs) from around Canada together with marketing to formulate our plans for the new fiscal year.

While the planning is exciting, what gets me most excited is the opportunity to foster the culture of the company with our team, in person.

David Green

Company culture has always been of paramount importance to us here at G Adventures, and it’s rewarding to come up with creative ways we can have fun together and engage with each other beyond just coming to work each day.

This year we went to a joint painting session, which was an awesome creative outlet. We also tried our hand at pasta making and attended the P!NK: Summer Carnival 2024 concert to let our hair down (for those of us who have hair!).

These fun events brought out our creativity, and allowed us to open up our thinking to how we can engage more with our travel agent community.

We have so many fun things planned for the coming year that we hope many of you will experience. The biggest takeaway for many of us was the surprise of how artistic we all were, but for me it was less of a surprise. The thing is we all have creativity in us, we just need to allow ourselves the time to be creative.

At G Adventures, culture means feeling free to be who you are, and fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging for every single team member to be able to do their best work and shine free from judgement.

AN ENGAGED, PASSIONATE TEAM

So what exactly is the magic fairy dust that results in an engaged, passionate team?

Being a part of something bigger than yourself is a huge part of what we encourage and that means enabling people to be able to dial into their own personal purpose, as well as that of the organization in terms of ensuring travel is a force for global good.

Motivation comes from feeling heard and valued, as well as knowing you are working for a higher good. In this sense we transcend travel. Each person who works for G Adventures knows what an important part they play in making the world a better place.

In return, we give our people freedom. The freedom to be who they are, to make mistakes without fear and the freedom to give feedback that will help us improve the way we work and make a bigger impact on the world around us.

Recognition is also important to us here at G Adventures. When someone has done a great job we celebrate their success and make sure they know we’re proud of their accomplishments and contributions. We’ve just ended our fiscal year, which was another record breaking year at G Adventures. I couldn’t be prouder of Team Canada and all they’ve done to create lasting memories with our agency partners. I’m excited to share some of our new adventures over the coming months, as our best years are still ahead of us!

I’ll leave you with this question: how are you encouraging your employees to feel safe and included, like they belong, free to be who they are and that they are recognized by their wider team? That’s the path to getting the best work out of the people you work with every day.

G Adventures’ Managing Director David Green’s monthly column, ‘G in 3’ is a 3-minute read running exclusively in Travelweek Daily every month throughout 2024