News 2003
Could milking goat’s in the CEO’s office be the latest staff incentive?
11/03/2003
Staff at Virgin Mobile, who were bemused when the company’s CEO, Tom Alexander, recently had his office turned into a farmyard, found out the reasons behind this today, as the winners of the inaugural Road Scholarship were announced at the company’s headquarters in Trowbridge.
The Road Scholarship is a new staff incentive programme that has been designed to reward staff who make an outstanding contribution to the company. Every year from now on, an employee will be sent to each of Virgin Mobile overseas offices for two weeks; this year there are two winners, one will travel to America and the other to Australia, with a partner or friend and up to two children.
Staff were put forward for the prize by their line manager and the nominations were then reviewed by a selection committee made up from Virgin Mobile’s management team. Those who made the final stages were interviewed about their role at the company, as well as revealing some interesting information about themselves that none of their colleagues knew.
At this stage, Jason Tye (30), an operations support manager from Bristol, brought a goat into Tom Alexander’s office to demonstrate the fact that he used to be a champion goat milker as a child! Jason’s performance and dedication to his work have won him a Road Scholarship to Virgin Mobile in Australia.
The winner of the Road Scholarship to the US was James Iles (30) from Bristol, a senior technical trainer. Winning the scholarship was made all the more special for James, as he had originally cancelled plans of a dream trip to the US to accept his dream job at Virgin Mobile. Now he will get to do both with his family by his side for two weeks! Both James and Jason will be sending regular reports back to Virgin Mobile’s HQ in Trowbridge.
Due to the incredibly high standard of all the nominations it was decided to offer each of the remaining nominees a pampering weekend for two, where they will be able to recover from their grilling by the Executive Committee during the judging process! The lucky runners up are Clare Hunt, David Buckingham, Lisa Guy, Phil Dymond, Denny Moodie, Kyra Ings, Kate Maitland-Taylor, Sam Morris and Nigel Denny.
Steven Day, corporate affairs director at Virgin Mobile, said: “Virgin Mobile has a great collaborative culture and we wanted to find a way to reward some of our most impressive members of staff in a fun way that supports our exciting global approach. We have a fantastically irreverent team and this scheme encourages them to milk their creativity for all its worth!”
