Blueprint 2017 Summary

I joined the communications team at Ryder in March.  Having heard excited murmurs on arrival about the Blueprint event, I was intrigued to learn more.  As I quickly found out, Blueprint is a celebration of Ryder’s people, service and architecture – Everything architecture.  A great opportunity for all the teams to come together and reflect on the past year (and enjoy a few beers afterwards).

Ryder is dedicated to achieving exceptional people engagement across all peer groups and this was certainly at the forefront of Blueprint, this year held at the impressive Wylam Brewery in Newcastle.

From inspiring guest speakers, internal celebrations and updates, to the whole team posing for a photograph on Wylam Brewery’s steps, the focus of the day was on excellence and teamwork.  What really struck me was that, despite only working for the company for six weeks, I was welcomed with open arms and made to feel like a valued member of the team.

As detailed in our people handbook, progression and skill development are highly important to the success of the Ryder culture.  However, rather than just talking the talk, Blueprint has shown that Ryder can walk the walk too, as evidenced when Mark Thompson, managing partner of Ryder, congratulated all individuals who have earned partnership, promotions or additional qualifications in the past year.

A particular highlight of Blueprint for me was the PechaKucha team presentations – an amazing overview of how many exciting achievements each team have produced this year.  Communication is a challenge in all businesses and, with teams based across six locations, the team update presentations were a welcomed and fascinating insight.

The event also provided a great opportunity to speak to a range of people I had not spoken to before, admittedly as a newbie, this was rather a lot.  It was especially great to see lead members of the Ryder Alliance from Barcelona, Budapest, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney present too.  The event really helped me to break the ice with my new colleagues and, since then, I have had conversations with people in the office I had never spoken to before Blueprint.

Although I realised very quickly that I had made an excellent career choice, there was no doubting after Blueprint that I had come to a great place to work.  I am looking forward to building a successful career at Ryder and would like to thank them for the fantastic opportunity to join the ever expanding team.