SALAMANCA — In the spirit of the season, the staff at Holiday Inn Express recently participated in a “Christmas Tree Decorating Contest.”
These masterpieces are part of a “team building” event conducted by General Manager Ruth Ann Zink who knows how important it is for the different departments at the hotel to work together.
“We’ve had this contest four or five years,” she said. “With Holiday Inn Express, we do team building during the year, as well as a Housekeeping Week and an Employee Appreciation Week.”
Because the establishment has some new employees, Zink said she needed some camaraderie and thought about how she was going to build the teams. She said it’s wonderful all of housekeeping know each other, but she wondered if they knew the people working at the front desk, maintenance personnel and all the other departments. Since she loves competitions, she decided they would do Christmas trees to bring them all together.
“We put everybody’s name in a hat and picked four teams,” she said. “Out of my 30 employees, we ended up with 26 participants with six to seven per team. They met and picked a captain, then sat down and came up with a theme.”
To keep each tree a secret until the unveiling, the teams constructed their trees in the board room where nobody could observe their creative process.
Red, Green, Blue and Multi-light teams — they made anything they wished, but the finished trees had to be 99-percent handmade. Zink pointed out the walnuts in a shell that have been made into Santas, little glass jars with snow scenes, and ornaments made from cookies and painted. There are even ornaments made from melted Starlight mint candies and candy canes decorated to look like reindeer.
Team No. 3 used their imagination for their Cupcake Tree. They took Christmas balls and embellished them with glitter and sequins, then put cupcake papers on the bottoms.
“Everyone had a ball doing this and several staff members are very talented and creative,” Zink said. “They really got into the camaraderie of it all and it made for many fun times.”
According to Zink, she owned six craft stores before taking over as general manager at the Holiday Inn Express more than 14 years ago. She said she has volumes of totes filled with craft supplies left and she could pretty much open another craft store.
“I put all this stuff together for the staff to use because I don’t want them spending a lot of money on this contest. If they need something that is costly, they can let me know and I will get it for them,” she said. “Sue Washington who works here is a crafter. She brought supplies in as well and helped me set it all up.”
Zink applauds her staff for doing this contest. She said a lot of their ideas came from the internet, but they worked together. The best part was having each team made up of combined departments from housekeeping, pantry, front desk and maintenance.
“It’s such a great way to unite the departments. I mix them all up because, as a whole, we are a team and without teamwork things don’t run smoothly,” she said. “The staff has a great time doing it and our guests love it.”
Hotel guests and visitors have the opportunity to vote on which entry they like best throughout the holiday season. The team with the most votes wins something special to congratulate them for a job well done.
Contest winners will be announced Jan. 3, 2017, then Zink will take the winning team to dinner at a restaurant of their choice.
