Terminal Team Values in Action
Tags: Startup, Remote Team, Canada, Technology, Team Building

The following post was contributed by Terminal’s VP of Marketing, Elisabeth Hawkins

Something magical happened last week. All of the Terminal employees, both remote and those spread across six different offices in the US and Canada, descended on our flagship office in Kitchener-Waterloo. This was the first time in our company’s history that every single Terminal employee was in the same place at the same time. We had a ton of fun meeting teammates face-to-face and changing up the day-to-day we usually spend on Slack and Google Hangouts collaborating across vast distances, but one of the best parts of bringing everyone together was our time spent at The Food Bank of Waterloo Region. This was a special experience for a few reasons, not the least of which it was the most genuine example I’ve ever encountered of a company living out all of its values in a single exercise.

Company values are something that we’ve all encountered, but more often than not, they feel like they are about as genuinely intended as one of those posters in a stressful workplace with a cat barely clinging onto a tree branch that says “Hang in There.”

Put another way, corporate values typically feel like an afterthought or a band-aid fix for a lack of a strong culture. I can vouch that Terminal is not in that camp. Our values are very intrinsic to how the company was built and the way in which we approach the communities of which we’re privileged to be a part.

Terminal Values

1. Win as a Team.

2. Awesome Standard.

3. Own it.

4. Global Citizen, Local Champion.

5. Agents of Growth.

6. People First.

With one of our main offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, our commitment isn’t just to participate in the tech community; rather, it’s to make an impactful contribution to the community as a whole. So with bringing the entire team together, it was a priority for us to spend a good chunk of that time demonstrating and reaffirming that commitment.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, I’m going to turn it over to the photos to speak to how Terminal’s values came to life.

Win as a Team. We broke into small cross-functional groups and raced against one another during one of our Food Bank activities to see which group could pack the most bags of potatoes. There may have been individual teams that stood out, but collectively we all got a Win as a Team participating together.

Awesome Standard. We were lucky enough to be the first group to use the new food prep facility at the Waterloo Food Bank (and got to set an awesome standard) by breaking down squash with the goal of preserving as much of the edible portions as possible so that it could be frozen and preserved beyond its season.

Own it. Can’t do food prep without owning hygiene! Co-founder Luke Finney and Sourcer Graham Rath were up to code and up to the task of preparing squash to be sliced and diced. This wasn’t a task either Luke or Graham are used to “owning,” but they definitely took the value to heart and got the job done for the team.

Global citizen, Local Champion. Becky from The Waterloo Region Food Bank taking us on a tour of their massive facilities and showing our global group all of the local entities that they support with food distribution.

Agents of Growth. This is only a small portion of the results from our potato-bagging competition. Starting with thousands of unorganized potatoes, our team worked together to play our small part in fueling the growth of the Food Bank’s new farm donations program. Each bag of potatoes will be distributed to organizations in the community that need them most.

People First. At the end of the day, that’s really what it is all about. These statistics, that hang in the sorting room of the Waterloo Region Food Bank, are a stark reminder of what a community can do when it comes together. Think 680,000 lbs of community-sourced food donations, and the recipients of those donations — 37% of whom are children.