Once a year, HRDLIČKA Holding pauses its normal operations, calendars are cleared, and colleagues from different branches and teams across the company come together. The annual employee meeting has a single goal: to be together, and at the same time to grow professionally and personally. The tradition of company-wide meetings is also important to us because our industry is advancing at an incredible pace: technology, standards, and the expectations of investors and clients are changing practically every day.
We met again at the Akademie Naháč hotel outside Prague, with more than 190 of us in attendance – a number that in itself illustrates how much we have grown.
Today, surveying is not just about measuring. It is about data, standards, work safety, digitization, and communication with investors and infrastructure managers. And because we work on projects where details determine the outcome, we want to be sure that we rely on the same procedures, the same know-how, and the same goals across the holding company. That's why it makes sense to devote one day (and one evening) to what we often don't have time for during the week: sharing experiences, new methods, and inspiration from practice.
Our HR department traditionally takes care of the organizational side of things: it secures the venue, classrooms, logistics, and evening program. The company's management prepares the topics and content of the lectures and also summarizes the past year at the meeting, provides information on how the holding company is doing, and presents the most important things: where we are headed and what awaits us in the coming months. This part is crucial for employees—it provides context, answers, and a common direction.
And then comes what we've all been looking forward to
The most enjoyable part of the day comes when we've finished our training and briefly looked back on the past year. At that point, the program loosens up, the official part ends, and we all know what happens next... no need to describe it at length.
This meeting is taking place mainly because we are so many, and our branches are scattered not only throughout the country but also in other countries. In normal circumstances, you don't get to meet everyone – sometimes not even the people you work with remotely. This makes the moments when we meet outside the office all the more valuable: we exchange a few words, get to know the "voice on the phone" in person, establish contacts across teams, and often find that we can help each other much faster than we would have expected.
For us, the annual meeting is not an obligation, but an investment in people – and thus in the quality of the work we deliver to our clients every day.
