I’ve been a dedicated member of the Arakan Martial Art family for years now, practising on the Gold Coast. I’m also the managing director of Palm Lake Group – my family has been developing over-50s residential resorts across the east coast of Australia for more than 40 years. We have 35 communities in 25 locations with about 11,000 people calling a Palm Lake Group address their home.
I know that people are my company’s most important asset and with such a large organisation and staff in dozens of offices in three different states, I actively encourage team-building opportunities across my workforce. When considering team-building options for our head office staff at Southport, combining my love of Arakan with my business seemed the obvious choice.
After an initial visit and demonstration from the Arakan trainers (where the staff had no idea what they were getting themselves in to, even while they were signing the waivers!), I signed up our business for 10 one-hour weekly sessions. My staff loved them – so much so that we are midway through our next 10 sessions. Each week, our Arakan training sessions are enjoyed by everyone from the CEO and other senior managers, to our accounts ladies, to the planning and development team, and all other types of admin staff.
There’s a lot of role-playing and team-building elements to the Arakan training sessions but the best part is that it brings everyone together on the same level and it’s giving them confidence, awareness and practical self-defence strategies that they can use in real-life situations. I know that they also secretly love the opportunity to give their bosses a punch each week! What I’m also seeing on the back of our Arakan training sessions is less staff sick days.
On the whole, Arakan training is bringing many positives to my company and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my personal passion for martial arts with my staff, in a mutually beneficial and fun way.
Scott Elliott, Palm Lake Group