ORS teams pushing each other in Paris2Nice 800k

ORS employees are enjoying the fun of challenging one another to make the 800k in May target for the Mullingar Lions Club Paris2Nice fundraiser.

A building consultancy with nine different teams and their head office in Mullingar, ORS is As a certified ‘great place to work’, and that is part of how they came to be involved in the challenge.

Head of Marketing and Employee Experience, Rachel Murray, said a cultural development team at ORS put forward wellbeing initiatives for employees to take part in.

"We are the highest placed construction company in ‘best place to work’," said Rachel, "and within that, we have a cultural development team who bring all the initiatives," she said.

The team meets every two weeks and they decided to take part in the Mullingar Lions Club’s Paris2Nice challenge as part of their wellbeing week. It involves getting active to rack up 800km throughout the month of May.

"We though the Paris2Nice challenge was perfect to tie in with our wellbeing initiatives for workplace wellbeing week. Obviously, it’s a local charity where we have our head office, so it was the perfect fit," she said.

Rachel said there was no pressure put on people to reach the 800km and it was more aimed at getting active and team-bonding.

"It’s a great initiative and everyone’s getting involved because with Covid, we can’t do things together like we usually would," she said.

But there is still some friendly competition, and the teams are enjoying having a common activity again.

"We do have great engagement with all of our staff and people do get on board with things."

"Obviously, there’s healthy competition between everybody. We have nine different teams and we’re definitely competitive in that sense. It’s a great talking point at team meetings. We are all encouraging each other to get our kilometres up."

The teams have been tracking progress on Nike’s tracker app which has a leader board so everyone can see their progress and support each other.

ORS are celebrating 30 years in business this year and currently have 58 employees, and Rachel has said they are growing significantly.

As a ‘great place to work’, Rachel has said it is important, with Covid, that they continue to engage employees and keep initiatives like this going for the teams.

"It’s great that the cultural development team with ‘great places to work’ really try and do as many engaging challenges as possible.

"It can be hard obviously because, with Covid, we’re missing that whole connection piece, so we try and do as many things as possible online and offline to keep to keep that going," she said.