Ahoy from Hamburg!

That's why we - the entire Culture Companions group - travelled to Hamburg. Two days to network even more closely, get to know each other better and ultimately get even more out of our shared network.

So there could hardly have been a better idea than to reserve the first afternoon and evening for team building. Three hours, a barge and around 20 highly motivated Culture Companions - a wonderful mix. By the way, always on board: social media support, a photographer and our videographer from the in-house film studio - so there was plenty of good material for further utilisation.

In addition to plenty of food and drink, some of us were also able to discover completely new talents - maybe I'll change my job to captain after all?

However, my personal highlight of the first day was definitely the exchange of ideas. I was able to hear so many great and inspiring stories and a lot of great ideas for new formats and postings emerged.

The second day began with a keynote speech by Martin Drust, Head of Marketing at FC St. Pauli. In addition to many very interesting aspects of his work and FC St. Pauli itself, one message in particular stuck with me: FC St. Pauli has the courage to be different in a highly commercialised system like professional football and to remain true to its values.

An exciting approach - especially in conjunction with our Culture Companions programme. We also want to convey that a large German company like the HDI Group has the courage to follow its own values and think about everyday (working) life differently than one would initially assume from the outside.

It was precisely this topic that we dedicated the rest of the day to. In smaller groups, we collected ideas and discussed what makes a good employer, what HDI can specifically improve and how we see our role in this context. Dogs at work? More structured onboarding? Every idea had its place.

We rounded off the day with a review of the past year, our joint successes as a group and how the programme for the following year can be designed even better. A worthy conclusion to a wonderful offsite.

Hamburg was the highlight of a long journey together. This year marks the end of our training as corporate influencers, but our passion for actively shaping the culture and communicating it to the outside world is by no means over. I'm already looking forward to passing on our experiences to the next cohort and to our next get-together in a large group.

And that leaves only one thing left to say: Thank you! Thank you for the great opportunity for all of us to be part of this fantastic project. Thank you to the whole group for the wonderful hours together and the ever new ideas. And thanks, of course, to the team who put together such a programme - and made such a great offsite possible.

Take care - see you soon!