KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

A ‘sow­ing and reap­ing’ chal­lenge is be­ing put out to cor­po­rate T&T.

It comes from Laugh­lin and De Gannes, which re­cent­ly held its Go Green cam­paign.

Staff mem­bers of the com­pa­ny’s San Fer­nan­do, Cou­va, and Port-of- Spain branch­es where chal­lenged to sow and reap veg­e­ta­tion us­ing on­ly wood­en palettes.

“All the nurs­eries and soil were pro­vid­ed by Laugh­lin and de Gannes,” said man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Greig Laugh­lin.

He added, “We want­ed the staff to be cre­ative with their ex­e­cu­tions. All three lo­ca­tions were re­quired to use re­cy­cled pal­lets and come up with an in­no­v­a­tive de­sign to grow short-term crops, such as let­tuce, patchoi, chive, cu­cum­bers and pi­men­tos. The ac­tiv­i­ty en­cour­aged greater staff en­gage­ment and it was geared to­wards a team build­ing ef­fort.”

The idea for the in-house com­pe­ti­tion was con­ceived in Jan­u­ary 2023 and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Land and Fish­eries was con­tact­ed to pro­vide guid­ance to all teams dur­ing this project.

All teams start­ed plant­i­ng in April and the com­pe­ti­tion end­ed on June 6.

The teams even adopt­ed names high­light­ing the flo­ra and fau­na of T&T—Port-of-Spain “Team Marigold”, San Fer­nan­do Team “D Green Igua­nas” and Cou­va Team “Roots and Shoots”.

Ac­cord­ing to Laugh­lin, even though “Team Roots and Shoots” won the com­pe­ti­tion the true win­ner is “Team LDG”.

He said, “In or­der to be­come a good leader you need to help peo­ple to grow,” he said.

“If you don’t reap as you want to then there is some­thing wrong with what you have sown. Com­pe­ti­tion is a nat­ur­al way to get the most out of your em­ploy­ees. You pro­vide mo­ti­va­tion and in turn in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“Staff al­so felt val­ued to be able to con­tribute their ideas and cre­ativ­i­ty in mak­ing this project a suc­cess. They were chal­lenged to stay on top of their game and all teams felt a sense of ful­fil­ment by see­ing their crops flour­ish­ing healthy.”

The pro­duce will be dis­trib­uted to staff and this will be an on­go­ing project.

Laugh­lin and De Gannes sup­plies tools, equip­ment and au­to­mo­tive parts and prod­ucts to the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try of T&T.