Bringing People Together with Food
The tech industry is diverse. At Propeller, we have people from a multitude of countries, speaking a multitude of different languages, who bring unique perspectives, backgrounds, and stories.
Employing people from all over the world, comes with the challenge of finding common ground and team connections.
What I’ve experienced first hand is that Propeller is its people. And when it comes to bringing people and cultures together, nothing works better than sharing food. Food that is cooked by the engineers, the sales reps, and leadership…Food that tells their story.
It started with bringing in leftover eggplant parmigiana during my first week at Propeller. Growing up, the kitchen was my family’s watering hole, and I knew the potential power of food. I wanted to meet the team in person, but the global pandemic meant people were working from home. The parmigiana worked! It got people into the office and brought us together.
From there, Friday lunches became one of the best parts of the week, and they remain so. They are an opportunity to stop and check in with the people we work with, without an agenda or action items. And if it’s tricky to engage in that conversation, food acts as an icebreaker — people get excited about what they are eating (or how spicy the chilli oil is) and from there, they get excited about their weekend plans or their next holiday. The result is we learn more about the whole person.
Our Friday lunches then evolved with people coming to me and asking to volunteer to cook something from their cultural background. We have celebrated Chinese New Year with Tim preparing Hot Pot in the office and Iranian New Year (Nowruz) with Mahsa and Shadi. We have had Lebanese and Brazilian BBQs, gnocchi making and focaccia bake-offs.
We have travelled the world within the four walls of our Surry Hills office, and I think this has been particularly important during the pandemic. Food has brought our people’s homes to Sydney.
Food helps us celebrate our diversity and allows us to engage in conversations about each other’s backgrounds with curiosity and openness. No one is forced to speak or put on a soapbox, but everyone is encouraged to engage and listen.
Food isn’t just what we eat to satisfy our hunger, food is where we meet.
