How F&G Connects with Team Members Downtown

Vibrancy, ease and connection. That’s what Downtown Des Moines (DSM) offers to all who work, live and visit the area — and F&G team members are no exception. However, going about business as usual can make it difficult to set aside time to connect in the same way you would at a social event.

Knowing that we’re flexible in where and how our team members work, we wanted to provide a built-in way for our people to connect with each other and enjoy Downtown DSM. We saw an opportunity to build a “Connection Week” around our quarterly town hall meetings as a touch point for team members to visit our corporate headquarters in Downtown DSM.

What is “Connection Week?"

A key component to a supportive and engaging culture is your relationships with your coworkers. Our people have made F&G not just a place to work, but a place of connection and inclusion. Connection Week has supplemented that by creating a space for people to come to Des Moines from all over the country to connect and continue building our culture.

Connection Week is a time when many of our team members choose to come into the office for our town hall meeting, a networking event and an all-employee social event. These events take place over the course of a couple of days each quarter. This helps our team members have time for their work as well as time to build connections and experience all that Downtown DSM has to offer.

When you walk into each Connection Week event, you can feel the energy between people who are meeting for the first time in person — though they may have seen each other on the screen for months or even years at that point. This week has provided a platform where team members can learn about each other as people outside of work.

Building relationships and embracing our values is core to our culture. Connection Week helps us do that by giving our team members a meaningful opportunity to come together, and the excitement of being downtown enhances it even more. — Renee Hamlen, SVP, Chief Human Capital & Brand Officer

Bringing the F&G Energy to Downtown DSM

Having our headquarters in 801 Grand makes it easy to provide a centralized space where team members can walk to the variety of options for lunch, as well as team dinners and gatherings after work. Plus, our people appreciate the skywalk that keeps those options accessible through any kind of weather.

We’ve heard team members from across the country say, “Wow! It’s actually really great here!”

We get the big city experience in a small city setting, and it’s cool watching our teams embrace this benefit. Plus, as the dining scene has grown downtown, it has proven to be an added benefit for our own growing team.

Each Connection Week that we host includes an all-employee social event at a venue downtown, like The River Center and the Science Center of Iowa. There are many other great places to choose from, and we look forward to finding more hot spots downtown!

From all-employee events to department happy hours and retirement parties, we’ve seen our team members gathering all around downtown. As we continue to grow as a company, we’re grateful that Downtown DSM is our headquarters and offers a vibrant community and downtown area for our team members to enjoy.

Read more about F&G from SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Renee Hamlen.

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