This time in our "in the spotlight": colleague Ilona Norbart. Within Districon, Ilona deals with all day-to-day organizational and support matters and maintains close contact between Districon's three offices. Here you can read all about her experiences.
Who are you?
I am Ilona Norbart and I am the Office Assistant at Districon for more than 3 years. Before I started to work at Districon, I mainly worked in the tourism branch, here I fulfilled positions varying from air hostess to RV rental specialist. The need to change jobs and industries was mainly caused because I kept looking for more and new challenges during my professional career
My experiences
My work varies from day to day. Daily, I provide administrative support to our consultants, including booking business travel tickets, converting resumes to our corporate identity, and adding the finishing touch to presentations and quotations we send to our customers.
Recently, Ronald, our senior consultant, gave me a very nice compliment. He asked me to double check a quotation which had to be ready within one hour (deadline). I immediately prioritized his request and checked the grammar, layout, and adjusted everything into Districon style. Just two days later, Ronald stopped by my office, thanked me for my help and said the quotation was accepted! In my opinion that was very sweet but unnecessary as I was just doing my job. Then Ronald said that my role is as important as the role of whomever is presenting it to the client: “together we created a coherent story, you finalized the document where I left off, you checked the spelling, the numbers etc. and this resulted into getting the order. So yeah, this is great teamwork”. And that comment made me realize, that we all do it together, no matter how big or small your role is within the process. It is proper teamwork within Districon.
Our annual seminar is usually a big event. A couple of consecutive years we organized this event at Nyenrode in Breukelen. However, due to renovations at Nyenrode, we were forced to look at different locations during the organization of the seminar in 2019. Together with my colleague Gerjanne, we searched the province of Utrecht for the perfect location. We visited four different locations and unanimously decided that de Observant in Amersfoort was the best suitable location for us. It is a beautiful building, with multiple rooms that could be used by our speakers to meet the attendees in smaller groups after the plenary part. What I liked about this experience, is that I not only offered support from behind the scenes, but I really felt I was part of the team: looking for the right location/venue, keeping close contact with the event managers, inviting the relations, offering environmentally conscious travel advice, and of course enjoying the seminar on the day itself.
Another great project I organized in 2019 was our personnel weekend. A staff outing is organized every 2/3 years for all Districon employees and their partners. And so, in that year nearly 100 Districonners went to Vlieland for the weekend in October. Months of secret preparation was planned because only 2 weeks before departure I told everyone what our destination was. Until that time, everything was planned in secrecy with a hint here and there. I had a lot of fun sending out hints to my colleagues, because the strangest destinations were guessed. Together with event agency Bureau Vlieland, we made it a fun and active weekend for everyone. In June 2019, I was invited by Bas and Erwin, the founders of Bureau Vlieland, to come up to the Isle and check out the accommodation, the private crossover boat, the bikes, the restaurants and I was able to try out the variety of activities firsthand. It was awesome! Bas and Erwin also came to our office a couple of times to finetune the final details into making this weekend an enormous success. And a success it was! Districon took over the Island. After a cross over in our own private boat, we arrived at the harbor to pick-up our bikes that were ready for us to use throughout the whole weekend. During our stay, we enjoyed the following activities: blocarting, power kiting, rib ferning, beachcombing and along with a mobile DJ, we rode on the Vliehors Express. To top it off with a festive night, we went tired but happy homebound on the Sunday. From early March until mid-October I was busy planning this event, next to my other work. It was one of my most memorable experiences.
Vision for the future
Organizing events is really something I enjoy doing, unfortunately there was almost nothing to organize in 2020. I hope that 2021 offers more possibilities to organize events, small or large. Fortunately, we also see companies around us that are contributing to the new way of organizing: live events via Teams or Zoom, hire film studios or share work experiences via podcasts. We’ve also started broadcasting. Curious? Click here to listen to our podcasts. We eagerly await what the future will bring. One thing is sure, here at Districon we do not sit still and are constantly thinking ahead. I will continue to give administrative and mental support to our colleagues. I notice, how small of large the message or present is, all colleagues at Districon truly appreciate it in these strange times.
Which colleague will be in the spotlight next?
I recognize my passion for adventure and travel within my colleague Tanya Bulavskaya, one of our Solutions employees. A good reason to give the floor to Tanya to be in the spotlight next.