The Ohlthaver & List Group turned to rental company dB Audio Namibia to breathe new life into the company’s annual employee engagement roadshow, with state-of-the-art fixtures from Elation Professional lighting the way to a successful series of events for more than 6000 employees across Namibia.

The Ohlthaver & List Group (O&L) is Namibia’s largest privately held group of companies, with revenues contributing roughly 5% to the country’s GDP. The group has business interests in food production, fishing, beverages, farming, retail trade, information technology, property leasing and development, renewable power generation, marine engineering, steel retailing, advertising and the leisure and hospitality industry.

Bringing people together

O&L group manager for employee engagement, Sonja Thieme explains that the annual Mwenyopaleka Employee Engagement Roadshow is part of a strategic employee engagement initiative that started in 2004, with the purpose of creating pride and passion amongst all O&L employees, while mobilising employees to actively and consistently internalise the Group’s purpose, values and vision. She adds: “Mwenyopaleka is an Oshiwambo word meaning ‘revitalisation’, but it can also be used as a synonym for ‘rebirth’. Over the past few years, the Mwenyopaleka Road Show Programme has allowed the O&L Group to promote and communicate these objectives to employees.”

Over the past 14 years, the O&L Group has been connecting with their almost 6000 employees across Namibia through the Mwenyopaleka Employee Engagement Roadshow. The programme combines content facilitation and industrial theatre with competitions and music. Employees from across the company’s 12 operating companies take part for a perfect blend of infotainment and team building.

The first Mwenyopaleka Roadshow of 2018 took place on 10 April, in Walvis Bay with the final event held on 23 June in Mariental. The roadshow ran a total of 17 times in 7 different towns with a combined team of 24 personnel travelling more than 4000km over the course of the programme.

Delivering a great experience

Rental company dB Audio, a leader in the technical events industry in Namibia, has been involved in the Mwenyopaleka Employee Engagement Roadshow for a number of years. This year, the rental company took responsibility for the technical translation and realisation of the roadshow concept and event content.

Lighting design for the roadshow was provided by Geraldo Papo and supported by Gillroy Barmann. The designers elected to include Elation Professional fixtures as a centrepiece of the set, to give the show a more modern, futuristic look and feel. “The designers turned to the high-output narrow-beam LED effect light to create the look that the client wanted to achieve. The ACL 360 Bars were spaced close together. Being a bar, Geraldo could create different shapes and cutting-edge beam effects on stage. The positioning of the fixtures in different configurations kept the stage dynamic for different scenes,” explains Ernst Steynberg, corporate communication manager at dB Audio Namibia

On the market for three years now, the colour-changing RGBW batten with continuous rotation has proven itself a diverse fixture that looks great as a blade effect, eye candy effect or even as a single LED pinspot, and can add an element of dynamism to any show. “The addition of Elation Professional ACL 360 Bars provided the set with the futurist look that was included in the brief by the event producer, who specifically requested a linear beam effect,” David Benade, founder and managing member of dB Audio, explains. “The aim was to create a futuristic and modern look and feel for the event,” he concludes.

After 14 years, the 2018 iteration will be the last time that O&L will be using the edutainment format to keep their employees connected to the O&L purpose. “dB Audio Namibia has been privileged to share most of this journey with O&L, and we excitedly look forward to what the future holds in store,” Steynberg concludes.