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Ranch Round-Up
GCR is always thinking of ways to enhance our customers’ experience. We are pleased to tell you that beginning next month, GCR Retreat Essentials will be available. Retreat Essentials include in-room hospitality packages that will surprise and warm the hearts of your staff. Meeting Helper Kits can help to make your meetings high energy and productive. Send your staff’s spirits soaring upon arrival with the tasty Lone Star Cowboy Hat, stuffed with all sorts of ranch goodies. And, make sure your meetings run smoothly with the Ice & Boredom Breaker Buckets filled with 15 original and engaging exercises to enhance group synergy. Find out more about all the Retreat Essentials on our web site.
Bragging Rights - Dallas Morning News' Cheryl Hall features GCR
Millennials learn ropes of cooperation
For 20 years, employers and employees have traipsed out to Garrett Creek Ranch in Wise County to mix, mingle and learn from each other. Two decades of urban encroachment haven't invaded the ranch's 460 acres of pristine, rolling hills in the rural town of Paradise, Texas. Corporate "residents" learn to play nice with each other while sitting on porch rockers or hanging from highline wires on a rope course. Everyone calls it training. But it's really intergenerational group therapy. And with three very different age brackets converging in the workplace these days, such communal bonding has never been needed more.
To read more of the article please click here.
Striving Toward Sustainability
Jaynie Schultz, GCR President
Garrett Creek Ranch Conference Center has made great strides in our sustainability initiative. As an important first step we have defined what sustainability means to us. Rather than limit the definition to "greening,” we decided that true sustainability is about much more. Garrett Creek Ranch will be sustainable if the great grandchildren of our employees, guests, neighbors and owners still feel as if they are stakeholders in the future of this Ranch. This means we must not only partner with the land to support us, but we must also expand our partnership to include the people that bring us together. Toward this, we have carefully reexamined our personnel policies and have initiated an effort to include more employees in policy decisions. We are also reaching out to our guests for more input in programming, facilities and design. And, we are looking for ways to reach out to
our neighbors in Wise County as well as bring them over to our place for visits. We are looking for new ways to expand the original vision of GCR and we hope that you will all be a part of it!
Thank you to everyone who responded about using water bottles in meeting rooms. We are grateful for your feedback and want to hear more. Please, continue to let me know what you think about our efforts. jaynie@garrettcreekranch.com
GCR Staff Spotlight
GCR’s Ranch Hand Fredy Valdez has his dream job. “I was born and raised on a ranch. Working with ranch animals and raising crops is what I know best and what I love to do,” exclaims Fredy. Originally from Atlamirano Guerrero, a small town not far from Mexico City, Fredy came to the U.S. not knowing what to expect. “My parents and my ten brothers and sisters are all still in Altamirano working and living on our family’s ranch. I took a chance and decided I may find better opportunity in America.” Over 25 years ago Fredy followed some friends to Houston initially taking any kind of work he could find. His plan was to find steady employment and then send for his wife who was still in Mexico. Eventually, Fredy and his friends followed the employment stream to Dallas and as luck would have it, Fredy met the Schultzs. To Fredy’s delight, the Schultzs
were looking for a GCR ranch hand. “I could not believe it,” Fredy exclaims. “When I saw this beautiful Ranch I felt so lucky. I was going to be able to do what I love. I knew right away it was the perfect place to raise my family.” Fredy and his wife Brigida, who also works at GCR in housekeeping, settled about a mile away and have raised their five children in Paradise. GCR has been just as lucky to find Fredy. "Fredy is one of the hardest workers I've ever seen and is always willing to help others out. He knows a lot about many things and is one of the primary reasons for the success the Ranch has experienced over the last twenty years. He loves the Ranch and you can see it in his work," says Lon Yaeger, GCR General Manager.
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