Occasionally, children come to the office, spending an hour or two with their coloring book while mom or dad finishes work. Every working parent surely tells their child something about their work, but if you ask my daughter, she will tell you that her mother taps away at the computer, goes to the store and makes coffee. One would imagine that geologists’ children know their parents spend all day studying rocks. We wanted to raise our children’s understanding of what we actually do at the office, which is why we hosted a Bring Your Child to Work Day for the first time.

The children came to the office around noon – a nine to five schedule might have been a bit too much for them. A total of twelve children participated, which means that almost all our employees’ children were there! So far, the children have walked around the office quite freely, but we wanted to make the day a bit more official. Tero from our environment and safety team started the day with a short safety training. The same safety training is given to everybody entering our premises for the first time. We go over the nearest exits, the meeting point and how to act in a possible emergency. In addition, our Managing Director, Jukka, gave a short welcome speech to the whole crowd.

First, we took a tour around the office and asked our employees to tell what they do. The children thought that the geologists’ 3D models on computer screens looked a bit funny – like you had been sticking long needles here and there! We admired different rocks and had a look at small drill rigs, the kinds that are small enough to be placed on a table.

After the office tour, we watched a short video about us and the work we do. The video tells the story of a rock – from the initial drilling plan to routing and drilling, all the way to storing the rocks as well as further actions. After watching the video (which was a bit too long, apparently), we moved to the warehouse, where we were welcomed by the warehouse supervisor, Risto, and the technician, Pete. A specific safety training always takes place when entering the rock processing hall. Exceptionally, this time one could enter the hall without wearing protection shoes, as the actual work of the day had already been done. The hall with its stone cutters and water purification system was interesting, raising questions about home sewage systems and water systems.

Then, we got around to examining rocks. Our geologist, Henri, had prepared various exercises related to rocks. The floating rock was the younger participants’ favorite – how exciting to see one rock sink to the bottom as usual, but the other one staying afloat! The bigger kids were interested in microscopical work – a rock looks very different through a microscope!

All these activities made everyone hungry, and we ended the day with a snack. We have a monthly afternoon snack together with the personnel, but there has never been as much hustle and bustle!

My daughter is a third-grader and she has studied English since the first grade. At home on Sunday night she said: “I think I will be brave enough to speak English in English class if a grown-up had the courage to speak Finnish to us even if it wasn’t perfect”. Many lessons were learned that day, not only about rocks.

They day was nice, rewarding and educational – I think it will become a yearly tradition!