Round-up from our brilliant Learning at Work Week
What a fantastic week we had last month at Artemis Marketing. We fully embraced the national Learning at Work Week event, thanks to some key staff on our team who put on a range of learning opportunities and facilitated some great pop-up learning sessions to enable staff to learn something new from each other.
The week kicked off with a team breakfast and a talk about the past presence and future of Artemis from our MD, Mike Knivett in line with this year’s event theme ‘Shaping the Future’. A team meeting was followed by a fascinating and insightful look at the future of SEO by our incredibly knowledgeable Technical Director, Justin Aldridge.
From Tuesday to Friday we started our learning drive with healthy breakfast smoothies while we picked up inspiration from a selection of TED talks. Smoothies were yummy, the talks interesting, and it created a real buzz at the beginning of each day. This learning lark is a lot of fun!
On Tuesday we were zinged into action with Maxine’s awesome Turmeric and ginger shots. Julia’s smoothies for the rest of the week included a beetroot, strawberry and mint concoction (mm mmm), an avocado, pear and ginger thickie (an Artemis favourite) and last but by no means least, a chocolate and blueberry smoothie with a healthy helping of cinnamon and nutmeg (delicious). It took a team of early-rising smoothie makers in our kitchen to get these freshly made each day (well done smoothie team – you were awesome).
Our Ted talk selection included How to be Team Human in the digital future by Douglas Rushkoff
Some rather worrying insights from Pablos Holman “Top Hacker shows us how it’s done”
A brilliant reminder to us all on the power of appreciation by Mike Robbins
And finally, an inspirational snippet on how to make small and sustainable changes in your life by Mike Cutts with his talk, Try something new for 30 days
On Tuesday lunch-time Jack, one of our brilliant Senior SEO managers, shared his medical knowledge (he’s also a volunteer Community First Responder for the South East Coast Ambulance Service), by putting on a Defibrillator training session.
Our Wednesday lunch-time learning session was run by our card-playing expert Ciso on Poker, the basics. We played with real chips, but no money was exchanged (thankfully as I wasn’t very good!).
With a real buzz building throughout the week, our Rewards and Recognition team (part of our new Pride and Belonging initiative) were tasked with recognising everyone in the company.
Staff completed questionnaires earlier in the week to record how colleagues had helped them overcome a difficulty, grow in their role or learn something new. Anonymous comments were read out and each team member received a lucky dip prize. It was a fantastic session which had everyone smiling and feeling fully appreciated, with hilarious prizes and lots of clapping.
Throughout the week staff made Learning at Work Week origami butterflies to record a personal and a work learning aspiration. The Butterflies are pinned on our notice board and will be shared this week. They will also be recorded in each employees’ HR file for action later.
We finished the week with the usual Artemis enthusiasm for trying something new by changing up the menu at our end of week team lunch, offering a wide selection of vegan, gluten-free and diary-free options to honour inclusivity.
What a great week! A big thank you to all of those who helped make it happen! It has been great to mark the importance of continual learning at work.
