to happiness and beyond... my first month reflection

By Lee Friday 4th February 2022

Thanks for stopping by here! Well, here I am a whole month into my official start with The Happy Learning Company and what a whirlwind rip-roaring- rollercoaster ride it has been. Just for the record, a coaster I would happily stay on all day and keep going and going and going.

I joined Team Happy after spending near on two years working overseas in South East Asia, so it was my first time working back with colleagues in UK. I recently worked for a large visitor attractions and entertainment resort, working on building an incredible theme park. That was on top of a mountain, 6000 feet above sea level in the Malaysian jungle... So yep, a completely different work environment for me! Here's me in the beautiful city of Kuala Lumpur (KL). When travel restrictions allowed I used to love getting down to KL and soaking up those views.

Readjusting to British life and Britishisms has been fun and enjoyable. But that doesn’t matter too much, because we work with clients all over the globe - so it works quite well, if I do say so.

The team at the Happy Learning company gave me the most special welcome, a cute box of balloons arrived in my first few days, bursting out with happiness. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that’s an awesome way to engage new recruits. It’s those little touches that make all the difference to an onboarding journey, surprising, exciting and engaging new people as they join your business. That’s what we are all about, create a spark and watch it burn bright into total happiness!

So let’s go back to the beginning, week one was definitely an adjustment week. We are mid project with our fab new client Pos Malaysia, based (you guessed it) in Malaysia. So, I had to move quickly to align working practices and procedures to the proven formula on ‘how it’s done’. I’ll be completely honest, it was a busy (tough) first week, but that’s okay. Jumping in at the deep end is what I love. It’s the best way to immerse yourself in a new world, so suited me just fine and I do love the quote....

"The expert in anything... was once a beginner!" - someone clever

Fortunately, my co-workers are awesome! Each one of them is super passionate about happiness, learning and engagement. What more could you want?!

My next phase of onboarding was again right into the nitty-gritty developing some detailed learning design for our upcoming project. What a great experience it is to see learning from a thought, concept, idea and a need, right through to designing a tailored experience that ticks all the boxes and does what it says on the tin. I love it!

After tonnes of learning design, client and internal meetings, I got the chance to put my creative hat on. In the next phase of our detailed design, we looked at all of the assets and creative materials used during our learning experience and began the process of designing those. That pretty much starts with the learning, turns into an idea, becomes a creative brief and then transfers to our super talented design team who bring the magic to life.You then have the most satisfying experience seeing something you’ve imagined get created. That’s job satisfaction.

My next few weeks will involve heaps of reviews of all of the creatives as we move to a key milestone in our project and run our pilot with the client in just over a month. A project that will be a hugely immersive culture transformation and engagement programme designed to excite and inspire colleagues around their business. Sounds awesome right?

I also had the pleasure of getting creative in a few other ways… one which is a little long-unleashed passion of mine - MOVIES! That’s right, our learning experience incorporates a whole mixed bag of multimedia elements including emotional, uplifting, engaging and out of this world films that home in on key learnings. We had to align our films to our learning, then build a brief from this. The next stages involve turning that film from the page into the (silver) screen. And that’s where we are at right now! I can't wait to see the magic happen as films come to life from our super talented production team.

I’m so excited for the next few weeks, as we start to see the films built, our creative ideas come to life, and we turn that all into the incredible learning and engagement experience we set out to build from day one.

It’s so true when I say this really isn’t a job, this is a passion. I think I’ve found my work soul mates, but I better not scare them off too soon!

"If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life" - Marc Anthony

Here’s to making more incredible learning and engagement experiences in the future and watching people’s happiness thrive.

Side note, if you’re interested in what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks and want to get a slice of the action - then we’d love to hear from you! Team Happy are expanding so the time is now to get involved and become your very best:

Get in touch for a chat about your challenges and goals - book a call today and kick start your journey to happiness at work - gethappy@thehappylearningco.uk
Check out our shop for inspiring tools such as the Creating and Leading with Happiness Challenges - www.thehappylearningco.uk/shop
Explore our new F.I.T. series for ways to help create happiness by unlocking you and your colleagues full potential in key topics such as facilitation, leadership and storytelling, discover more www.thehappylearningco.uk/events