Lunch and learn at Unboxed

Learning by doing is one of our core values at Unboxed. Our lunch and learn sessions are all about knowledge sharing and relationship building.

We encourage people to try new things, ask challenging questions and be curious. It’s not always easy to do. We don’t want to get things wrong. And we want to deliver good results for our clients. But learning by doing, for us, means giving something a go knowing you have the support of your team. Being curious means taking a risk sometimes.

Learning is fundamental to both our personal and professional growth. As an agency, we work on a wide variety of projects. Our teams can be working on local planning, patient experience or electric car charging.

To complement and build on all that expertise, we started our lunch and learn sessions. We know Unboxeders have lots of skills and knowledge to share. So we thought it would be a good opportunity to create a dedicated time and space to learn together. It also gives the wider company the chance to get together - particularly important for those who aren’t team based.

So far we’ve delved into how the bid process works at Unboxed, how to write in plain English and what a developer does, and what they mean when they say certain things. A crash course for some of us in the basics of coding.

The benefits of our lunch and learn sessions are three fold:

1. We all get to learn new and cool things, sharing our breadth of knowledge. With designers, developers, delivery managers, ops and sales, we are a multidisciplinary company, which means there is lots of experience to share. It’s not only from a professional point of view, but a personal one too. Our wellbeing at work is important to us. So sharing any tools or knowledge around what de-stresses us or makes us happy is very welcomed.
2. We get dedicated time to nurture and build our relationships. If we understand what a colleague knows, or what helps them, it helps us all to support each other. Positive relationships are a hallmark of a great organisational culture, one which puts kindness at the heart of its values. For new joiners it’s a great opportunity to get to know new colleagues and see what skills they have to share. And it works hybrid too.
3. And last but by no means least, we get to share lunch together. I have written about the value of eating together at work before. The intimacy of food sharing deepens social ties. When a lovely tray of food arrives, it makes us feel cared for and happy. Post Covid and remote working, it is a joy to be able to share food and a laugh with friends.