THE MOTO OF THE MONGOOSE FAMILY IS "RUN AND FIND OUT"

At Mongoose, as with many businesses across the UK, we have been looking to implement the best working from home practises and find the appropriate ways to support the ‘Geese be it in the UK, Ireland or Singapore. This week is ‘Learning at Work Week’.  As we all know, work in the office can be often be all consuming with a lot of time pressures and a lot of balls to juggle. Unfortunately, this sometimes means we can forget the fun of learning something new. But now we’re all working from home, the lack of commute has given many of us a couple of precious hours back each day and the time to pick up a new skill.

At Mongoose, one of our key values is about being impactful. It goes without saying we want to make an impact for our Clients and in the industry, but it’s also about making an impact on our careers, through sharing, learning and developing alongside each other wherever that may be.

In that spirit we have implemented some key training initiatives. Whilst in the office, we often have group training sessions led by someone who’s proved themselves to be an expert.  There is also on the job training, and we each have a mentor to share their personal experience and advice. And, as Clients grow and change, there is the opportunity to develop additional skill sets through dedicated external training courses or through our parent company, MISSION, who provide cross Agency training programmes covering areas such as finance, sales techniques or account management. This has added value to not only increase Group expertise but facilitate multi-agency information sharing and creativity.

During lockdown, as with many things, we’ve had to turn our processes digital. Luckily as part of the MISSION we have access to a valuable online training platform. This gives us the opportunity to participate in over 850 courses with a variety of topics and levels from everyday Excel and Powerpoint training to more advanced management skills and digital strategy. The team have free rein of the platform, line managers are responsible for recommending courses to their team. So when staff are looking at career development, they are being given guidance in developing key areas alongside their objectives tailored to future career and client opportunities. It’s about making sure each team member is engaged in their development and learning because it’s bespoke to them. This has formed the basis for other training initiatives, and we’ve been able to do our Group training sessions over Zoom with a simple screen share.

Whilst working from home and being in lockdown has brought about many challenges it has also created some opportunities. And, it’s not just about growing your digital expertise or perfecting your sales technique, it could be about tackling that recipe you’ve never tried or finally learning a language, getting out in the garden or just getting creative again.