I’m Jason. I’ve been at Synima for nearly four years and it’s been quite the journey to where I am today! Joining Synima was one of the best decisions I ever made, though I didn’t know it at the time. You’ll be aware as I am how companies love to advertise their people-friendly credentials, but in Synima I found a company that supported people every step of the way.
This environment incubates positive growth in every field of development. Thinking about the 2018 me, I would never have envisaged that today I would be calling myself the Head of Learning (or indeed head of anything). I came on as a Producer and quickly brought to the table my knowledge of learning having worked in that world for four years prior.
Synima had been doing learning for a long time, though had never treated it as a separate beast to marketing or commercials. I saw the opportunity and stepped up to pioneer learning. Building on the strong basis we already had along with our award-winning experience in media production, I brought in clients focused only on learning. To this day, I remain extremely proud of the transformative learning projects I produced in my first year at Synima.
I had come from a corporate background where micromanagement stifled creativity. Suddenly, in an environment where I could stretch my wings and run with what I wanted to do, I was able to get the whole company tuned in to learning. The company supported me and promoted me to be a Senior Producer, not losing focus on our strengths in video and animation. In most companies, you’ll speak to a project manager or business lead – not directly to the producers or team directly working on your project. I loved that Synima did things differently – the client knew me, and in doing so, knew everything about the project; who was working on it and when to expect deliveries. There were no middlemen.
This was critical during those dark days of lockdown when we were all communicating remotely. The last thing production needed was extra calls to pass information from one party to another and to another. Clients could drop me a voice note on their lockdown walk and I’d have their amend back to them by the time they arrived home. Getting used to these new ways of working was certainly a gear change, but the catalyst of the pandemic resulted in a much more efficient way of working in the long term.
The working relationships that I built up with clients during this difficult time were invaluable. They were built on true trust, care and yes, friendship. We got the work done and we looked out for each other while doing so. The pandemic, as difficult as it was, humanised so many of us in the corporate world in a way we had never been allowed to be before.
I lost my housemate, 29, to Covid during the first lockdown and Synima gave me as much fully paid time off as I needed. Far from being unproductive, I took that time and came back with a new impetus to highlight the value of people. That energy led to us to make a series of wellbeing animations, available freely on our website to use, to support anybody or organisation that needs material to support its people during difficult times.
It’s this path of twists and turns that has led me to be Synima’s Head of Learning. While the path was not always smooth, Synima supported me throughout. I felt confident in the space that I could do what I needed to do and say what I needed to say. With the full support of the company, I’m now proud to say that I head up our fantastic learning offer – and I know that from our unique foundation, we’ve got a really exciting future in creating learning that I hope you’ll be a part of with us.
Jason Lowe
If you are looking for high quality e-learning packages or want to learn more about creating a connected workplace, feel free to contact us at hello@shootyou.co.uk.
