“The partnership with Feel Good has been recognised as one of the most effective colleague touch points during the Covid period.”

WPP offered a wide range of learning opportunities to their people, but engagement was low, and morale was declining due to the impact of lockdown. Having collaborated with WPP for over two years, we were approached with the challenge of addressing both issues, and introducing an innovative solution for collaborative-first live learning.

This is the story of how we launched our cutting-edge immersive virtual workshop experience, inspired by theatre and brought to life by War Horse Director Katie Henry – a move that resulted in our series being their most well-attended WPP learning programme to date.

WPP is the largest advertising agency in the world and has a global population of 109k + employees in offices located in the US, UK & Asia. Although the organisation offers a wide variety of learning programmes, achieving high levels of engagement is always a challenge – especially with escalating workloads and global morale being tested due to the impact of Covid and lockdown.

Our challenge was to deliver a dynamic wellbeing experience that not only gained traction and a strong following every month across WPP’s global offices, but also successfully encouraged collaboration across their global population in a fun and dynamic learning environment. This resulted in boosting morale and empowering employees to take their personal and collective wellbeing to the next level.

Shift thinking by getting everyone out of their heads and into their bodies.

Taking our cutting-edge 12-month employee wellbeing programme, Sharpen Your Edge, we first opened up the sessions to their global population and ran multiple sessions each day to cater for different time zones.

We used the ‘global get together’ angle for communications and invited people from the US, UK and Asia to attend live sessions on Nutrition, Sleep, Mental Health, Movement, Resilience, Financial, Mindfulness alongside their global colleagues.

They were primed to expect something a bit different. As attendees began to join, the speaker began by requesting people to turn their camera on, to stand-up, use music to reminisce ‘mountain top’ moments and participate in a series of physical and mental exercises to shift thinking.

Everybody left their comfort zone, but they did it together. They experienced something a little uncomfortable that actually rallied them together. Which is why they kept coming back.

Collaborating globally, to learn in an experiential way during a time of isolation was a real icebreaker. Employees got comfortable with being uncomfortable, which rallied them together. Our workshops have become a lifeline and a popular opportunity to regularly connect with colleagues.

As one attendee said: “I can’t think of any way it could be improved, it was very well done.”