A blogpost from our 2016 intern..

Written by Edlyn Ong during summer 2016

(And yes, that’s us the pioneer batch of LEGO Builders in the picture below at the entrance of the LEGO office!)

Hello everybody! My name is Edlyn Ong and I am an intern at LEGO Hub Singapore.

I am really excited to have this platform to share the LEGO experience to all future LEGO Builders who wish to understand how is it like to be an intern in a toy company, what we do and the exposure we get. It is a 13 weeks internship project where we immersed ourselves into the different workings of the departments we are attached to, understand the LEGO Brand Framework and Strategy, the goal of reaching 300 million children by the end of 2032 at LEGO Group’s 100th year Anniversary and be a part of this LEGO journey.

We will be posting fresh topics to keep quench your curiosity thirst! There are many things that I want to share with you about interning in this place where play comes alive literally at work, where you can just grab bricks in the office and start building anything you want!

First up let me share more about the office area that will definitely keep you pumped! 

In LEGO Hub Singapore, we are introduced to New Ways of Working (NWOW), which is activity-based working facility. You may think that this is similar to hot-desking but NWOW is very different and more specialized.

Each work facility is designed for the purpose of the work you want to engage in. For example, phone booths when you need to make confidential calls, collaboration tables as per its name suggest - to collaborate with colleagues across departments, focused-work area for you to concentrate and do your work and the list goes on.

It was, of course, a novelty to work in such activity-based facility but it was a challenge for me during the first week of work. I did not have the safety of sitting around the team that I was attached to, and neither did I have familiar faces next to me every day. The people sitting next to me changes every few hours! It was definitely not easy to try to find people, I could not snack at my desk, and I have to locate the different meeting rooms – WOW.

But over time, it got better. Now that I am two months on into the internship, I can better appreciate this method of changing workstations as per your work needs. It makes doing work a lot more productive and the part where you get to see different people so often allows you to mingle and have more opportunities to have a conversation with different colleagues from different part of the organisation.

 What amaze me most are the areas such as Quiet Lounge, Library and Meditation room. Is this cool or what? If you just need some time alone to relax, listen to some music and peace out, just head out to the Meditation room. If you need to be really focused at work, you go to the Library where no one is allowed to disturb you! And of course, just when you really need a quiet and serene environment with no disturbances to do your work – the Quiet Lounge.

Did I forget to mention, we have in-house baristas to make you coffee and tea daily at the pantry? Apart from the free beverages, the café sells salads, sandwiches and some hot meals if you need to grab a quick lunch in office! Also, you are not to miss the waffles there that come in a variety of flavours such as chocolate, kaya or just good old plain flavour! Apart from the main pantry, each level has designated snack points where you could grab some light snacks (nuts/biscuits/chocolates/fruits) or another drink. Really how cool is this? Just pray that you don’t gain too much weight after working here.

We like to keep the bricks close to us during our everyday work or play. There is two brick walls around the office – one of which that is theme-based on a monthly cycle to encourage people to build on it! And here’s what we the interns built for this month’s Hari Raya theme!     

{It took us close to 3 hours to get this built!}

The other brick wall – Wall of Fame where we could customize our own mini-figures and leave our mark in on the wall! 

What do you think about our office space right here or do you have any questions about LEGO Group that you would like use to answer? Do leave a comment and let us know!

For our next post, we will be sharing more about the different projects each of the intern were tasked and the type of exposure we had the past months!

Stay tuned!