Perhaps partly attracted by the free lunch, our first session gathered a whopping 20 attendees. Our Training Manager, Marcello Duarte, spoke about transitional figures, starting with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, which in turn encouraged other North African countries to start similar change processes. Marcello demonstrated how we as individuals can also become transitional figures by changing our environments and the people around us. He also explained how we can use the key qualities of a transitional figure to become better leaders in our own workplaces.

During the second session, one of our Magento experts, Gordon Skinner, showed us how Triathlon can make you better at your job. There's an excellent recap on the Session Digital blog on his talk, or you can view a video on our Vimeo account.

Benefits of Enlightening Lunches

But why run these events in the first place, you may ask? In our experience, the benefits are threefold. First, getting the entire company together encourages interaction between different departments, and especially in the case of work-related talks, improves understanding of each others' daily challenges. For example, our CEO gave a Company Finances 101 session, and one of our project managers shared his experiences with leading agile development projects for our clients.

The second benefit is offering a forum for employees to practice public speaking. Lunch sessions are an excellent way for aspiring conference speakers and those who simply wish to improve their presentation skills to practice in a safe, familiar environment.

Third, a lot of the talks will directly or indirectly contribute towards the professional and personal development of employees. Some of it will be subject matter expertise - for example, we've had sessions on JavaScript, Magento, and other technical topics - and some will focus on soft skills, such as communication, time management and other aspects that'll help us become better at our jobs.

How we did it - a short guide to running Enlightening Lunches

Lessons learnt, mistakes made - this is what we've found out so far.

How to spark interest

The most important bit in organising Enlightening Lunches is sparking an interest. Of course, free lunch does generally generate interest, but Enlightening Lunches are much more than that.

To make everybody feel included and to offer a variety of topics, the floor is open to every department. Even for a company like Ibuildings, not all talks have to be technical; we've had talks on subjects ranging from religion to working abroad. Perhaps they've just finished a really interesting project that the rest of the company could learn from; maybe they have a really unusual hobby or interest that others would like to learn about; or maybe they're an expert in a certain field. Part of the beauty of it is that the talk doesn't have to be work-related.

It's also vital to emphasise that doing an Enlightening Lunch doesn't have to require a lot of work: give the talk in the way that suits you best, no need to spend hours on preparing slides. For example, one of our Enlightening Lunch talks (by Paul Matthews) was to a slideshow of photos taken whilst working abroad.

Accessibility

Enlightening Lunches need to be accessible to everybody, not just to every department but to every office too. Ibuildings has satellite offices in Liverpool and Sheffield, and these remote teams are included through video conferencing. Slides are also made available in advance.

It is important to ensure that it is a cross-departmental platform, accessible to every employee. We try to ensure this by offering two talks during each Enlightening Lunch: one non-technical, and one technical.

One of the goals of Enlightening Lunches is to unite the company and get people talking, so at times it is good to have a non-technical 'fun talk' to open the arena for company discussion. A recent talk given by Gordon Skinner had the whole company discussing their favourite films - this kind of talk every so often can really help colleagues to relax and interact over lunchtime as it has nothing to do with our day-to-day work.

It's also worth considering creating an internal wiki page/similar to announce the talks, keep track of the talks that have been and gone and the talks that are coming up. This is particularly helpful to new employees or to anyone who has been away.

Task list

So how to make it happen?

A couple of days before the lunch: Send out a reminder email to all staff to make sure everyone who intends to participate has signed up. This will help you order the right amount of food. Ordering food is not as simple as it would seem - for example, in our office we have vegetarians, a vegan, someone with a severe nut allergy... We don't want to exclude anyone so we always try to order food to accommodate everyone and clearly label it when it arrives.

On the day, before the talk: Allow yourself a good 30 minutes to prepare before everyone can pile into the room. Ask a couple of volunteers to help you set up enough chairs; then get the projector set up, check that it works and that you have the right adapter, then test that slides are clearly visible. Also, set up a Skype connection for the remote teams. You could do this with a phone or a laptop - but make sure you set it up in advance so that talks aren't delayed. It often takes longer than you expect!

Make sure the food is delivered well in advance - there is nothing worse than the food arriving part way through a talk as the speaker will get no attention. Lay the food out at the side or the back of the room, so as not to distract the speakers when they're presenting. And finally, ensure that everyone arrives promptly for the session to start on time - Enlightening Lunches shouldn't eat away from our standard work time, unless otherwise agreed.

During and after the talk: Always allocate somebody to 'host' the event - introduce the speakers, keep an eye on the time, etc. At the end of the session, remember to thank the speakers before everyone goes back to work. Doing a talk requires a lot of effort and it is important to encourage people to take part and thank the ones who do. The end of a session is also a key time to drum up speakers for the next session.

The clear up doesn't normally take long, but it's best to allow 10-15 minutes of your time (and ask everyone to clear up after themselves, before going back to their desks).

Your turn

We hope we've inspired you to try out lunchbox-style sessions in your own company. It doesn't require much - just people eager to share their experiences and expertise. If you are already running a similar programme in your company, we'd be interested in hearing about your experiences. Are you doing something differently? New interesting formats, good tips for arranging food for a large group of people, ways to convince people to talk? Share them in the comments below!