Tatum recently joined Medialab as our Front of House & Office Manager, and since taking on the role, she has transformed the Medialab office. In a role that has many far reaching responsibilities, Tatum takes us through a day in her life…

6.30am

I get up around 06:30 am and make a cup of coffee – a strong one. Being from South Africa this would generally be my favourite time of day to sit in the sun with my morning cuppa, but that is a tradition proving difficult to uphold in the UK.

8.45am

Once I am in the office and my laptop is on, I do a quick round of the office to check everyone is happy and make sure the office is ready for a busy day ahead,  checking the small things like kitchen and toilet supplies are fully stocked and clean – the kinds of thing you would only fully notice if they’re not there! I do a weekly shop for office supplies, so we should always be good to go with all the necessities on hand.

9.00am

This morning the Board have a meeting in the office, so I greet everyone and take a quick glance at my emails before heading out to clear the pastry shelves of Pret and become the barista’s best friend with a mass coffee order. Around 9am I have a proper sit down and sift through the emails, a lot of which are updates on the IT tickets I have logged for new starter setups and general tech support for the team.

9:30am

To liven up the month, we also thought it would be a great time to develop our wellbeing initiatives, and so every day for a month, I send a wellbeing related activity to our team. Today’s activity is a Mental Health Drop-In centre with one of our 8 Mental Health Allies – they have all completed the MH First Aid qualification and are offering an hour each to chat to anyone who would like some support. We had a lot of fun organising mini care packages to be sent to everyone at the start the year too – it included a face mask, some chocolates, and a few other pampering bits – all in the name of wellbeing!

10.00am

Around this time, I’d be in a weekly one to one catchup with a different team member each day. I work quite closely with HR and Marketing, and so this is always a useful time to touch base and get answers to any questions I may have on various projects. As part of our weekly HR catchups we discuss new starter start dates, allowing me to prep well in advance for their equipment needs.  We’re growing really fast as a business so there are lots of new joiners to help onboard!

11.00am

After the morning catchups and depending on the day, I might need to get a bit of shopping done. We are undergoing a bit of an office makeover so this leaves me plenty of gaps to fill and pictures to put up. We had a polaroid photo shoot with the Medialab team on the afternoon of our Christmas party last year, and they came out great! Currently sourcing a frame that would work and do these lovely pictures justice.

Lunch

We have a lunch hour, but its hungry work running the office and it is likely I would have already eaten my prepped lunch within an hour of arriving this morning, so I will pop out to grab a snack and a coffee.

2.00pm

As a company we have set goals to reduce our environmental impact even further this year, and I so am currently developing a sustainability plan to implement going forward. I am still new to Medialab (I’ve been here just over 6 weeks) so naturally my role has been quite varied as I start implementing new procedures, so I put some time aside in the afternoons for this.

3.00pm

At 3pm we have our weekly Marketing catchup. It is great to be included in this as I am always keen to get creative. It’s great to be using Adobe InDesign to level up on my design skills and do my part in planning our internal and external events. This includes our MediaTeds (like a TedTalk), CollabLabs and Lunch & LearnLabs, we have a lot on – you never get bored.

4.00pm

If I haven’t already, I will do another round of the office to make sure everyone is sorted. Being Front Of House and Office Manager, my role is largely office based and people focused, so I really enjoy our bubbly and buzzing office in London. As the day starts nearing the end, I make sure I’ve done all my urgent bits marked on my to do list.

5.30pm.

It’s time to go home. I close the shutters, turn off all the TVs and coordinate locking up and make my way out.

6.00pm

I am still a newbie to the cold weather, so it is likely I am freezing when I arrive home. I might (a hard maybe) do some yoga before dinner or have a glass of wine. Maybe both.

If you weren’t at Medialab, what would you be doing?

I’d like to think I’d be hiking in Peru.