Last week I spent the week co-facilitating a Mindshop Excellence program at Computershare with Mike Boyle from Banjar Group. We worked with four students from Yarra Valley Grammer School Andrew McNeill, Declan Woods, Matthew Hulme and Jack Zhu.

Mindshop Excellence is a structured five-day Work Experience Program for groups of 4 -6, Year 10 or Year 11 students. The program aims to immerse the students in a real problem, selected by a host company. It has the potential to avoid the ‘pretend’ element that so often lessens the impact of Work Experience. The students are seen as real partners with a valued role to play.

The students real problem was to look at the existing working environment at Computershare and make suggestions for improvement. Over the course of the week the team looked at the existing environment, surveyed employees and used an array of consulting tools to come up some solutions for improving the workplace. On Friday 27th they presented, to the Computershare Technology Services Team, a selection of recommendations on how to improve the working environment. Ideas included "A Crash Area" (with Nintendo Wii, Sofas and Table Football), reconfigured desks, improved meeting rooms and the use of Epiphytes or “air plants" throughout the office.

Computershare staff were highly impressed with the boys' ideas and indeed their fabulous presentation skills. Well done lads!