An insight into a work-day at the Mallusk Enterprise Hub in Mallusk Enterprise Park
As an Erasmus trainee in Belfast – working and living for one month I am living many new experiences – much different than a normal day at the office back home in Austria where I am completing an apprenticeship as an Office Clerk. My UK workplace mentor Christine Watson, of Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing and founder of TrainingMatchmaker.com has a wide variety of clients to support with marketing and training so no two days are the same.
Michelle, who is also doing an Erasmus traineeship at the same time, and I had an interesting day at Mallusk Enterprise Hub. The Mallusk Enterprise Hub is a part of the Mallusk Enterprise Park. The Mallusk Enterprise Hub is a Social Enterprise. You can find more information about that below in the about us section that I have added to this blog to make it easy for anyone who wants to look into working from the different work stations provided within Mallusk Enterprise Hub – just like Michelle, Christine and I did.
We started at the Belfast Central Library – which is our official work base at 9:00 am and journeyed north of Belfast, along the M2, arriving at 9:10 am at the Enterprise hub – Christine asked us to time the commute as this is an important marketing message for the new venture, along with the free parking as parking in Belfast city centre can be quite expensive.
At first, Christine met with Tania, she is a chocolatier and the founder of local business Lekkers NI. Christine booked large chocolate letters to spell out the Word ‘WORLDHOST’ for her customer service training workshop that she was running in the training space at Mallusk Enterprise Hub. Throughout the day Christine had meetings with various individuals including Emma Garrett, who is the Chief Executive of Mallusk Enterprise Park.
After meeting with Tania, I met a lot of members from the Mallusk Enterprise Park business advice team and Michelle, Christine and I helped them take a group photo with a prop to celebrate their key achievements in 2022.
The local press was also present on the day to get an overview of the business park, visit some of the units rented by tenants within the park, including the Belfast Artisan Distillery and meet the founder of audiolevel – DJ Craig Dalzell -who was featured in Mallusk Enterprise Park’s most recent press release.
In the late afternoon, I took some photos and micro-videos of the main conference and training room, which was used for a hybrid zoom meeting – it boasts an impressive Donview computer screen and I found it an interesting insight into how meetings can be both in person and online.
Michelle and I worked from a huddle room in between our content marketing – photo and micro video filming tasks for the day. This small private workspace was perfect for our needs, we appreciated all the electric sockets to keep our laptops and phones fully charged and we enjoyed the free coffee and the complimentary lotus biscoff biscuits too! The benefits that I found from using the huddle room at Mallusk Enterprise Hub are as follows:
Benefits of pop up working at Mallusk Enterprise Hub
Monika, the friendly receptionist from Mallusk Enterprise Hub, took really good care of my well-being. There was always fresh free coffee and tea available. Also a watercooler which provided both hot and cold water. My favourite was the Lotus Biscoff, which you can enjoy perfectly with your coffee.
The air conditioning in the rooms are also easily to control yourself to find a perfect temperature to enjoy work – especially as it was so hot and clammy outside.
You can also park your car for free or charge your EV at Mallusk Enterprise park.
The Huddle Rooms offered our small team an ideal quiet workplace, the rooms were also perfect for meetings that our Trainer Christine had scheduled throughout the day.
10 reasons why I enjoyed my time co-working with my work buddy Michelle in Mallusk Enterprise Hub at Mallusk Enterprise Park
Michelle and I really enjoyed the chance to work in one of the little private meeting rooms – called huddle rooms in Mallusk enterprise hub – there were a few to choose from. I found that I was very productive and I would definitely recommend this way of working to others. You also can park your car for free.
About Mallusk Enterprise Park
Established in 1992, Mallusk Enterprise Park is a local enterprise agency located in Newtownabbey. Operating as a social enterprise, Mallusk Enterprise Park is committed to supporting individuals and businesses in the Newtownabbey area, throughout each stage of their entrepreneurial journey.
They support businesses in the following areas:
The Mallusk Enterprise Hub includes a conference room that can hold up to 40 people.
Their co-working space offers a good opportunity for entrepreneurs and freelancers to work together in one space alongside other businesses.
There are also Individual huddle rooms or meeting pods, and these can work as private breakout areas for training workshops – each huddle room has a whiteboard for ideas and tasks.
Users can reserve the different rooms for an hour, half a day, a day or even a month.
The Enterprise Hub has full hot and cold catering options available upon request for bookings but the coffee dock has complimentary coffee and tea with lotus biscoff for users of the co-working space and huddle rooms.
About me
My name is Romana Schöser and I am 20 years old, I came to Belfast from Austria/ Tyrol via Munich and Dublin airports. At the moment I am doing an apprenticeship at the company ‘Tyrolit’ and I work as an office clerk. I am in the 3rd year of professional school and this is the final year as a trainee/apprentice. My final exam is in July 2023.
In my free time I love to play volleyball or go snowboarding in the mountain where I live.
I also have an Instagram account about the time in NI here you are welcome to follow me so you don’t miss any of my experiences whilst I am on my Erasmus traineeship in Belfast. @Romana_in_belfast
You also can find me on LinkedIn – Romana Schöser
About Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing
Watson and Co. Chartered Marketing is a marketing consultancy and training company established in April 2005 by the multi award winning and industry experienced Chartered Marketer, SOSTAC Certified Planner and Licensed WorldHost Customer Service Trainer Christine Watson . Christine is my mentor at my Erasmus work placement in Belfast.
Christine and her team work with businesses to deliver creative and effective marketing and customer service solutions to achieve optimal results for them.
About WorldHost
Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing offers WorldHost – world class customer service training for employees of customer focused companies in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. The course can also be delivered to English-speaking organisations around the world.
More than one million customer-facing employees worldwide have been trained in a WorldHost customer service programme.
About Training MatchMaker
Trainingmatchmaker.com directs people to free or paid online and face-to-face courses to inspire people to go on their next learning journey. There are also various trainers that you can find detailed on the website at Our Trainers – TrainingMatchMaker.
Training MatchMaker was founded by my Erasmus mentor and trainer Christine Watson.
Here you can also read the latest blogs from Michelle and I on the trainingmatchmaker website. At the start of our Erasmus placement in Belfast we wrote our first blog to share our learning plans and we will also be writing a blog at the end of our traineeship which will detail what all we have learned during our time living and working in Northern Ireland. Before coming across trainingmatchmaker.com we were not aware of so many different learning opportunities. Blog – TrainingMatchMaker
Monika the receptionist
Michelle my work buddy.
- We felt a lovely sense of community, some of the business founders we met work alone and it was nice for them to meet other people face to face and to get a break from their normal isolated environment.
- Michelle and I were able to support each other across the desk – we shared ideas, we had each other to take photos and videos of us working – which was a task requested by our Trainer.
- I learned new things from Michelle – she showed me how her iphone camera settings worked, which was different to mine and she helped me with the settings on my laptop too.
- It improved our productivity – we motivated each other and working across the desk from someone kept my spirits high – I witnessed Michelle typing and this kept me concentrated too on the tasks to be completed.
- Free coffee and refreshments station – we used this the whole time and it saved much time queuing in Starbucks and expense too!
- The free and fast Wi-Fi available in the hub was perfect for our needs – we had online research tasks to do.
- We appreciated that the hub was so close to Belfast city centre – our commute from our base in Belfast Central library was only ten minutes and we were able to park for free, in comparison to having to pay to park our car when in Belfast city centre.
- We found that the set up of this workspace meant that the photos and videos we took of each other and also of others were professional in nature.
- The business advice team was very friendly.
- The calm and clean environment was immensely helpful for productive work
Tania Ventura Menendez founder of Lekkers.
Luxury cocktail flavoured chocolates from Lekkers NI.
Insight into the marketing meeting between Christine and Tania.
- Ideas Generation
- Marketing & Market research
- Financial Management
The business advice team of Mallusk Enterprise Park
Left: Louise and Peter
Right: Colleen and Emma.
Business Mentor Louise Parkes working in the
Co-working space at Mallusk Enterprise Hub.
On e of the Huddle Rooms available at Mallusk Enterprise Hub.
The co-working spaces available in Mallusk Enterprise Hub.
Me in front of the Belfast City Hall.
My Trainer Christine Watson.
