Patrick Singleton joined the Lynx team as a Senior Account Manager last month. He brought his daughter Amélie, who is 6 years old, along to #LYNXCubs and in this blog he tells us what this day meant to him as a Dad and all about their experience of the day.

For our family the concept of a “bring your child to work day” was usually reserved for Mum, with many of my previous employers favouring the ‘personal sacrifice’ mentality rather than the ‘work-life balance’ approach to employee satisfaction. Having said that, even the days at work with Mum were more of a childcare emergency than something that was actually purposefully constructed and never really amounted to much more than learning how to use the photocopier (which I’m sure will be assigned to the technological scrap heap by the time my six year old is ‘office-job’ age). So, having the opportunity to bring my daughter, Amélie, into work for the day within my first month at Havas Lynx was something to behold. Many employers are now catching on to the idea of ‘wellness’ programmes and realising that happy employees are usually productive employees too, but even the best of the best can fall short due to their superficiality. Sure, you’ll get goodies, beers, massages, free snacks, office meditation and wild parties but they often fail to incorporate one hugely important thing: respect for the work-life balance and respect for each other. For me the #LynxCubs day was a wonderfully organised nod of respect to us parents, giving me a hint that I made the right choice coming to Havas Lynx, and letting me know that they respect the struggle of the average parent trying to forge a career and raise a family at the same time.

First order of the day was a tasty breakfast, followed by a whistle stop tour of the offices where I think Amélie’s main priority was to spot an office dog (we failed on that one as Romeo was having a well deserved day off, but we did manage to find Maisie later on in the day over at number 54). And then, once we returned to Department X, it was time to crack on with the main order of the day…. drawing and colouring in! As an avid colourer-in-erer and drawer, filling a room with paper, wonderful cartoon character templates and a shed-load of colourful pens was her idea of a perfect day; and she was quick to get stuck in to her alien-like green monkey. We had a dog with a person body, a dog with a tiny body and one big leg, a wonderfully traced chubby elephant and, la piece de resistance, a balloon headed cowboy-like fella who could “part his beard to reveal sweeties to the children.”

Before we knew it lunch time was approaching so we made our way to the local restaurant. Over lunch, it didn’t take me long to break out my Dad-magic repertoire including (but not limited to) pulling off the end of my thumb, the floating napkin and the levitating glass, thrilling my audience of two.

Then it was back to the office for the final top up of sugar with ice cream sundae making (or, should I say, filling a tub up with sweets and eating them with a spoon) before goodie bag hand out and heading back home.

The activities of the day certainly rubbed off on Amélie, with much of the next morning spent scribbling away in her make-shift den trying to perfect her cartoon dog. I made an attempt to assess what she now thinks I do at work and I appear to have been upgraded slightly: prior to this I “worked on a computer”, but now I “help people”. I couldn’t ask for more!