Career and life can be compared to playing games, the stronger you become, the higher stage you could reach!
However, one shouldn’t sacrifice happiness for achievements. Family shouldn’t be the price to pay for success!
Universum releases the global talent attraction index: “The World’s Most Attractive Employers 2011”, Google, Microsoft and Apple are among the top 10 list. The reason Google is ranked at no.1 is because of its innovative work culture, great work ambianace and handsome bonus and benefits. Another report from the latest news says that the United Nation consigned Columbia University to research on World Happiness Report which was released during UN Happiness Forum on April 2nd. The report shows that all the top ranking countries are situated in North Europe with Denmark taking the lead. Taiwan is ranked at no.46 in the world and no.3 in Asia, next to Singapore (no.32) and Japan (no.44). South Korea is ranked at no.56, Hong Kong at no.67 and China at no.112.
This international survey illustrates Albert’s idea that the employees should ‘do what you love and live in peace’. This is the promise of happiness he gave to his partners in Gamania. Therefore, we have since had birthday leave, grand-tour leave, gym, and gama island etc. From April 3rd, 2012 we had the first ever corporate affiliated child-care service in Taiwan game industry—GamaGarden.
GamaGarden Documentary
The average age in Gamania has exceeded 30 years old which is around the stage of life where one makes a family. According to internal survey conducted in 2011, there are more than 100 employees have more than 1 young child. Some of them raised this request to the company: could the company consider providing the child-care service? For Albert, who always put ‘providing staff with a work environment that they love and feel comfortable in’ as top priority, such request could actually put Gamanians in a better position to work without worries in the back of their heads. He hence decided to establish GamaGarden, a kindergarten that provides child-care service to children aged 2-6. He hopes that this would become a child-care center that inherits Gamania’s spirit: love adventures, free and unrestrained, and lively and spirited. GamaGarden provides exceptional teachers, friendly exploring and learning environment for kids. In order to realize this promise of happiness, Gamania has thrown in over 7 digit investment into the hardware facilities. The spatial arrangement of GamaGarden is also uniquely designed, incorporating characters from Gamania’s original animation brainchild, Mig Said and fusing spirited forest onto the magnet walls in GamaGarden. Children could use their creativity to play around on the wall and at the meantime it inspires children’s perception on color and space. The spatial design for the 2nd floor revolves around the clouds in the sky and extended to semi-outdoor sand box game area. Due to physical restriction of the building and space, we tried what we can to create a space that could increase children’s exposure to the nature. We promised to create a unique world exclusive for these baby Gamanians.
In terms of the crucial teaching manpower, after countless evaluation and interviews at various professional institutions, Gamania finally decided to collaborate with renowned child-education institution, Healthy Grow Foundation. In order for every child in GamaGarden experiences that ‘playing games is a form of happy learning and learning is a game of knowledge searching’, the Foundation crafted a carefully-designed guideline for GamaGarden. We stemmed from our spirit of ‘Love to Play’ and drafted a series of professional children education course, such as free choice corner learning activity, thematic activity, group activity, individual activity, outdoor teaching, children theater, and art activity. Among which the free choice corner learning activity could not only inspire children’s potential and autonomic ability, but establish a proactive learning attitude. Of course, there are various teaching materials designed based on children’s basic ability, physical capacity and interests so that children could freely learn in a environment that stimulates both their mental and physical growth.
▲Albert and the mayor played games with children during the press conference.
When we kicked out this promise of happiness, we were so sure about a lot of things because this was not our strength. We had to do everything on our own but in the course of doing it, we actually received a lot of professional assistance from different fields. GamaGarden’s construction started in August, 2011 and in less than a year’s time, we successfully completed the hardware facilities, teacher recruit, course design and acquired certificate of permit. On April 3rd, 2012, the mayor of New Taipei City, Eric Chu attended the launch of GamaGarden and conferred the certificate of permit of GamaGarden to Albert. He praised the fact that Gamania takes staff’s balance between work and family seriously and created a friendly work environment for its staff so that they wouldn’t have to worry about children’s education. The Mayor also commended Gamania to be the role model for New Taipei City and other companies in the nation. Gamania successfully integrated a child-care service into corporate structure, and became the first company that has an affiliated kindergarten in the country. This is a validation, recognition and proof that yes, we did it!
▲The Mayor of New Taipei City, Eric Chu attended the official launch of GamaGarden and conferred certificate of permit of GamaGarden to Albert in person.
GamaGarden opens at 9am and closes at 7pm to accommodate Gamanian’s work schedule. The great location also enables parents and children to stay close and rids the commute time for transportation. Currently the children of Gamanians could hopefully receive the tuition favor of half the price of average kindergarten in New Taipei City. In the grand opening day, we saw the Mayor and Albert played with kids in the sand box, that moment of treasure truly worth everything! Like the great weather we enjoyed that day, I believe the Almighty will also guard this promise of happiness with us!
▲To provide Gamanians with a ‘do what you love and live in peace’ life, Albert made the promise of happiness to establish GamaGarden.