Talking Partners: A New Kind of Buddy Scheme – Henry Searle and Tarun Gidoomal

Talking Partners is a new kind of buddy scheme, supporting a co-worker to be the best they can be. Find out more in this two minute video.

Hi, we are Happy

We are leading a movement to create happy, empowered and productive workplaces.

How can we help you and your people to find joy in at least 80% of your work?

Watch the session below

Read the transcripts

We have co-CEOs now and talking partners started with them. So everything we do at Next Jump is this framework of one-one-all, so you make it work for yourself, make it work for someone else and then start scaling it to the rest of the company. So, Charlie and Megan, our co-CEOs, started doing talking partners then the leadership below them started having talking partners; when we saw that was working we scaled it out to the rest of the company. Now you do, to a certain extent, chose who your talking partner is, but we have some guidelines of how to choose.

What we say is:

You want to have shared responsibility, so it wouldn’t necessarily work if Tarun was talking partners with someone who started 6 months ago, because that would be a one-way mentorship programme for Tarun mentoring them. It should be a co-mentorship programme, so shared responsibility really helps with that.

The other thing we try and encourage is people who are quite different, so Tarun and I are very different people, we have very different characters and that helps because I see where Tarun’s lacking and Tarun sees where I’m lacking.

Sometimes talking partners work better – there’s elements in there like trust. I think one of the most important things about talking partners is being authentic with each other and being able to bring anything up, so if you can have a trusting relationship then that can be the first start, but generally you choose yourself.

What’s the culture in your company and how do you give that feedback?

It is anonymous; we find that, especially for newer people, that allows them to be a lot more honest. A lot of the feedback that we have through apps is anonymous. And you give feedback to others in the way that you’d want to receive it yourself. No one’s out there to be malicious, no one’s out there to hurt you, so the feedback that goes in there is often constructive or honest. I think they’re the most important things, that one – it’s honest, so: “Did you even speak up at all?” Maybe that’s not constructive, constructive would be: “You could have spoken up more/given your opinion more”, but at least it’s honest, and that’s the most important thing.

Keep informed about happy workplaces

Sign up to Henry's monthly Happy Manifesto newsletter, full of tips and inspiration to help you to create a happy, engaged workplace.

Henry Searle is Co-Head of Next Jump’s UK Office. He joined as a software engineering intern in 2011 and joined full time in 2012. Since 2014 he has lead the UK engineering team and has overseen product developments which have driven record revenue growth in the UK. You can follow him on Twitter @henrysearle.

Tarun Gidoomal currently serves as the Co-Head of Next Jump’s UK office. Having joined Next Jump in 2011, Tarun has helped quadruple the business in under 4 years as they expand globally. He frequently speaks on leadership and corporate culture. Tarun is a member of the Virgin Unite’s People Innovation Network – a community of 30 businesses brought together by Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington, all of whom are passionate about re-defining work to help people thrive. You can follow him on Twitter @tarungidoomal.

Learn the 10 core principles to create a happy and productive workplace in Henry Stewart's book, The Happy Manifesto.

Support your aspiring and current managers to be empowering and confident leaders with Happy

Happy offers leadership programmes at Level 3, Level 5 and Level 7, from new managers/supervisor level all the way up to senior leadership teams and CEOs. These programmes are based on the ideas of trusting your people. They are practical and based on applying what yo’ve learnt. We aim to inspire and ignite change in your organisation, as well as giving you valuable management skills such as business strategy, decision-making, negotiation and project management.

We also offer programmes tailored specifically to people from Global Majority backgrounds. The content is the same, but have been designed to give new and experienced managers the skills they need to navigate organisational culture with a clearer perspective on their own potential, as well as building their confidence and expanding their professional strengths.

Claire Lickman

Claire is Head of Marketing at Happy. She has worked at Happy since 2016, and is responsible for Happy’s marketing strategy, website, social media and more. Claire first heard about Happy in 2012 when she attended a mix of IT and personal development courses. These courses were life-changing and she has been a fan of Happy ever since. She has a personal blog at lecari.co.uk.

Next Conference: 2025 Happy Workplaces Conference

Our Happy Workplaces Conference is our biggest event of the year, and we’d love for you to join us on Thursday 12th June!

This year’s event will be held in London, venue TBC. We may also offer a hybrid option for people to join us online simultaneously — do let us know if you are interested in joining online and we can add you to the waiting list.

As always, our next conference will be filled with interaction, discussion and space for reflection.

Book now and get our special half-price Early Bird rate — just use discount code Happy2025.