It’s All Thanks to You

While we now think of Thanksgiving as a time to be with those we love as we sink into a food coma, its origins are a little more complicated. It wasn’t until Honest Abe was trying to help unite the North and South that he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, as a way to build healing and trust. Although it took a few decades for everyone to come around to a shared holiday, once we bridged that divide the country made up for lost time. United in our love for turkey, pie and falling asleep in front of a football game, Americans now eat 46 million turkeys in one day and average 4,000 calories on Thanksgiving.

Though we can’t deny our love of a good Thanksgiving dinner, we have much more to be thankful for.

• Great partners
  Being part of Allen means we spend our time with clients who are willing to take innovative risks in instructional design to get big results. Our brand education program for HP had 250,000 voluntary completions – 10 times more than any previous training initiative – and helped employees understand how they influenced others’ opinions of HP. At LEGO, the gamified training program Allen created had a measurable impact on the retail operation’s bottom line.

• Industry recognition
  We are incredibly grateful for our partners who trust us with such important parts of their business. It has allowed us to do award-winning work with things like mobile design, learning portals, custom content and gamification. This year, Allen has won more than 30 awards, including four Brandon Hall awards, and we hit Training Industry’s Top 20 List for Learning Technologies, Gamification and Content Development.

• People at Allen
  The trust our partners give us has also allowed Allen to expand and grow, which has been a very exciting time for the company. Many of you know we were able to move into a new building with more room to team up and brainstorm on new projects. The beautiful view of the Wasatch Mountains doesn’t hurt either. We were also fortunate enough to grow our team by 40%. Being able to collaborate with such talented people on projects for major global brands is what makes our work so gratifying. We are thankful for the opportunities we’ve had to grow as a company, and for the individual growth the employees achieve.

This year has been wonderful thanks to our incredible partners and coworkers. From us to you (and with apologies to turkeys for our part in eating so many of them), we wish each of you Happy Thanksgiving as you snooze in front of the Lions game.