Like many of you, I have now finished my 20 days of work experience. I enjoyed my time in Recreation Services and feel like I made a real contribution to the team. When I came onboard, there was a vacant position as someone had recently left and they were grateful to have the extra support. It wasn’t long before I proved myself and was given some independent projects to work on. There were days when everyone in the team was sick and I don’t think the e-newsletter would have gone out that month if I hadn’t been there. It felt good to know that my work was appreciated and I was involved in substantial tasks.
A highlight of my prac was when a colleague told me that her spelling and grammar had improved since I’d been there and it had really enhanced her writing. I know it’s small but it made me laugh and summed-up my biggest ongoing project – editing. By the end of my placement they were calling me, ‘The Writing Guru.’
A low point of my work experience was being asked to draft a submission for an industry award that didn’t get put forward. I worked on it for two days straight, working ten-hour days to get it finished before deadline, only to find out the following week that our manager decided to wait until next year to apply for the award to allow time to improve our chances of winning. It was disappointing to find out I spent so much time on something that isn’t being used but it was a good experience to be part of the project and I learned a lot more about the work Recreation Services has done.
I’ve been asked to stay on with Recreation in a full-time capacity for at least the next three months and I’m glad to know my work was valued and I’ll now be receiving payment for my hard work.
2 comments:
Hi Marie-Claire
That's great news about your permanent job at Recreation Services, congratulations! I've been doing my prac placement part time as well and wondered if you noticed if communication seemed to break down at all for other part time employees? My placement has opened my eyes that it is very easy for communication to be lost or forgotten about when it comes to keeping the part time staff in the loop! I also wanted to ask if the e-newsletter was a tool that is used to communicate internally or if it an external activity? I want to suggest this in my report to assist with the communication break down at my placement so it would be interesting to hear how it may work in other organisations.
I look forward to your response.
Sarah Harrison
Hi Sarah,
I felt a little out of the loop when some enquiries came up because I was only in the office a couple of days a week. However, I found it easy to catch-up on what I had missed because there were only 3 of us making up the club development team. Our sub unit (Recreation Services) also included leisure planning and community bookings and we kept informed about each other’s projects through monthly recreation team meetings and the production of the Recreation Times – an internal document that include updates on projects and was distributed with the meeting agenda.
The e-newsletter that I have been working on is an external tool distributed to all the sport and recreation clubs in the City of Joondalup. The City does have an internal staff e-newsletter but it is an informal communication tool that includes information about employee’s holidays, engagements/weddings, recipes, etc.
I think recommending an e-newsletter would be a great way to keep part-time employees informed. I know the Recreation Times has been a great tool within my department!
Good luck with your report and future PR work!
Marie-Claire
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