First week in the Corporate World!

Hi everyone,

The first week of my PR393 work placement at Woodside Energy has begun and it has been an exciting and amazing rollercoaster ride! On my first day (6^th February) I was escorted through all 24 floors of the Company’s Perth head office, concentrating mainly on level 22 and the Corporate Affairs Department in which I will be spending the next four weeks. During my internship I will be standing in for a lady who is holidaying in America and will have my own desk, fully equipped with telephone and computer! My title for the next 4 weeks will be “Corporate Communications Adviser”.

The protocol for working at Woodside is very professional and formal; before I could commence any type of work for Woodside I had to complete a Drug & Alcohol Test and then spent the majority of my first day completing compulsory online quizzes that focussed on the safety and business ethics standards that are expected and required of all employees at Woodside.

After I had completed the quizzes I attended two meetings over the remainder of the day. The first meeting was an introduction to the small Corporate Communications group I will be working in (5 of us). The second meeting was a Corporate Affairs departmental meeting which included a wider group of people from various departments which work alongside the Corporate Communications group. Working within a communications department I can recognise the importance of having regular meetings to ensure everyone knows what is being done and what still needs to be done.

 
Late in the afternoon on the first day I was required to head down to one of the conference rooms and help set up and prepare for a press conference scheduled to take place the next day at which Woodside planned to announce their continued sponsorship of the Fremantle Dockers. Woodside considers sponsorship of the Dockers to be a really important part of highlighting the Company’s Australian identity as they continue to develop their oil and gas business across Western Australia.

I helped set up the Woodside banners that sit behind where the speakers address the press for the conference, and then helped set up the stage for the Woodside CEO and Dockers guests to sit on. The press conference took place at 12.30pm the following day (7^th February) and in more preparation for the conference I managed to be extremely lucky and was able to collect Dockers captain Matthew Pavlich from his car in the lower car park and bring him upstairs to the press room. (For all you Dockers fans out there ...  Matthew even hugged me on arrival at Woodside). The atmosphere at the press conference was very fast-paced and buzzing; everyone was excited for the arrival of the press and TV reporters, but more importantly for the arrival of Matthew Pavlich!

I have also just completed a 3 month internship over the summer with West TV (Channel 44) working as a reporter for the station so the switch to a Corporate Public Relations environment has been very interesting to see how the two fields interconnect.

It has definitely been an exciting first few days here at Woodside and I can’t wait to see how the following weeks unfold!

Jasmin Stuart