Research or the primary tool to get started in corporation projects

Hi everyone!

Let me introduce myself first : Alice, 21, from Mauritius, and in my last semester of a BA Mass Com degree at Curtin University.
I'm having the fantastic opportunity to do my internship at Woodside Energy Ltd, which is Australia's largest operator of oil and gas production, and would like to share my first impression on the importance of the Research tasks I've been asked to do, after a brief explanation of my role as a Woodside intern.

I'm in the Pluto LNG Corporate Affairs team, -Pluto LNG is a gas field located in the Carnarvon basin, about 190km North-West of Karratha -  focusing on Woodside's relationships with the Indigenous communities of the Dampier Archipelago (including the Burrup Peninsula, Karratha and Roebourne - North of Western Australia). Woodside is committed to these communities and they want to make sure that wherever they operate, the communities benefit from their presence.

I have a very dynamic and challenging work environment and even if I am not in the Public Relations discipline, I do many similar works (i.e magazine article, Intranet update, communication strategies for a comic promotion etc...)

Woodside recognises that long-term and meaningful relationships with the communities where they operate are fundamental to maintaining their licence to operate.

In order to be able to understand their current position and to know exactly what was the outcomes of my tasks, it was fundamental to make some research, over and above the documents that they gave me to read, in order to get familiar with their projects.

Reading the fact sheets, communication strategies and media releases gave me a first overlook of the community projects. Once I needed to start to write something, I felt these documents was not enough and more thorough research would give me a better insight.  Therefore I went on the different websites of the organisations involved,  collected the information, and implemented a short objective that I wanted to achieve through this document I was creating. At the end of my internship, this will allow me to provide a benchmark for an evaluation of my work as well.

I therefore used the secondary type of research, using existing data.

As Albert Einstein said "If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding a solution."
I really appreciate this statement, even though I'm not facing problems as an Intern, it's a statement full of meanings and truth.

I'm spending more time to define and understand what's need to be done, what are my supervisor's expectations and less time in doing the task itself.

I'm still enjoying my time at Woodside and the opportunity it is giving me to improve my written skills, be part of a corporate team and learn everyday practices of the business world.

Did you also feel more thorough research was needed in the task you've been assigned?
Or did you have any research task to do?

Feel free to comment and share your experience or your views on research in the PR field.

Alice