Corporate Sports Australia is a very small
office. There would not be more than 15 full time staff squeezed into one floor
of offices above bar 1907 – and a lot of the staff don’t even have an office. About
6 of them (plus the interns) work from adjoining cubicles.
In such a small office , when you are
constantly within a metres distance from another colleague, you would think it
would be easy to maintain good internal communication. Apparently it’s not.
During my 10 weeks at CSA I heard a few of the
employees mention how bad internal communication was within the organisation
and how much better it had been in previous years. As an intern I imagine I
did not experience the full extent of where it was lacking, especially as I had no
idea of what ‘good internal comms’ looked like.
While there were 15 staff in the office, only five
of these were really involved with the City to Surf. And despite them being in
constant contact with each other (where it was essential to the management of
the event) there seemed to be a lack of general support.
Over the course of my internship a few
instances gave me an indication of just how bad there communication was – and it
really impacted my view of the organisation as a place of work and my relationships with senior staff – which in
turn affected my attitude to work and possibly my work ethic.
About 2 day before ‘event day’ i’d received no information
on what I’d be doing at the City to Surf – so I assumed I would be
assisting in the media tent with the majority of the interns. Nope. On the Friday
before the City to Surf (Sunday) myself and another intern were walking down to
a press conference when she said, ‘hey congratulations on getting the stage
manager role for Sunday.’ Stage manager? I had no idea this role existed nor
had my boss mentioned it to me. Ever.
Later that day, i was ‘briefed’ on the role by
the intern. Having been put in this role at such late notice, made it feel as
if I were simply thrown in there as an afterthought. The fact that my boss had
not bothered to tell me herself made it feel like a really insignificant job –
which was reinforced by being briefed by an intern. Having now fulfilled this
role I know one thing:
There was A LOT of information that no one
bothered to tell me.
Funnily enough, my next task was to create a
formal brief for the next intern who would be assigned the role of stage
manager. How nice for them.
Following event day (Monday was one of my normal
office days) I was ready to head in when I got a message from another intern
making sure I knew we were not needed in the office until lunch time. Thankfully
I got her message before I left, because all the senior staff had neglected to
share this information with me.
On my last day of interning I spent 5 hours by
myself in the office sifting through stats. The other staff had not bothered to
mention they would all be out of the office until the afternoon.
These do seem like quite petty examples of bad
internal comms and as an intern I never expected to be treated on the same
level as senior staff, but as a result, it really changed my impression of the
organisation and the people I was working with.
Until next time (hopefully with less whingeing)
Alanna
2 comments:
Hi Alanna,
Sorry to hear of your bad experience! Hopefully there was a silver lining to that grey cloud, maybe some good experience in improvisation!
I can sympathise with you, having also completed work experience in an organisation with bad internal communication (outside of this unit).
In a similar way, the office i worked in only communicated via email even though they could easily have spoken face to face, during my time doing work experience for this organisation i was placed at a desk seperate from the other staff and even when other staff members walked past me i was not acknowledged. Needless to say i left quickly.
Internal communications is esstential for smooth operations, developing work team morale and work place happiness. It's a shame that despite the closeness of the employees (physically) at Corporate Sports Australia, they still fail to communicate well.
Since leaving the above organisation i gained placement at Venn art gallery Perth (again, outside of this unit) and here i was pleased to find out they have a different way of doing things, they only email other staff when it's necessary (e.g to pass on documents) otherwise they pay each other a visit and pass on messages face to face. It works a lot better.
Amy
Hey Alanna,
That sounds shocking! I guess there are some companies out there who really don't take too much car win communicating, especially essential info as that! I can relate to an organisation that I worked in with a similar problem.
It was my first day and I was brought into the office and was pretty much sat down at a desk and was told to get to work without any briefing over what it was I was expected to do. Naturally it made things pretty tough. But it got me to ask as many question as I needed to in order to feel comfortable with my role, which I wouldn't have normally have done if I had been briefed.
It just shows how essential effective communication is in any business!
All the best,
Mike McCarren
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