Communication and organisation.

Communication and organisation Communication and organisation, the two most important requirements when working in a busy environment or working with a variety of projects and people. Being organised and the ability to communicate have been reflected in my studies from day one. In a university environment the lessons I have learnt have been through working with other students in groups, by being able to collaborate, communicate and produce a project together. The internship I am doing really enforces the ability to always be organised and the ability to communicate at all times and work with more than one person on a job. I am in the office 3 days a week, during the day I need to keep track of all projects I am working on, this is updated into our internal communications program ‘stream time’ where we log all our time, project details and the work we are doing. At the end of a working day I will write a short report ‘work in progress’ (WIP) to be emailed to all seniors and other people involved in the project to be made aware of all changes on a client’s job and the current status of a project. This gives everyone in the office a clear idea of the status of all projects in case I am out of the office or if someone else needs to answer any questions in relation to a client’s request. Every Tuesday, a WIP meeting is held in the board room. Log sheets with all projects are printed off our internal communications data base ‘stream time’ so senior staff can run through the documents and check with all people in the office the current status on all projects, this then gives everyone an over view of what is happening and what needs to done to move forward and complete all client jobs. The importance of being organised will reflect a person’s ability to multitask and complete jobs confidently with no stress. An example of a day in the PR consultancy world, I might be working on a media release, then I will be asked to proof read a document, then I will be asked to prepare the board room for a meeting and then asked to collect milk and mail. In the mean time I will be asked to continue to answer phones, scan documents and enter data. This is also multitasking however requires the ability to prioritise and organise yourself during busy times. Communication internally can also get lost in translation. Some days I find it difficult when a task is miss-communicated. For example I was in a meeting with a senior who requested three contact lists to be merged into one to create a master contact list; this will then be used to send out a document to a variety of organisations. I then repeated the task back to verify and asked any questions that would be important to know, after a few hours I had to report back on the task. Returning to her office I was asked about a fourth document which wasn’t mentioned. Her response was an expectation of I should have known about it without the needing to be told. This reflects the importance of being able to communicate all aspects of a task and not assuming people will know. I found this to be an ongoing concern, I understand the stress and how busy seniors are, but I find it difficult to keep up with a lot of jobs or tasks when I still have not been taught certain things. Overall the internship has started to test my ability and push me to really keep on top of everything I am learning and question all tasks so I can produce the best outcome possible. I am enjoying working in an office environment and a very busy office environment, every day is a new task and every day is a new lesson.