Volunteering our time at Woodside: Subsea & Pipelines Volunteer Week

Subsea & Pipelines Volunteer Week

The final task of my internship with Woodside Energy Ltd has been to organise a Community Initiative event for the Subsea & Pipelines Function, with the Safety, Health, Risk, Environment and Community Committee (yes that’s the SHREC Committee for short).

After several committee meetings, I came up with the idea to incorporate three separate volunteering opportunities within the last week of October, Woodside’s dedicated volunteer month.

The three events took place in the last week of October (26-30), and included options during the weekend (26/27), a full day option on Monday (28) and a half day option on Wednesday (30).

Below is a short description of the volunteer activities on offer to the Subsea & Pipelines Function:

1.      Directions (26/27 October)

·         ‘Directions’ is an organisation that supports those within the community living with disabilities. The ‘Directions weekend’ saw Woodside volunteers and their families spend one day with a person supported by Directions, either an adult or a child, and the staff member was responsible for planning activities and meals for the day using whatever resources they had available. A support person from Directions was also present on the day.

2.      Vic Park Centre for the Arts (28 October)

·         Woodside volunteers spent the day at the VPCA which is a community based Not-For-Profit organisation. The centre hosts a number of art classes and exhibitions, and is home to a small shop, beautiful garden and soon will also have a cafe. The centre, run almost entirely by volunteers, supports disability services organisations by providing art classes and an outlet for exhibitions and collaborations. Woodside employees were engaged to paint the main studio, oil the decking and ramp, trim the hedges blocking the ramp, and do a general tidy of the garden.

3.      Homeless Connect (30 October)

·         The Homeless Connect Preparation Day required volunteers from Woodside to sort, package and label goods in the Homeless Connect warehouse on Wellington Street. The day was in preparation for the Homeless Connect annual event (13 November 2013) which sees more than 700 homeless people in Perth gather in Northbridge to utilise a variety of goods and services provided to support people living on the streets.

With these three options chosen I got to work and with the help of one other dedicated committee member, we set up the briefing register for staff to register their interest in these events. We also brainstormed the possible marketing pathways for the activities to inspire members of the function to register. I was all the while liaising with my contact Katie at Volunteering WA, who was in contact with the Not-For-Profit Organisations we were planning to work with.

A few different ways to promote the volunteer week were recognised, including a power point presentation, that we would send out via group email and show at the regular morning tea meeting, posters in common areas, and simply by word of mouth.

The aim was to secure 15 people maximum for each activity planned. Staff at Woodside would need to apply for their volunteer leave (Woodside staff receive 12 hrs of paid volunteer leave a year), gain manager approval and register via the briefing register, providing their t-shirt size and any dietary requirements for the day.

The powerpoint (attached) was sent out to detail the volunteering activities on offer to employees, with email being the predominant form of communication used to promote Volunteer Week.

I was disappointed to see a lack of involvement from the other committee members as there was such a high workload and very little support from the other members, this unfortunately meant that the full extent of the marketing planned for the event was not realised.

As a result there were fairly low numbers around 7/8 registered for the second and third events, this dropped even lower as people began to pull out for various reasons.  A little disheartened but determined to have a successful week, I signed up for the Vic Park Centre for the Arts activity day to make the numbers back up to 6 people.

Volunteering WA picked the group up from Woodside Plaza and supplied the group with all we needed including morning tea and lunch, as well as drinks throughout the day. I organised for Woodside to provide volunteer t-shirts and hats for the group.

We had a fantastic day despite having a work load meant for 15, it was quite hot and we were outside for most of the day, but we managed to get a surprising amount of work done, completing the 3 coats of paint in the studio, the two coats of oil for the deck and the ramp, trimming the hedges and also a good tidy of the front and side gardens.

Below are some photos of the day we spent at VPCA:

Directions was a great success according to activity leader Steve McGregor and The Homeless Connect Preparation activity, ended up with 11 participants who all enjoyed the day throroughly.

Reflections

Looking back on the process, I have positives and negatives to take away, the organising of the activities all in one week was certainly a challenge and meant long hours and prioritising over other workloads, as well as catching up after my full day of volunteering.

I also was forced to reflect on the committee’s effectiveness and also the negative associations with internal committees. I assumed those on committees were there because of a geuine interest in the subject at hand and a proactive nature to lead initiatives and dedicate time to a particular cause. However with comments such as ‘committees are just for making your PDP look good’  being thrown around, I realised the corporate structure I had entered may present opportunities for others to abuse these committees and in doing so, discredits them to some extent.

If there was more corporate control over internal committees at Woodside and a compulsory review session for committees to analyse the contribution of each individual, I believe this would cut down the number of people who do ‘sit on committees to better their PDPs’ and increase credibility of those doing incredible work on committees.

To end on a positive note, I believe the 12 hours of paid volunteer leave that Woodside allocates to each staff members is a true show of corporate social responsibility, and reinforces the monetary donations the company makes with an incredibly valuable resource to most NFPs...Time.

Regards,

Maddy

Public Relations at The Perth Royal Show

As part of my internship I volunteered with the Woodside Corporate Affairs team at The Perth Royal Show to develop my face-to-face communication skills when speaking directly to members of the Public. I spent 3-4 hours on Saturday 28 September, and Saturday 5 October at the show in the Shire of Roebourne exhibit, in which Woodside had a stand.

The stand consisted of some games put together by Woodside and various community investment partners such as Earth Science and the WA Museum and most were directed at younger members of the crowd. The Mangroves game taught children aged 4-9yrs of age about the animals inhabiting the mangroves that surround Karratha and other parts of the Shire, narrated by children from the area; it was a really valuable part of the stand.

The Earth Science quiz game was also a big hit and enabled some conversation more directly linked to Woodside operations with children between the ages of 10-14 yrs of age most commonly interacting with the game. The Earth Science quiz also got some parents involved and the information about Woodside operations displayed on the walls became useful to prompt members of the public through the oil and gas questions.

Although I was expecting to have to know everything about Woodside to adequately answer all the questions I might face, I actually found most people wanted to tell me about something or someone they knew, that had a connection with Woodside operations, particularly up north in the Shire of Roebourne.

Woodside organised some merchandise to give away to those who came and spoke with the staff at the stand, these were fishing lures of various kinds. The first day I volunteered I was troubled by the fact that children were taking them and many people failed to realise they had fishing hooks on them, and were not appropriate for children. This was remedied by giving a verbal warning to parents and others taking the lures. By the following Saturday Woodside had printed and stuck on warning stickers which removed the concern I had about people misunderstanding the use of the lure and giving it to their children.

I came up with an idea during the second day of volunteering to continue Woodside’s engagement with the members of the public that spoke to staff at the Royal Show. As I was handing out the lures, I’d often be in conversation with somebody asking ‘so what kind of fish do you think you could catch with this lure?’ or asking where they live up north and how experienced they were with fishing. It dawned on me there were opportunities to maybe include an email address on the paper backing of the lures where people could post pictures of their catch, or possibly engaging people in a competition for the biggest catch.

I believe this kind of ongoing engagement that prompts people to stay in touch, via the website and also by getting them to actually use the lures keeps the information they gathered at the stand more prominent in their memories, while encouraging a positive reflection on their experience with Woodside.

I found it particularly valuable for the public that the people manning the stand were Woodside Employees, from all areas rather than just people from Public Relations backgrounds. It made the stand more authentic and proved the credibility of the company by using some of the more technical minded staff to interact with the public.

I really enjoyed the two days I spent on the Woodside stand and was lucky enough to chat to some fantastic members of the public, and also some staff members I hadn’t met previously.

Unfortunately I was too busy chatting to the public to get any pictures of myself but I’ve included one of a Woodside staff member showing a ‘show goer’ the booklet that was available at the stand.

Regards,

Maddy