Time to Reflect and Getting Back in the Game!

Whilst it has been a long time in between my third and final blog post (this one), I've had a lot of time to think about my time at KCGM and how my internship went and I thought now would be a good time to post as I've been lucky enough to have been offered a position working for them again, despite the industry struggling earlier on in the year.

My time working at KCGM provided a lot of experience and helped me to apply things I've been taught in class, in a real life situation. Every time I go back, I learn something new and the company and the team make it in their best interests to help me better myself as a PR professional and continue to throw challenges at me, which I may not think I'm ready for, but they believe I'm perfectly capable of doing the job whilst still giving me guidance.

I have been told by the team that the Underground Tours I arranged earlier this year have been a great success (let's hope this is true!) and last week would have been the end of them.

Being able to apply everything I've learnt in Public Relations over the last few years, including writing techniques, event planning/management, issues management, crisis management, CSR and image management, has opened up my eyes and cemented my love and passion for Public Relations.

Whilst I know I should broaden my horizens, working in Community Relations is my dream job. It incorporates my love for PR with my belief in giving back to people into one, nice, challenging position. At the moment, largely thanks to my work placement with KCGM, there is no other area I'd rather work in. Ideally, given the opportunity, I would love to go back to Kalgoorlie to permenantly work for the organisation due to the broad range of responsibilities and opportunites presented to me.

Finally, I'd like to thank the team at KCGM for once again going out of their way to give this position for me in order to help with my course, despite industry struggles and as I've probably already stated way too many times, I can't thank them enough for the experiences they continue to give me. I feel extremely priveleged to be able to be a part of such a wonderful team of people and to feel as valued as I do when I work there.

As this is my final blog post, I'd like to wish all of you luck with your future endeavours and careers and hope all of you love whatever you end up doing with your degrees :)

Taneika

 “Coming together is a beginning.
 Keeping together is progress.
 Working together is success.”    Henry Ford                          

My latest project is trying to increase awareness of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The disorder relates to the risks drinking has to an unborn baby. The impact of drinking alcohol during pregnancy can create lifelong issues that are not curable. However FASD is completely preventable. The key message is that not drinking during pregnancy is the safest option.

Aiming to shift cultural norms and changes lifelong habits to improve public health is a big job, with a relatively small team and budget allocated to get the job done. My internship involves bringing people together and equipping them to make a change in the community.

It seems impossible that a team of two people could make a change but internal communications, partnerships with other health agencies and community involvement make this possible. Some examples include:

Internal communications

• Ensuring the message given by people in the agency is consistent: that not drinking during pregnancy is the safest option.
• Training doctors, nurses and those involved in pregnancy planning or testing to talk to clients about the risks of drinking while pregnant and provide strategies to ensure success.
• Supporting employees in having alcohol free pregnancies by providing non-alcoholic options at events and planning social group outings where alcohol is not the focus.

Partnerships with other health agencies

• Developing sustainable partnerships with a shared vision of reducing incidents of FASD and using the strengths of the different agencies to promote the message (that might be time, resources, skills and abilities).
• Recognising different backgrounds and use this diversity to support development of different initiatives. For example indigenous health groups can ensure messages are culturally appropriate and help reach areas of the population that may not be seen by traditional health care providers.
• Ensuring communication between partner agencies is effective, regular and timely so that a consistent message is presented to the community. This is especially important if new information is released or in times of crisis communication.

Community involvement

• Raising public awareness about FASD and influencing the target audience to change values and behaviours. Drinking can be a social norm and people have reported feeling isolated as they are not able to be involved in social activities if they don’t drink.
• Educating and equipping people for change through workshops, events, media releases and provision of information designed to provide options to support alcohol free pregnancies.

 

Through all this consideration needs to be given to ‘best practice’ and the strong ethical guidelines around health promotion. There are many social detriments to health and long lasting, community wide change involves strong strategic planning and a long term commitment by health promotion agencies to addressing the issue.

The scope of the project may seem large but I am encouraged by reading about Canada’s success at raising awareness, and reducing incidents of FASD. This can only be achieved through a holistic approach and by working together.

My degree in public relations has enabled me to be confident in engaging, working with the media and planning events but it is just the first chapter in making a difference in a health promotion setting.

Fast paced and slow moving

When I helped coordinate my first ever event, and 1500 people ended up turning up, I remember being so incredibly stressed, yet the feeling when something went right was amazing. As stressful as organising and coordinating that Open Day was, it was one of the most rewarding and fun experiences of my life so far. I'm feeling the same way with the upcoming (possible) two month tour event.

As it still isn't a confirmed event due to waiting on approvals etc (we're keeping our fingers and toes crossed it can happen), it's been a little difficult to coordinate an event you don't know if you're having. Especially in the current financial situation - you don't exactly want to go ahead and spend so much money to be told it's not happening anymore. As a result, it's been stressful as there is so much work to do in regards to preparation and possibilities, however, nothing can go ahead yet officially. I've been spending my time doing as much as I possibly can to have everything organised to push and move forward when we get the go-ahead. I've also completed my script for the short film which will be edited this month for release in September.

Unfortunately, not much new has happened as of yet due to the mass workload of the two projects, however, I wrote my first article for the organisation's internal newsletter. This has helped me to try and hone my writing skills as the internal newsletter allows you to have a little fun, whilst I'm so used to writing formally.

I've unfortunately only got one more week left of my internship this time around, and once again I don't want to leave. Hopefully the project will have taken off when I write my final blog post next week.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic time at their work placements :)

Difficult times ahead but we're still moving forward

Since my last post a few weeks ago, a lot has been happening at KCGM. I've been making good progress on my projects for the Mt. Charlotte 50th anniversary so far and I thankfully haven't had too many struggles. I've definitely been kept on my toes and being at the forefront of organising logisitics, interviews and meetings has kept me busy.

The tours and the DVD I mentioned I was a part of are still underway and are still a major working progress, however things are going well and I felt like I really accomplished something today at work (which sounds like a silly thing to mention, but being on a large mine site, safety is #1 priority and last Friday I spent about 4 hours of my day in meetings and felt like I hadn't achieved much that day!). It has been difficult to get the ball rolling in regards to my projects as certain procedures were absolutely necessary before too much work was commenced, however after today's TBRA and visit to the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society, I definitely have plenty to do in the next couple of days.

One thing I have found interesting - and is something I wouldn't normally get to experience - is how my organisation is responding to the gold price plummet. Some people might have heard of the plummet in the price of gold earlier this year which sent the gold mining industry into dismay. As a result, KCGM has been reviewing budgets, however, this has sent the local media into a frenzy. I've now experienced firsthand how easy it can be to take advantage of these kinds of situations for a story. There have been some, shall we say, not so friendly articles produced over the past couple of weeks, however it's great to see how KCGM is dealing with the negative portrayal of the gold mining industry in general lately (mentions of possible redunancies etc). In addition to community engagement and employee relations, issue management is another topic I've found incredibly interesting during my studies. As budget is currently under review, there are currently no definite yes or no answers so nothing can be confirmed to the media, but whilst there has been a big focus on the low gold price at the moment (it's slowly starting to rise again - yay!) and how significant the impact on mining in WA, it's been relatively good timing as last weekend was the annual KBULG tree-planting day in which KCGM is a major sponsor. In addition to this lovely bit of positive media, KCGM has also had great coverage nation wide thanks to an article which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week which reflects the journalist's experience of the Super Pit Tour.

Once again, I'm still enjoying my internship and I really don't want it to end in two weeks. I love it too much!

I'll be back soon with another update and I'll let you know how my projects are coming along.

Back in the mining game

It has been a week since I started my internship at KCGM. Fortunately for me, this is my third time working for the organisation as a student. Every time I rejoin the Community Relations team at KCGM (which is a part of the Environment and Social Responsibility department), they welcome me with open arms and throw projects at me which are even more challenging than the last time.  The first time I worked there, I got to do a bit of everything, my second stint gave me the experience doing a bit of everything and more, including organising a community open day for the tourist mine, of which over 1500 people attended. This time around, I've been thrown into the deep end once more and I'm loving it.

As KCGM is a gold mine which is not only on the door step of the City of Kalgoorlie, but also has operations which are on the historical Golden Mile; catering to the needs of residents, local businesses and other stakeholders and celebrating the history of what made the city it is today, is very important. It is the 50th anniversary of continuous operations at Mt. Charlotte operations this year and I've been given responsibility to help organise the two months worth of celebration tours coming up later this year. Some of my responsibilities include: Assessing risks in Team Based Risk Assessments (TBRAs), figuring out a budget, organising logistics, tickets, ensuring the safety of others, writing tour notes, procedures and work instructions for tour participants and working out a media plan.

In addition to this, I am helping to produce and write a short film celebrating the history of Mt. Charlotte which will go straight to be sold in the Super Pit Shop on DVD. Some responsibilites include script writing, research, conducting interviews and piecing it altogether. As this comes under the same major Mt. Charlotte project, everything is coming together pretty nicely and I had the amazing opportunity to do my underground induction today in preparation for heading underground for filming and tours and I got to head about 600m underground which probably made me way too excited, all things considering.

Once again, I'm thoroughly enjoying my work placement so far and am fortunate enough to be able to do it for this the internship unit. I'm curious to see what happens over the next few weeks due to the gold price crisis which is a huge issue at the moment and one that affects KCGM greatly due to its sheer size, however I'll let you know how my projects are coming along shortly and how things start to pan out over the next few weeks in the mining industry. It's ever growing and always changing.

Engagement is only a couple of rings away.

Community engagement, especially for a political office, is a peculiar beast. A long time staffer once tried to sum up the situation, he said: “People come to political offices for one reason; they want something,” and while that is true in so many ways, I don't believe it give credence to the scope of what people actually want.

In my experience there are two kinds of people who go to politicians for help. The first are lobbyists of one kind or another, and the second are people who are at their wits-ends with no where else to turn. The latter, the people who are at their wits-ends, are the reason I went into politics.

During my internship there have been several cases where people have come into the office desperate for help having no where else to turn. Some people cannot be helped but others you can help untangle the bureaucracy that is Government and have them walk out the door with a smile on their face and their problem solved, and that is incredibly rewarding. Form helping someone with an immigration problem to assisting with a Centrelink quandary sometimes people just need a leg-up.

Do I think any aspect of my Public Relations degree is able to assist with this kind of community engagement? No. Not really. You can’t teach empathy.

But Community Engagement isn’t just about inbound calls, outbound is, as we’ve been told often enough, just as important, and keeping good relationships with sporting groups, community advocacy groups, residents, schools etc. is another key aspect of what I do and an aspect in which the skills taught in Curtin's PR degree have helped.

This week we did a mail out outlining the Government’s new dental health scheme for kids and lower income Australians. This went out to several thousand houses and is a great example of the kind of outbound communications tactics we use. But of course, as any PR101 lecturer will tell you, outbound doesn’t work effectively by itself, which brings me to the final two important aspect of Community Engagement in my job.

The first is face-to-face ‘open air offices’ whereby people are given the opportunity to meet with the Member at a predetermined time and location and ask questions or seek advise. These are always hit and miss and often depend on the level of apathy in the community, but they are none the less an important part of the democratic process, politicians do represent 'the people'.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on social media and specifically Facebook. One of the first things I did when I started this job was create a social media presence for my boss because it creates those very important symmetrical lines of communication, which has worked quite well but is still in its infancy.

So, that’s me for today. All the best with your own experiences - Ron.

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