Brett Lee, the Deep End and Faking It Until You Make It!

Wow. This is, by far, the best unit I have ever taken.

I started my internship back in February and have now been with my company, Onsite Health Solutions, for just over 3 months. Not only am I completely devoted to them, but am constantly reminded why I chose to pursue Public Relations and how lucky I am to truly enjoy something I will be doing for years to come.

Working for a health company that supplies health programs to mine sites would never have been my first choice, however when the opportunity came up I did my research, had my interview and suddenly found myself in the office very much a part of the team 7 days later. Of course, I felt daunted and completely nervous that I had managed to talk myself into a job that barely existed in a marketing department that had never really heard of PR.. the thought of finding myself unable to deliver anything of value to the company constantly played on my mind. However, instead of freaking out and quitting, I decided to give it everything.. "fake it till you make it girl!" Turns out, I barely had to fake it at all.

Thrown into the deep end my internship started with only one week until one of the biggest events for the organisation ever. Having just been acquired by and slowly getting integrated into the Sanitarium 'Health and Wellbeing Division', my organisation was throwing a 'Healthy Breakfast' and tour of some of the sites we work on to announce the new partnership. Hosted by Brett Lee. Oh my god, Brett Lee.

With a whole heap of excitement and a head buzzing with creative ideas, I set about finding out what kind of media strategy the marketing team had put together and how I could help. None. Oh no. So with two days in the office (one working week) until Brett Lee landed in Perth, I jumped in and began trying to find out as much as I could about the organisation, the new partnership, their current programs goals and objectives, and the itinerary for Brett's stay in Perth.

Within one day, I had several Press Releases, a Media Kit and event running sheets for the Breakfast and Brett's tour of an FMG site in Port Hedland. Within two days I had been on the phone and email to several journalists, some nice, some rude, and had secured us some press in a local newspaper in Port Hedland. The event the following week went smoothly, Brett was amazingly down to earth and friendly and our clients were absolutely delighted when we produced our bright red OHS hats to them to be signed by Brett Lee.

There was really only one problem encountered for the week, and that was a small thing called cyclone Rusty. Ah. So I forget about the issues management document, oops.

Luckily cyclone Rusty wasn't too bad in the end, but unfortunately it did mean that the tour was called off and Brett Lee never got to see our sites in Port Hedland, so much work for what felt like nothing. Looking back now though it is never nothing for the experience and huge learning curve I tackled in my first week, and we did in fact get some press. I meekly showed my boss the news clipping from a local paper in Port Hedland (from a journalist I had been talking to in the lead up to the event) very disappointed with the small article that could have been a front page spread, only to have her jumping up and down in excitement at getting some press! Even though it was a small article in a local newspaper, I was suddenly the bright new star in the office, the directors and my fellow colleagues all congratulated me on such a fantastic job. That was the moment I realised just how huge an impact public relations could have for this company, and (more importantly for my nerves) how supportive they would be over the coming months as I set about carving out a solid PR foundation for the future.

3 months later and it just keeps getting better, but you will have to wait until my next blog post.. 

Rolling out social media to a Mining Company...

Right now I am ten days into my placement and absolutely loving it.

I am at INPEX which is a worldwide oil and gas exploration and production with more than 70 active projects globally. I have been working within the External Affairs team which consists of 13 members all of whom are extremely passionate about the work they do and have been more than happy to lend me a hand or answer any questions I might have. Working within such a large and diverse company has certainly broadened my scope of the Public Relations world as to just how much time and effort goes into every event, every media release and every decision made behind closed doors. 

It is a very busy time at INPEX as they are in the construction phase of the Ichthy's LNG Project, a world class project implemented to develop the gas and condensate field in the Browse Basin, the biggest of its kind it is expected to produce LNG for the next 40 years and represents the largest discovery of hydrocarbon liquids in Australia in the last 40 years. 

Last week I attended a meeting regarding the new implementation of a social media outlet internally amongst employees at INPEX, this social media platform is called Yammer and is essentially a Facebook for the work place, I was more than intrigued as to how the company would get all employees on board in order to establish new and broader channels of communication within the company. Little did I know that it was me who would be developing a communication plan over the next few days as to how this implementation of a new social media platform would work. I was originally terrified at the thought of having to develop and present my plan to the highest levels of management but it turned out to be an extremely rewarding experience.

At University we are given weeks to produce communication plans for major assignments and we are generally in groups, I had three days to complete the plan and all I had was my own ideas and a doubt as to whether they would be good enough or not. You really don't understand how hard PR professionals work to produce such documents at such a high standard and in such a short amount of time. For the next three days I barely left my desk, not even to eat and at the end of it all I had produced something worthy of showing my supervisor and upper management, I was proud of the work I had done as were they.

For now I have a meeting scheduled with the manager in charge of social media at INPEX to present to him my plan and my ideas for getting all employees involved and onboard with the new social media platform, but I now feel confident enough to go into that meeting with my own ideas ready to present. 

I certainly hope in a future blog post I can let you know how that meeting went!

I am really excited about the challenges my placement holds for and I now understand why people say this unit is one of the most rewarding!

Until next time..

Hayley

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction." - John Crosby

My work placement is going really well. I am learning a lot and there is a great team with a vast range of experience. I have been partnered with a senior consultant who I will work with closely on projects and any other tasks that she needs done. She is a mentor figure that has years of experience including Burswood, Channel 7 and HBF and there is a lot that I can learn from her. That being said, she is new to the mining and resources industry so we are learning new terminology and processes together along the way.
 

We had a new addition to our team last week. Another junior consultant was assigned to our team and it is a great combination. I am able to bounce ideas off her and vice versa. Our workplace has been relatively quiet this week which is quite unusual compared to previous weeks but there are still other projects currently in progress and new ones coming in. In the meantime, my fellow junior team member and I have been working on streamlining a few of our processes such as our Work In Progress meetings and the spreadsheet which is used as a weekly guide in the meetings. We have been conducting some internal primary research and conducting in-depth discussions on the processes, the pros and cons and suggestions as to what they think will work best and what doesn’t work. From this internal research, my team member and I were able to discuss it and then create a new spreadsheet which was functional but simple and would streamline the meetings reducing the time.

While I have enjoyed working on client projects, I have enjoyed being able to edit and change internal processes to order streamline them to create an efficient environment. Reviewing the processes and including the entire office has helped to create something that works for the diverse teams in the office. I’m also really proud of myself that a process my team member and I have come up with works and receives positive feedback.

Meaghan King

Bentley Campus