The Last Hurrah : Making Recommendations

The Last Hurrah : Making Recommendations

The last day of my internship is long gone and my report well underway, so I figure now is a good time to stop and take a look back at my notes and musing of what I think should be different about PR at Netball WA.

In writing the organisation overview, thoroughly reading the marketing and communications plan and other official documents like the corporate sponsor introduction booklet ('Becoming a Partner Booklet') and the five year strategic plan (2013-2018), some major things stuck out that needed to be addressed to maximise the good that PR could do for Netball WA.

For starters, there were soooo many channels; right from the normal stuff like a range of social media accounts and websites, through to a whole range of regularly sent electronic direct mail. On top of this, across four sectors of the workplace, almost every employee had regular contact with a range of external key publics – from parent of developing players to corporate sponsors. These communications take place without monitoring or significant training from the communications team, meaning that communications coming out of other departments is varied and the communications experience at each interaction differs.

Another strange aspect of the organisation’s operations was the four key pillars of objectives and the four functional sectors of the workforce do not link well, it seemed very odd to have such a serve an imbalance of resources for each of the organisations key objective areas.

Another aspect was the residual impacts of the ‘go with the gut’ communications strategy that was in place at Netball WA until recently. While the team have developed a five-year communications strategy that is currently implemented and seems to suffice, there is very little reference to any research or environmental scans, meaning that decisions to implement or alter strategies are often made with little background knowledge about organisations implementing similar tactics.

As well as a revamp of internal communications to achieve streamlining of work efforts and follow on communications coming out of the organisation, the communications strategy objectives are not SMART (which isn’t surprising due to the insufficient research done prior to their creation).

It was definitely a learning process from day one where operations seemed to be effective and smooth, to the final day when I had notice a number of potential changes. It takes a critical eye to see through seemingly effective operations and onto the areas in which it could be improved.