It’s the final Countdown

Hey! It is so close to the end! The countdown has finally begun for last semester of my degree (and possibly a lot of you too) to be finished!

So, here I am, my final two days and I am feeling two conflicting emotions; deflated and excited.

Let’s get the negative out of the way shall we? Deflated, reduced and disheartened is my emotion towards my time at HBF coming to an end. Throughout my placement I learn a diverse range of industry skills and knowledge and also made many friends whilst doing so. I have gained a high level of confidence not only in myself to pull through in times of pressure but in my writing skills, established my drive and my passion to make the most of what I can achieve and make a career for myself.

Onto the positive (my favourite mindset!) my final days have been simply marvellous! It started with writing some more internal communications articles for HBF’s intranet page ‘The Pulse’. Internal communications has proven to be an area of Public Relations I am finding myself drawn strongly too. I adore the idea of aligning and engaging staff through interesting and inspiring articles as well as internal initiatives.

One such example is the HBF Wellness Launch; an initiative put in place by HBF to increase the health and wellness of employees in the workplace. To effectively manage the launch Jodie and myself held a meeting with the Wellness consultants to develop efficient execution of the launch across all branches and the head office.

The meeting was interesting revolving around the launch event for HBF Wellness Program ‘HBF Balance’ bringing health and wellness to all HBF employees across 6 planes: Physical, Mental, Relationship, Social, Financial and Career health. The launch involved preparing a healthy breakfast to provide employees an idea of what constitutes as healthy and help them on their way to leading a fuller, healthier lifestyle. The breakfast bags were delivered throughout all of head office and all the branches with about 500 employees collecting their breakfast bags.

From my experience this simple equation sums up how I feel towards my future PR career:

Health Initiatives + Public Relations + Internal Communications = Where I want to be!

Straight after my meeting with Jodie and the Wellness Team the girls took me down to the HBF café (all 100% health food might I add – made on the premises) and surprised me with a PR team morning tea to say farewell and thank you for all my hard work – I feel truly blessed to have been a part of such a wonderful team of inspiring young women, and man - my manager Andrew! Women truly do dominate the PR profession haha.

Completely unrelated to PR in any way, shape or form, was that I made mini baked cheesecakes for my team to say thank you for helping me. The reason this is so exciting is that:

1. I eat sugar free; and
2. I eat gluten free

BUT, despite my mini cheesecakes being sugar and gluten free, I had each team member personally come over to thank me for such a delicious tasting dessert, my manager Andrew claimed they were “Sensational” and very well presented! Just another skill to add to my LinkedIn maybe?

Anyway catch you all later – I’m off to enjoy some more cheesecake!

Kiara xx