Putting Skills to the Test

Nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing your hard work pay off. I realised that when I first got my hands on the special ANZAC Day edition of Programmed’s quarterly newsletter, which I had played a big part in producing. 

  The company newsletter goes out to staff in Programmed offices across Australia and New Zealand, and as part of the ANZAC Day special employees had been asked to send in personal stories about their family’s involvement in wars. A huge number of submissions were emailed in and they were all incredibly different. From a simple timeline of a great-grandfather in WWII to a hand-written letter from a man shot seven times during the landing at Gallipoli. There were tales from Vietnam, experiences on board navy vessels and stories from more recent conflicts. Sorting through these was no easy feat. In fact, it was pretty emotional. A lot of employees had gone to the effort to do some research on their families and write up a few pages on a relative who had passed away. It was moving to read how proud these people were of their ancestors. It reminded me that to do your job properly you’ve got to have some emotional investment in your work. Of course, at the stay time you have to stay professional.

One of the biggest challenges was that I felt I needed to do justice to peoples stories and represent them in the right way. I had to ensure that the articles made sense and were factually correct. Aside from looking at my finished articles from the perspective of the general reader, I tried to look from that of the person that had submitted it. With war being such an important and emotional subject for so many people, it was important not to misinterpret anyone.

 The other day I saw a guy who is part of the digital marketing company that Programmed hires for photo shoots and to print the quarterly papers. He told me that people in his Melbourne office had read the Anzac edition and really liked it, which pleased me a lot. The challenges in writing the articles gave an insight in to what it must be like to write professionally, whether it be for PR, journalism or any other role. It’s not easy to think that there will be people reading and scrutinizing your work, but in the end I'm proud to see my name printed next to these articles, especially for such a important subject.