By: Everardo Alanis Fuentes
About halfway through my internship my amazing boss Amanda gave me the opportunity to help with the internal newsletter that was due to be distributed around the office early to mid August. This project was very exciting and I loved being a part of it. In a general description I had to go around the office interviewing and getting information off different people for the newsletter sometimes I even had to convince them to participating, at which point I used my good luck and charms to get them to help…. You have no idea how many times I failed but every interview, every meeting, and everyone I met was always pleasant and we always had a laugh.
Some of the Stories that I wrote were serious interviews with different executives in the office regarding changes in policy and other relevant news of that magnitude. There were also multiple stories which were more personal and smaller about weddings, competitions, fun questions, and such, this types of questions were the ones i preferred as they gave me a big opportunity to get to know my colleagues. I will always remember two things about this internal news, the story about an executive who had a pigeon as a pet who had recently found a mate and laid eggs, and the other one was one of my invention for which I went around the office asking different people (this question was based on something I read on the news) whether they would ever change their last name to the name of a certain type of food and in exchange they could get that type of food for free for life, this brought some funny conversations.
I think from everything I did during my internship this is the one that taught me the most. We had always talked about the benefits and possibilities of internal communications during lectures and tutorials, but to see it up close, to see it happening, changing is a different thing entirely. From the moment I started asking questions people started laughing and slowly the whole environment in the office started to change and lighten up. Coworkers would ask with anticipation when the newsletter was gonna arrive so they could read it and have some fun. When it finally came out the office was full of laughter and the tension disappeared everyone enjoyed it. Thanks to this I can now see better the benefits of internal communication and why it's important. Talking about this with some of my friends outside of Public Relations they didn’t understand, they didn’t see why it's important nor did they believe me when I said it did make things different, but to all you PR students I have to say, never underestimate Internal Communications and its power to lift the morale of the company, organisation, or office.
Of Course it wasn't all flowers and roses there was a time during this project when everything got extremely tense... To the point of almost explosion, but more about that later in my next blog: "When The Bomb Drops And Shit Hits The Fan".
1 comment:
Hi Lalo! It's so good to hear that you are learning and experiencing so much from this internship! Being a part of something such as the company's internal newsletter is really amazing, as the entire office and all the staff will be seeing your work! Going around the office to interview people is something that must have been very nerve-wrecking yet fulfilling. However, from our previous group works together I know that with your out-going personality, it must have been a breeze for you:) As you said, internal communications is indeed something very important and vital within an organisation. Keep up the good work!
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