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.
