All the good times must come to an end.

 

These seven weeks has really flown by! Being here at TAC for three days per week has really been valuable and a good learning curve for me. This internship especially gave me an insight into how it works in the public sector. Something that I quickly realised when working in the government is that everything takes a longer time when it comes to proposals and how rapidly those to changes can be implemented. Although I have been making suggestions to the outlook of the website, drafting up a website business plan, organised surveys, drafting speeches for a social media presentation and so forth, these methods cannot just start to get used. These suggestions have to go through a whole process of levels before the decision is made and they decide if it is important to the organisation or not. Sometimes, this might even take between 3-6 months, and if it is approved, it might not even be relevant anymore. I am not sure if I like that when discussing the public sector, I do not know if it is the right position for me to begin my career because it might just be to slow paced to what I am used to. But I suppose, if a position occurs that may suit your qualifications, you also need to start somewhere when you are a fresh graduate from university to gain knowledge in the PR industry, you cannot expect to score the top job in your first employment. In essence, my time at TAC has been a good experience and has left me with serious thoughts about my future decisions.

I wish all my readers the best for the future and I hope you all achieve your future goals.

A need to succeed - Employee communication

We have always been taught how important stakeholders are for an organisation. In this post I will briefly discuss how my internship keeps this at a high satisfaction level.

In a PR profession, communication with the internal stakeholders such as employees should always be kept on a satisfied level. In essence, without good communication skills within a company, the external communication could never succeed.  At TAC, the employees’ satisfaction is highly regarded by the organisation. By the use of different communication methods such as; email, face-to-face discussion, regular lunch-dates on Friday’s and mid-morning tea at least once per week, the atmosphere in the office is always on a positive level. It is also visible in the employers, as many of them have been there for a long period of time, although it is common in a Government position to switch departments.

In addition, every second Friday, TAC holds a regular toastmaster meeting for its employers, to improve the verbal communication and appearance skills from its employees’. After measuring the outcome of the toastmasters meetings by doing a survey, the toastmasters’ members said they were 100 per cent pleased of the improvement of the verbal and appearance skills. However, they also said that they enjoyed the toastmaster meeting because the interaction with friends on a non-serious level.

TAC also acknowledges its staff members birthdays, both on the Intranet and with a celebration in the office with presents and food provided by the department.

In conclusion, TAC has successfully created a good communication strategy with its internal stakeholders, and it is definitely shown in the quality of the work within the organisation.

The importance of social media

In every PR unit during my degree I have learnt about social media and the impact it may have on the community. As I started my first week at the Training Accreditation Council (TAC), one of the first tasks I got given was to create a presentation about social media and what impact is has on reaching stakeholders for governments and businesses.

It is inevitable that social media is playing a dominant role in the society, both positive and negative, and especially for businesses. As a PR professional, we need to understand what possibilities and disadvantages social media may have. After doing my research, I understood that TAC does not include social media as a tool for them to communicate with their clients, although primary research stated that a large per cent of their clients used these social forums. The secondary research stated the importance for governments to include social media as a tool to develop a relationship with stakeholders.Please see Social media guidelines In today’s era where businesses are hugely dependent on the public’s viewpoint and where social media is used by other government bodies as a way of not only communicating with the society, but also as a way to create a positive brand image, TAC can definitely benefit from the use of social media. It came to my knowledge after doing in-depth research internally that TAC has been un-successful with previous communication strategies, and has a large amount of complaints from clients. However, if implementing social media tools as well as traditional communication techniques such as telephone, email and verbal communication, I believe TAC would see a greater per cent age of satisfied stakeholders, both external and internal. Social media is a time-consuming communication method to apply, but after doing the research, it could have more benefits then negatives for TAC, and may create a more positive corporate image then what it is today.

It's a first for everything

Today was my first day the 20-day internship at the Department of Education Services. I will be located in the section of Training Accreditation Council, who regulates courses delivered at higher education departments and TAFE’s, which is delivered by Registered Training Providers (RTOs). Before I commenced my internship, I had done research about the Department and TAC; however, I could not get a clear understanding the services they provide. Luckily, on my first day I had an information session with one of the Register Officers at TAC before I started to commence any work, in order to get a better knowledge of the industry. During the session, my questions were all being answered. How does a person become an RTO? How do you accredit a course? The answers are too complicated to outline in this blog post, but believe me, at the end of my first day I am not even 100 per cent sure because it is a lengthy and complex process that will take time to learn. One of the main issues I could identify without being with the organisation for a long time is the webpage and how it is out dated and difficult to navigate. TAC receives a large amount of complaints regarding communications problems on its website. This became one of my first tasks, to draft up a new webpage that could improve the outlook of TAC as a modern organisation. Sadly, I had to use Microsoft Word because it was not any design programs available so the template looked quite basic. When working in the public sector, new implementations has to go through a series of decision making progresses to identify if those changes could be utilised or not within the allocated budget. Being in the public sector, funding is always a problem. Previously, one of the Managers for Regulation had asked to increase the funding so the needed update for the webpage would be possible to implement but that proposition was rejected. My supervisor wanted me to organise the webpage to reflect on how the organisation is operating, but in a monetary efficient way. My suggestions included tools such as social media, a search function on the webpage to reduce the difficulty of navigation, more inviting pictures on the homepage, changes of the position of the navigation buttons and so forth. All to be more user friendly and less complicated. However, time will examine if the suggestions are applied or not during my placement at TAC.

Until next time,

Karolina