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

The Corporate Lasso

Happy week 5 everyone!

Okay so this blog is about how in-love I am! With my HBF placement of course ha! Over the duration of my internship, after getting my article published in the paper (yay again), I dove into a new line of work in PR – Internal Communications.

I worked with Jodie Leishman learning all there is to know about internal communications. Working in the not-for-profit sector, stories produced were welcoming and stimulated a sense of community amongst staff.  Thankfully they are also a lot less demanding and rigorous than outbound media releases and so much more fun to write, on the basis that I produced 15 article during my 20 days at HBF.  I love the idea of internal communications! There is something so enriching about creating a unified body of knowledge around an organisation of over 900 staff members and developing a piece that invites all staff to envision the same goals and work toward them as a team.

Those 15 intranet article were a large facet of what I produced during my internal communications experience, I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of knowing that my article will have the power to encourage over 900 HBF staff to take part in many of the wellness initiatives put in to play by HBF around the workplace. Of those internal articles published on HBF’s intranet system ‘The Pulse’, favourite article is posted below:

The Global Corporate Challenge an exciting ongoing event for the corporate world to reach their quota of 10,000 steps necessary each day for a healthy lifestyle. I produced this article from an energetic and playful perspective (one of the perk of internal communications is that you personality and style can shine through in your articles) in hopes that my energy and my love of fitness would radiate through my article and impact each HBF employee positively. Being in an already health conscious industry a lot of employees were already taking steps to change their lifestyle, a rule of thumb created was that all employees have to take the stairs instead of the lift (I did not abide by this rule, as most days I had already completed an hour of cardio or weights before 7am hit haha – my HBF team were very forgiving thankfully!). This article remains my favourite as it aligns perfectly with my beliefs and the results from this story were fantastic with employees packing healthy lunches and only healthy treats and muffins were to be allowed into meetings. A truly inspiring work place to be a part of!

Just before developing this blog contribution, I stumbled upon Holly Hazels “Don’t dread the red pen” blog entry raising the topic of constructive criticism on personally written pieces. I felt immediately connected to Holly’s blog as it related to my intranet articles. My first intranet article had a lot of edits to ensure that the language and tone matched that of HBF, however with each article the edits became minimalistic. It felt wonderful to eventually adapt to HBF’s style of writing.

Hope all is well, and that everyone is thoroughly enjoying their internships! I am currently in the process of seeking out my second work placement. Wish me luck!

Kiara Natasha xx

The four to 1four60 Ratio

First of all, Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my blog! Okay, so I presume you are all wondering what my little ratio is all about. It is simply a reflection on how I feel about internship so far.

The four to 1four60 ratio can be broken down into three simple points:

•  The first ‘four’ reflects how many days I have attended my internship;

• The 1four60 is a breakdown of my 4 years studying into days – 1460 days give or take  a leap year and all that confusion;

• The sum of all it all is that I feel in my four days at HBF I have gained more ‘useful’ and practical information than I have over the course of my Public Relations and Marketing double major. Never has the term public relations become so definitive to me, it is amazing how hands on experience can just concrete every single aspect or theory ever learnt at uni!

Anyway, let's get back to basics – I commenced my internship on 5 May 2014 at HBF Head Office on Murray Street being accepted immediately into the not-for-profits sixth floor communications family. The sixth floor is a welcoming mix of public relations, communications, marketing, events and the health funds CGU and Pharmacy sector.

My little ‘family’ includes my very approachable supervisor Andrew who is head of PR at HBF, and four driven young ladies Fleur, Jodie, Chantelle and Shae, each respectively taking care of: external public relations, internal communications, social media platforms, media and communications, working extremely close together.

Within my four days, I discovered the “bread and butter” of public relations, as Fleur so simply puts it. Pivotal to public relations is real life cases as they embody compassion and interest as well as relatable content. This “bread and butter” had me tediously stalking the HBF Run for a Reason Everyday Heroes page for five solid hours, finally emerging with a mere, but rich, six possible media grabbing stories *praise the lord*. The stories were eye opening, many being about family losses due to illness, prompting gratitude for simply being granted another day in this life, but brought to attention the realities of how cut throat the media industry can be – with only truly individual, interest sparking stories making the cut.

The afternoon of my fourth day involved taking a trip with Fleur to the local gym, meeting up with Today Tonight journalist Cassie Silver to film a brief clip for the HBF Run for a Reason Ultimate Runners Playlist segment aired on Today Tonight in May just before the run. Oh my goodness, did I learn a lesson that day - did any of you know that it takes around 45 minutes to an hour to film 20 seconds worth of footage to air on Television? Crazy right? I thought so!

One area of the internship which I guess is both a negative and positive however is the timing. I work three/four days per week which means my PR experiences at HBF are limited to smaller activities able to be completed in my two internship days, that is the negative. Here is the positive: I get to experience varied tasks relating to all different activities and initiatives held at different times of the year! Either way I am just so happy that I was given this opportunity to start with!  

Until my next blog,

Have a wonderful week!

Kiara xx