My name is Arianna, and I am going into my final year of Business Management and International Relations. Upon completing my third year I was looking to gain an internship and came across the Aberdeen Internship Programme at the University. After applying I was accepted to be the Communications Intern within the Estates & Facilities Directorate with the title of the internship being: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.
From understanding what ‘Directorate’ meant prior to my interview, the time flew to the first day of the internship at the beginning of June. As someone who has worked in the healthcare industry with members of the public, the thought of working in an office environment was daunting, however upon reflection I had nothing to worry about. After meeting the interns of 2022, I met with my line manager to determine what the plans were for the next 10 weeks. I was set the following four tasks:
- Understand what hard-to-reach staff want from the Directorate
- Update the Estates & Facilities Website
- Develop a Staff Newsletter Template
- Take new photographs of campus
The E&F Directorate consists of Operations, Facilities Services, Planning & Development, Student Accommodation and Catering & Commercial Services in addition to Sustainability and Health & Safety. It was important for me to gain a baseline understanding of the current levels of communications across all departments and identify any areas of improvement. In doing so, I met with harder-to-reach staff including meeting with cleaning staff at 5am to learn about what they wanted from the Directorate in terms of receiving information. These meetings were crucial to understand what the expectation is from staff and their honest opinions about what current levels of communications are like.
Soon after, I began to work on the E&F website. After completing OpenText CMS training I looked at our current website and our competitor universities’ webpages to gain an understanding of what others do. After planning the changes I would make, and ensuring that they were possible, I went ahead and worked on implementing these changes. The images below show the before (left) of the landing page of the website (the page you see as soon as you click on the Estates & Facilities tab), and the after (right) is the new landing page.
One method that had been previously used to improve communications to all staff within the Directorate was through a staff newsletter. Part of my internship was to redesign this newsletter, creating a more reader-friendly format and that is what I did! It was important to me to make it as inclusive as possible whilst keeping it short and sweet. This was easier said than done because the Directorate covers such a vast range of departments and over 400 members of staff so to keep it short proved to be a difficulty.
Upon reflection of the past ten weeks, there has not been one aspect of the internship that has not been enjoyable. The role has been very independent which I thoroughly enjoyed as it meant I could take more control on how I went about achieving each goal. The guidance and support I received from each member of staff within the Directorate has been second to none and I am incredibly grateful to have been given this opportunity. The Internship programme has been very well organised and run from day one, and I would truly recommend this programme to anyone looking to gain some work experience. Everything I have learned over the past ten weeks has been so valuable and I will take with me to future employment.
