G&B UpOver

A bit about work...

Wow - June since the last post...slack

The last couple of months have been exceptionally busy both on the work front and socially.

First work (well Geoff's work).

The team recently went through Black Thursday - a day when big announcements were made across the business that also affected our team.

The day started with a meeting where Darren (my boss) announced that he was leaving the business after five years. Very sad but not exactly unexpected. He's been a bit frustrated by the time it takes to do things and the amount of 'managing up' he has to do. Also five years is a long time. He's off to the dark side and will be working for an agency. Everyone was quite emotional about his announcement. He has a lot of respect and admiration in our team. It's a real shame for me as he was the main reason for me moving over here - to learn from the best. Oh well, I got eight months so that's great!

The next announcement was a change to the structure of the Corporate Affairs team (my wider department). This was done by the big boss and it meant changes to all of the teams within the department (Internal Communications included).

After this meeting we went back into a meeting with just our team to get the details of what the changes mean for us. Darren announced that the team was going from 15 people down to nine - quite a cut. Six of my team are now out of a job. He then met with each of the team individually and let them know where they fitted in the structure (if at all!). I was last as I was just on assignment and (thankfully) he has asked me to stay on to the end of the contract. Yay!!!

Unfortunately Karen, Sam, Heather, Emma, Mark and Karen M no longer have jobs and will be leaving before end of September. Most of them are actually happy about it which is good.

Louisa (the person who I am covering) secured a role as Internal Communications Manager, Business and Strategy - a much bigger job. That means that over the next few months I'm doing this job. It includes ghost writing for the Chief Executive, communicating all financial results and business performance, launching the new strategy of the company to the business and organising, writing and attending the Chief Executives Global roadshow - not bad for a little kiwi boy! I am really enjoying the new challenge!

Darren had his final leaving do last week which was exceptionally sad. We had a few drinks at The Bunk - a local pub. It was a very pleasant evening sitting outside getting slowly sloshed. Darren gave a very moving farewell speech (not a dry eye in the house) and said some very nice things to everyone in the team. Here's a pic of him mid flow.

We also had a caricaturist (sp?) doing pictures of everyone. Here's what he thought of me...

Finally on the work front - I got to attend a brilliant course in June. I am officially now an Internal Communications Black Belt!

It was a four day residential course through Melcrum Publishing (specialists in Internal Communications). It was held at the Cranfield School of Management and was called the Internal Communications Black Belt Program. Read about it >> here. Twas brilliant and I learnt HEAPS! God, it's good to get together with a group of people and talk about Internal Communications! Not something that happened too often in NZ. In fact there were more people in the class (about 16) than in the entire IC industry in NZ!

Bridge is also having a brilliant time at work. She really does have an awesome team and very much enjoys the camaraderie that she's built up.

Last week, she organised a team building day clearing bracken from Snellsmore Common. It was a hot day (mid-30s) but everyone seemed to have a good time. Here's some pics from the video she took of the day.