Key learnings from my work placement experience

One week back and I can’t be happier!

We’ve been away from school for more than a month (Dec. 13 to Jan. 24) and I realized how much I missed school after being in a work environment for three weeks.

We got back from our work placements with so many stories, both good and not so good, but that didn’t stop us from learning everything we could from the organizations we were placed in. We were, after all, PR majors.

If you were wondering where I was placed, I chose to be placed at Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA). I went in not knowing anything about this organization and came out with an appreciation for about 120 or so people who were dedicated to making sure our airport was safe, functional, and friendly to all who use it.

While at WAA, I was able to exercise the PR knowledge we learned in class like writing fact sheets, backgrounders, event planning, and making media lists. I spent 14 work days at WAA and I must say that was too short of a stay to be able to really get a feel of what it was like to work in a corporate communications environment.

The biggest thing I learned at WAA was using tours as a function of PR. We learned in first year PR some of the tools to get the public involved and touring was definitely one of them. But I haven’t seen how it affected people until I got to experience it first hand. On my second day, I was invited to tour the new air terminal under construction. In an instant, I was able to understand what the new air terminal was all about – about transparency and community – because I was right there. I was able to see everything with my own two eyes. The information didn’t have to come from someone else; it was unfiltered. Like in communication, I think PR professionals should strive to pass information to their target audience as direct as possible, without any type of lens and as clear as possible. I think this would make their audience feel more involved because the communication was more personal.

I remembered when our class with Kenton Larsen came up with a class motto for PR.

“To propagate, not contaminate”

When I said ‘propagate’, I didn’t mean to increase by sexual or asexual reproduction. Rather, to cause to spread out and affect a great number or to foster growing knowledge of…

Being in PR, it was very easy to contaminate a message or put a spin on it. As professionals, key messages should be kept as unbiased, clear, and concise as possible. After all, it wouldn’t be called ‘key’ message if it weren’t so important.

Now that we’re back, I can’t wait to learn more about PR especially in our brand new course called Communications for Non-Profits where we learn about non-profit organizations, what their function is, how they work, and what we can do as a PR professionals to bring true value to a non-profit organization.