Well, I’m at the end of my first week in the corporate communications area. How did I get here? Well, perhaps a little background…

I was a HR Manager for a state government department. Due to a government policy change, an edict came from the highest levels that corporate services areas (e.g. HR, Finance, IT, Admin Support) of a number of government departments should merge into one entity to provide these shared services back to those government departments, but at a different physical location.

Now, there are different types of “doing” HR, as far as I am concerned:

  • Operational HR, which involves processing of transactions (such as recruitment admin, processing workers compensation etc)
  • Consultative HR, which involves providing professional advice to managers on dealing with issues such as poor work performance or attendance, coming up with strategies for filling difficult positions etc and providing employees with counselling and career advice,
  • Strategic HR, where the HR Manager is a part of the organisational (or regional, in my case), executive group and working with them in the business planning process, providing input on business strategies from a HR perspective. For example, if the business plan over the next three years is to bring in some kind of special program of services, thinking about whether we would need to recruit new staff, or perhaps up-skill existing staff over the preceding period so they could do it, or, would some staff roles become defunct in the process and what would we do with them etc.

What I liked doing was Strategic HR, and I was doing that happily when an opportunity arose to work on the implementation of a new HR and payroll system. Now I was keen to get involved in the implementation because:

  1. I am a HR Manager, and a new HR system has the potential to provide me with good reporting information for such purposes as workforce planning, so I wanted to make sure I could get the sort of information I wanted,
  2. I’m a wanna-be geek, so this would combine my professional HR knowledge with a new computer application.
  3. I have a short attention span I like gaining different types of experience, so thought getting involved in this implementation would increase my skill-set.

So, I was successful in getting on to the project in a Change Management capacity. Mind you, being a Change Manager didn’t mean (in my case) not getting involved in the system build scope or technical areas (much to the distress of those for who they were a responsibility), so, poke my nose in I did. And I enjoyed it BIG TIME.

During this project, the shared services organisation was formed and my HR Manager position transferred to it, and it was planned for me to go back there after the project was finished. Of course, once the initial project was finished, two other projects came immediately after, implementing the new HR system into the client organisations of the new shared services provider, so all three client organisations were on the same system, as well as my new employer, the shared service organisation. I continued to work on the projects, a total of nearly THREE years.

So, the project was coming to an end, and it was getting to be time for me to finally take up my position in the shared services organisation. Now, if your eyes didn’t glaze over from my long explanations of the different types of “doing HR”, it didn’t appear (to me, at least) that I could practice strategic HR in my new role, as I was totally removed from the management ranks in the client organisation I was working in, so there would be no way I could be so involved in the business planning process (hell, I would hardly KNOW what the business objectives were, being now outside the organisation), so the options for me in my new organisation would clearly be in the consultative role. Not my career choice.

Fortunately, my new organisation talked to me about where I would be going after the project, and I was pretty honest about the fact that I didn’t really look forward to generalist HR (not to mention the fact that I have gained some pretty terrific change management/communications experience that would go wasted), so they made the suggestion that I might like to move to the corporate communications area. My ears pricked up right away!

So, here I am, at the end of the first week.

In my previous jobs, I was pretty certain about what I was doing and I felt that I did it pretty well. Sure, in the projects I did a LOT of communication in terms of newsletters, presentations, posters, as well as some pretty complex change management and communications strategies, and I got a lot of really positive feedback from managers as well as readers (cuz, you know, I like to chat and write and stuff…) BUT, I was doing this stuff as a HR Manager doing communications, not as a professional communications expert. I loved the communications aspect of my role, but I guess in my mind, I was only “playing”. NOW it has gotten serious. I’m part of the corporate communications area and I’m expected to be an expert. I’ve got all sorts of self-doubt issues going on, as well as trying really hard to get in synch with my boss, who definitely knows what she’s doing, and I don’t want to disappoint her.

Actually writing this is quite cathartic, because as I am writing it, it’s become clear to me that “everyone else” thinks I’m a great communicator, and what’s really important to me right now is impressing my boss. Well, I can’t say I’ve done anything earth-movingly impressive in the five days I’ve been in the role. Mostly, I’ve been trying to get a handle of what’s going on, what’s expected of me, and trying to understand my boss’ communications “style”. Does she like stuff produced to be really “clean” and “simple”, or does she like stuff that’s extraordinarily eye-catching and different? That’s what I need to pin down, so I can produce stuff she likes right away.

I suppose this sort of soul-searching is a part of starting a new job. Has it been the same for you? Are there any tricks or tips you could offer on how to transition without the pain? Would love to hear it!

I’ll keep the details of the sorts of things I am doing for another post. You’ve suffered enough! :bye_tb:

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