Back to corporate life after attending lectures for around 10 months was something that was eagerly waited for. I was privileged to get associated with Gmmco Ltd, a CK Birla Group, in its HQ office Chennai. Summers in Chennai is something that needn’t be explained in details. The environment in Gmmco is so welcoming, the employees are so friendly, that the very first day itself I made friends. The comfort zone that was built up helped me a lot during my entire course of two months. I was allotted to the Marketing & Communications department and was given a laptop on the very first day. This itself shows how much respect they have for their interns and how fast is the system there.
Working there was a great experience. Internal communications were something that was suffering in the organisation. The objective of my internship was to come up with ideas for streamlining communication and promote engagement within the employees. My reporting authority was the Asst. GM of Marcomm. She was open to all ideas and believed in smart work. The leadership even never made me feel as if I was just an intern and not a permanent employee.
My strategy towards achieving the goal of my project was first to interact with employees and get an insight of the company culture and understand the processes. After observing things, I came up with an idea of getting digital newsletter published in regular intervals, making highlights videos every month, celebrating events like “clean desk day”, “world environment day”, “ethnic day” etc. The ideas were highly appreciated the leadership and even during my course, I got a chance to work on a version of the newsletter and get it published internally. In doing so I was completely given freedom with respect of selection of content, design though I was monitored daily.
I also got an opportunity to coordinate in arranging Caterpillar brand awareness week for the employees of Gmmco. Starting from making stall, playing games, running workshops enabled me to strengthen my relationship with the employees of both Gmmco and Caterpillar. Inviting people, requesting them to come to visit the stalls to increase the footfall was something that helped me in learning how to mingle with strangers in a corporate world and get your things done in the sweetest way possible. This event gave me a chance to interact with the MD of the organisation. Interacting with him made me realise the power of the digital world and how businesses are running in this competition to leverage it.
Preparing the marketing intelligence report for the company enabled me to groom my technical skills in marketing and implement the concepts read in 1st year to solve real-time problem of a company.
My company mentor was such a lovely intelligent lady who was open to all modern ideas and ready to explore the world. The way she involved me in meetings and discussions, shows her ideology of respecting individuals and their ideas. It was great learning working under her. She can prove to be a great mentor to anyone.
