In May, my journey through the maze of human resources started as I joined the Strategic Development team. Having prior experience in communications and knowing my focus during the summer would be on the intranet renewal project, I had some idea of what the next four months would entail. But little did I know how deep of a dive awaited me.
During the first weeks at UPM, it quickly dawned on me how big of a project I was involved in. My main task during the summer was to focus only on the intranet content of the HR function, which, do not get me wrong, is quite immense on its own. But in addition, and especially after having studied project management, I truly enjoyed following along with the entirety of the project and seeing what all the other project teams were planning and creating. I even got to join a few other project teams outside my main HR circles and help them get their own intranet sites up and running.
As a side product of creating intrapages, I got a crash course into human resources. Having to explain things to all employees on the new intrapages as clearly as possible really required me to take a deep dive and understand the projects going on in our department and what the target of them was.
Even though my summer involved creating and modifying dozens of SharePoint pages, that is definitely not the only thing I was up to. Another big project of mine during the summer was a series on the summer workers at UPM. After contemplating for quite some time whether or not, I would be able to create a professional and high-quality video series of the summer workers without any filming or editing experience, I decided to take up the challenge and find my inner director.
Just like any other project, this one did not come without its setbacks and challenges. Not only did I have difficulties trying to find a suitable editing tool that did not make my laptop crash every time and was easy enough for me to master in the brief period of time, but I also felt very at a loss when I finally got into the studio for the first time without any experience on how to turn the mic even on.