Today marked the advent of my experience at SAS. I was assigned to the internal and external departments of corporate communications. I started the day in internal communications. There I discussed with a team member the ins and outs of SAS as an organization. She explained to me the typical things that she does on a daily basis, and how imperative it is that companies such as SAS have good intra-organizational communication to ensure all of the employees understand the vision behind all of the purposeful actions taken. We then attended a department meeting. In the meeting, I watched as the employees discussed how they could make their direct communication with the rest of the organization’s employees more accessible, and how they could improve their reception to the rest of the organizations’ thoughts and concerns. It was very interesting to hear and begin to understand how the organization works in this fashion. After the meeting, I moved to another building and ate an excellent lunch.
Following lunch, I was taken to the top floor of one of the primary buildings on SAS campus. I walked by Dr. Goodnight’s office, and into the office of SAS’ Director of External Communications. She explained to me the extent to which the organization really has a diverse set of needs and explicated upon the types of sub-departments within the general external communication department that work together. I learned a lot about the public relations team, and how external communications works a lot with internal communications to ensure that the message remains consistent across the plethora of programming platforms in use by SAS. I watched how one of the employees dealt with a problem, where the internal and external communications were not conveying the same message. She dealt with it swiftly by directly communicating with members of the internal communications part of the company, and the issue was resolved smoothly. Overall, my first day was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about SAS’ organization communication!