Mid Term Internship Check In

 About Me and My Internship

   My name is Abigail Good and I am a senior at Kansas State University majoring in Strategic Communications and minoring in Psychology. I will be graduating from KSU in December of 2021 (yikes). I am originally from Olathe, KS, but am now living full time in Manhattan, KS. My career aspirations are still not fully identified, but I enjoy writing, creativity and working with others. I like to say as long as I can do those things I will be a happy camper. This summer I am a Participant Communications Intern at Empower Retirement. In general terms my team at Empower assists clients communication tactics with their employees in order to ensure they understand the best plan offerings for them.  This also includes participant/employee engagement and long term plans. 

What do I do on a daily basis? 

    This internship is fully remote so I have been working out of my apartment in Manhattan, KS. This has presented it's own set of challenges, however I am still gaining lots of experience, no matter where I am doing it from. Additionally, my cat has been greatly enjoying my drastic increase of time at home.  

    I have been assigned a summer intern project that entails reorganizing and redesigning the internal website utilized by the whole communication team. This site has need been given a lot of attention since Empowers origination in 2016. This being said, there is a lot of work to be done. This is my primary focus for the summer, but I also assist in smaller side projects and I also continue to network with executives within the company and other interns. 

What does my big project entail?

    As I had mentioned, this site has not seen love in many a years, so the first step was a deep spring cleaning of outdated files. This led to many excel spread sheets that then got decoded into keep, delete and archive via color coding. This process took multiple weeks as the list of files was extensive. After we had a good rough draft we got to start on one of my favorite parts, redesigning the site to ensure it is efficient and usable for all communication employees. Most recently, I have developed a rough draft via power point for what our new site and organization may look like. 

 Whats next? 

    This rough draft will be presented to my leadership team soon and we can begin perfecting it. I also plan on conducting a small survey to learn what other employees use most on the site and what they imagine for the site. I think this is critical information because leadership wants this site to be a hub for all employees and it cannot be that if employees voices are not heard. Soon, I will also be given authority to edit the site, though I will not be redesigning the site myself. The redesigning process will take place after I leave, but they will be using my template to do so. I will be editing the site by deleting and moving and grouping documents together so that the redesigning process is much smoother. At the end of the summer, I will put together an entire presentation for executive leadership regarding my project and what I've done during my time at Empower. 

The fun stuff!

    I have learned a lot and we are only half way through the internship. I had no experience in the financial service industry before and it is more interesting than I initially thought. I really have enjoyed my time learning about the industry and sitting in on my coworkers day-to-day operations. I have really enjoyed getting to to talk to our Market Research team and our VP of Corporate Affairs. That is not including my amazingly supportive manager and mentor. I can tell that I am gaining experience and am excited for what the rest of the summer has in store for me and my snuggly coworker!