From the President
April
From the President
Sizing up our brand
Once upon a time, in the days when women wore boxy jackets with whopping shoulder pads and I didn’t know anyone with a mobile phone, I was the sole technical writer at United Bank in Christchurch. It was my job to create and maintain a suite of manuals for the staff at 90 branches across New Zealand – manuals that documented all our products (loans, deposit accounts, insurance, credit cards), equipment such as our ATMs, and also our credit and personnel policies. I flitted about, from department to department, liaising with tellers, product managers, GMs, training staff, and other SMEs, gathering intelligence and communicating busily via the written and spoken word.
During that time, our Human Resources team brought in a group of specialist evaluators from a company called Hay, whose job it was to size and rank our jobs. These experts worked with selected staff from various departments to discuss what our jobs involved, so that they could decide our position on the pay scale. As it happened, I had a colleague in HR who had worked with me on a project, and knew at first-hand what I did. That was lucky for me, as she successfully argued for my inclusion on the Management scale, which meant a higher salary and more scope for future increases.
As technical communicators, we have significant ability to contribute to the success and growth of the companies we work for. Through our intelligent intervention, we can reduce waste, improve in-company communication, work as customer advocates, identify and promote opportunities for improvement – the list goes on and on. The featured Southern Communicator article this month provides ideas and a template to help you demonstrate your worth.
The Technical Communicators Association is working hard to ensure that your contribution is recognised and rewarded. As part of that work on our brand, change is afoot. We’re not ready to tell you more quite yet, but be on the lookout for an announcement in next month’s newsletter.
Claire Nicholson, Vice President
Claire Nicholson joined the committee fairly recently, but she has been our unofficial brand champion for several years. She has been steadily working on improving the messages and pictures we impart via our website and other channels, as well as helping to run some very successful events in the Christchurch branch – including the last conference. In recognition of her significant contribution to the committee’s work, we recently appointed her as the TechCommNZ Vice President, a role which was left vacant at the AGM in October.
Farewell to Rhiannon Davies
In March we farewelled our Communications Coordinator, Rhiannon Davies. She has tweeted, posted, interviewed, and reported for TechCommNZ for the last year, and been a huge support to the Marketing team of Kaye Churches, Claire Nicholson, and me. She is now more than fully occupied with her third year studies at Massey and her 40 hour/week part-time job. We wish her every success with her challenging year ahead.
Renewal time is on its way
It’s nearly that time of year when we contact existing members for subscription renewal. The benefits of membership include access to the data in our annual salary survey which we've just made available, but there are many more. Since June 2014, we’ve introduced this newsletter, negotiated discounts on some IITP workshops, invested in our future professionals via our support of ICT-Connect in schools, and made it easier for you to access the Southern Communicator journal. In other words, we’re constantly striving to do more for you, our members.
For those who are not already members, you can read about the membership benefits and join up at any time.
I hope you enjoy and share our April newsletter!