My internship was positioned in Health Promotion Board under the Health Ambassador Network Management department. It falls under the new Regional and Community Health Division. The HANM oversees the recruitment and management of HPB’s volunteers. Health Ambassador Network has grown tremendously in the past 2 years and talking about recruiting and managing volunteers, we have a total number of 5000 Health Ambassadors working with us. However, unfortunately not all the 5000 people are active in contributing their volunteering work for events.
Thus Health Ambassador Network management is currently working on new plans, which include revamping the training syllabus and designing more targeted and impactful role for our HAs. There is a need to revise the program to ensure Health Ambassadors’ skills remain relevant to suit the public’s needs. With this change, we hope to create more targeted deployment opportunities, providing Health Ambassadors with a more meaningful experience.
In other words, we have shifted into looking at the quality, focusing our engagement efforts on core group of HAs. This will be a great benefit for the HAs as it will better fit into their area of interest, providing them more opportunities and more specialised roles. We are doing this so that Health Ambassadors can continue to meet the changing needs of the community. HANM wanted to establish this through a series of workshops and tea sessions, which is the ‘Healthy Lifestyler Workshop’.
This will be a good opportunity in getting to know our current HAs better and it will also be a good chance to asses and monitor them by taking note of HAs who mention changes to their commitment level, having unsuitable behaviours such as having bad tempered or any other feedback from them. The main idea of this whole series of workshop is to split the current HAs into 3 groups where group 1 is our top 300 HAs, group 2 are the low active or recently registered HAs and lastly, group 3 are the inactive HAs.
Thus, we target to filter the HAs from 5000 plus to 700 HAs in total and after filtering the rest will become ‘Healthy Lifestylers’. DISCUSSION All of us who are working in HAN do not have a specific fixed job or work to do. All of them here handle many projects, proposals, presentations, emails and many other staffs at one go. That goes the same for me as I also have to work with many different types of tasks and not only focusing at one main assignment. Therefore, for this workshop I had quite a number of tasks to tackle with and to contribute my part.
The following is the holistic structure of how the whole workshop was being done, up to my knowledge: Healthy Lifestyler Workshop planning Creating event in CPRMS Sending out invitations to HAs Handling emails, registrations and enquiries Attendance Sheet Catering Food Booking of venue Arranging with Logistics Contacting Event Organizers for training materials Goodie bags Other needed materials The planning for the Healthy Lifestyler Workshop was done by Vanessa Tan, Acting deputy director and the HAN team as they felt that having a revamp would be better to analyse all the HAs.
They planned to call all the 5000 HAs face to face and have more of these sessions; starting off with the first 100 HAs and subsequently calling all of them for the other sessions. Up to date, we have successfully completed 5 sessions of HLW. Firstly my executive Swee Seng or Elianna Lee will create the event in our CPRMS (citizen and partners relationship management system). This is our intranet where we create all the events and store in all the details of the events and our Ambassadors. Usually if it is a small event where only 2 – 10 HAs are needed, I will get to do the deployment details.
However if it is a big event, then my executives will handle the creating and they will monitor them personally. Sending out event have my contribution as if it is a normal deployment for a small event, then I will have to create a distribution list in our system and then look at the constituency of the event and select HAs according to that constituency they live in and add them to as the targeted participants. If it is a huge event or event that does not follow the constituency basis like inviting over 100 HAs from different areas, then we will have to do a mail merge.
For this Healthy Lifestyler Workshop I have sent out about 2 to 3 blast of mail merge requesting them to sign up for the event. Following with that, I also have to constantly look for emails, as some HAs would request us to sign up for them; and I may have to reply to their queries about the event details or anything they are not sure of. In addition to this I and my colleagues will also have to keep our eyes on the registration list to gauge how many people would most probably attend the session.
Roughly after some days, by looking at the rate of the registered number of participants, we would start ordering the food. Usually for this workshop, selecting the food items will be done by Steven Lim, Manager of HPA department. He will always choose food items that are less in fat and oil and has the healthier choice symbol. My part in here is to call the catering service and confirm with them the ordering and give them details on when do we want them to deliver and set up the food. In the meanwhile, I have to concentrate on booking the venue and the resources for the workshop.
Usually I and Karen, Manager of HPA department will do this together by logging into the e-Facility Management System (EMFS) and book facility such as the auditorium, function Lounge and lecture hall and also book the resources needed for the workshop such as the tables, chairs, flip charts, whiteboards and wireless mic. Another important job I need to look at is arranging with the Logistics. I have to contact Noraini, our logistics in-charge and Gary our Event Organiser, to help us out in arranging the tables and chairs for the event.
I will have to do a floor plan and pass it to Noraini and he will arrange everything according to my design plan. I have attached the sample of a floor plan I did in the appendices below. Mostly the goodies bags will be prepared by our event organizer Gray. My executive will mail him the soft copy of the training materials and he will print them and place them inside the goodie bag along with little souvenirs such as note books, hand fans, water bottles, pamphlets and pens. Our part here is to check if all the items are correct in the goodie bags or not.
If anything is missing there, we will have to add in them and place it in the workshop venue so that we can give that out to the HAs on the event day. Beside all these major tasks, the other small work that I will have to do is to print out signage and getting ready with the clip boards, white papers and pens for the facilitators to write notes during the sharing session with the HAs. Lastly I would have to send out a Gsms to the HAs reminding about the event and letting them know that we are providing breakfast or any other last minute information.
When all these are arranged finished, it means that we are ready for our big event day. On the day of Healthy Lifestyler Workshop, I and my colleagues will arrive earlier to the venue to set up the registration table, collect the invoice from caterer and to paste the signage and get ready with the attendance sheet along with all the writing materials and we will wait for the HAs to arrive. Once the HAs start to come in, we will do the registration and get a photo of them to update in their profile and ask them to have their breakfast.
After around half an hour of doing registration, we will usher them into the lecture hall as it will be almost time to start the program. This is the whole process of how we do the event and in any case if anything goes wrong somewhere, it will definitely impact the overall operations and business objectives of the organization. For example if the HAs have arrived and the catering service still have not reached, then we will face stress in resolving it; the HAs may get annoyed if this happens, we may have to call the caterer and ask them to come fast and inform the HAs to kindly wait.
REFLECTION & EVALUATION Looking at all the 16 weeks I had in HPB, I would proudly say that I had learnt many things which I did not know. Firstly to say, when I came in here, it was really very difficult and confusing to use the system. However now I can say that I have somewhat mastered the program well on how it works and how to apply it. I have to thank You Jin for this, for taking his time in explaining to me each and every detail. I had even tried the different methods of extracting people and sending out invitations with the help of our engineer Raja who taught me how all the ways CPRMS can be used.
It will be very useful for me to get a job in government companies as some of the government jobs also require CPRMS. The next thing which I want to mention was doing mail merge. All these while, I have used Microsoft Words but I did not know how to use the function. After I came here, Swee Seng taught me how to create and send it using with different formats. Another thing which I found it quite hard was doing food catering. I was the in-charge of an event called ‘Briefing by Agency for Integrated Care (CHAS and SMF)’, which happened on 4 Jan 2014.
I and my colleague Sharinah decided on the food choices to pick and I realised that it is quite hard to pick good tasty food with healthier choice symbol and it has to be under the budget. Nevertheless I was pleased to hear the compliments from the HAs on the actual event day that, they all enjoyed the food and it was a good selection. Apart from this, I learnt other admin staffs like what are the processes of sending collaterals, replying to emails and queries by typing official responses and lastly on how to do a procurement form for small value purchases.
In addition to that, what I studied in RP also helped me a lot in my work. In Health Promotion Module, I was taught about HPB grant on how it applies and works; when I work here I encountered few people enquiring me about the Grant. Following that, I leant that asking questions and doing survey is very important in my FYP and counselling module. Having that in mind I drafted a survey form for an upcoming interview and I had attached the sample grant form and the survey form in the appendices below. CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, I believe that I did an excellent job on my overall performance and gave my best effort in every task given to me. I had a great experience on how a working life will look alike. I gained knowledge in many interesting facts that I did not know. This internship gave me a fantastic opportunity to explore many events and for me to connect with HAs. I met great souls mainly like You Jin and next Steven Lim, who helped me a lot from the start till the end of my internship in HPB; my sincere thanks to everyone here.
