Reflective Writing on the Workplace Investigation Project

From contacting the interviewee to presenting the findings in front of the whole class, our group has completed the workplace investigation project finally. This project was really a challenging one when we looked back to how we begin.

At first, we decided to focus on the banking industry, especially the finance sector, as all 4 of us are planning to start our career in this industry after graduation. However, the difficulty came up soon when we tried to contact the office staff and hoped for an arrangement of an interview. We sent email and phoned to the bank office, but their reaction seemed unenthusiastic about it. We did not give up easily, and held a meeting to discuss what we could do better. We came up with the solution that we should try to make use of our network, to see if anyone of our friends or relatives know people working in this industry. Finally, we found Tom Yiu, who later became our interviewee, in the guest list in a sharing section in engineering department. We approached him face-to-face and persuaded him to give us a chance. Fortunately, Tom felt interested to our topics and arranged an interview with us.

Looking back, I have learnt several things from the contacting process. As a team leader, I tried to bear a larger responsibility and tried to solve problems along. But then, I found it is not an effective and responsible way to face problems, as we are a team, who should work together and break the barricades. In the meeting, Wilfred, one of my group mate, suggested that phoning and emailing in this way might be useless in the busy business world. He then pointed out that we could make use of our identities as a HKU student, as many senior staff or managers are our alumni in the banking industry. In fact, things went easier after we switched our direction and looked for the alumni in HKU who worked in finance sector.

I have learnt that a good team leader does not mean doing everything by himself. Instead, a good team leader can group the whole team together and figure out the solution. I will definitely remember the strength of teamwork. Also, I think Wilfred has inspired me that networking is one of the most important factors to succeed in the business world. A talent can never succeed on his own, he needs people to support him. Similarly, networking means that people can group together and find each other to help when facing a problem. From now on, I will spend time on reading related materials published by HKUSU or its associations, and look for useful contact and information, such as alumni sharing or job offers.

Moreover, I have learnt that it is easier to persuade people when you show great sincerity. We have failed several time in contacting the office staff by phone or email, possibly because of the tiredness of the staff who deal with tones of email every day and non-interest with a standard common request. In the process approaching Tom, we have done research