Yesterday I attended the latest session of the ILM3 Leadership and Management course I am enrolled on and have spoken about before. This week the theme was ‘Planning & monitoring work and performance management’ and as ever it was really useful in helping me to think about my own workload and the workload of other members of the team here at the Retail Office.

Throughout my school years the importance of planning work was drilled into us, and I have to admit it is something I did somewhat reluctantly, seeing it as an additional task to an already substantial workload. It was only once at university that I truly appreciated the value and importance of planning my work. As a history student I can honestly say that I would often spend more time in the planning stages of an essay than the actual writing process. A good plan was essential to success in achieving the outcome I was aiming for. This is one skill that I have transferred directly to my role as intern and something which was discussed in today’s session. It also ties into the idea of SMARTIES targets I talked about a few weeks ago. Planning your workload is ... read more

Amy and I have signed up to do the GCC 100 day, 10,000 step challenge along with some of our colleagues from Event Durham. The GCC challenge aims to take you on a 100 day virtual tour around the globe, with a daily target of 10,000 steps per team member. Teams are made up of 7 members who have all been provided with a cutting edge accelerometer, which tracks daily activity.

The University has a total of 16 teams made up of individuals from different departments. Amy and I are part of “Event Durham Dynamos”.

The 100 day journey began on the 28th May, filled with lots of enthusiasm! We went on a team walk at lunch time and lots of us managed to clock up 10,000 steps by the time we had left the office. After day 1 I think the reality of the challenge dawned on us.. 100 days is a long time, it takes us up until September, and 10,000 daily steps is actually really challenging some days.

We have both been doing all we can to bump up our steps each day. I’ve been getting off the bus 4 stops early and walking half way to work and doing the ... read more