This morning I noticed in my mail inbox that I got an invitation from my assessor Floor for a video call with my peer Bart regarding my question on adjustment in my proposal. I could unfortunately not attend this call as I had an interview with my previous employer who is opening a restaurant and asked me if I am willing to run his restaurant at Neude. I was very excited and I agreed to meet him at 1 o’clock in his restaurant in Oudegracht. I also receive a call from my last employer who asked me which days I am available to work which I was very excited to do meaning that from the first of June I will start working part-time at Buurten and from 20th of June at Julia. I am so done with sitting home and not doing any physical work so I had to prioritize. 

From my internship today I did the same as yesterday I focused on screening people and forwarding potential candidates to my supervisor and answered emails regarding screening and data collection on the company server with the IT department. I close the day off with a very long video call with my supervisor which I was not prepared for. To sum up the call it was all about my personal view on my internship at Vision Factory. My supervisor wanted to know my thoughts and what I felt when working for the HR department since I was supposed to work in the event management. My supervisor was worried as he could not exactly provide me with an internship I reach out to him in the first place. However, I was very clear and explain to him that I enjoyed very much working for him also in the crisis management team which help me I let myself in terms of creative thinking and problem-solving. Nonetheless, I had an opportunity to upgrade my communication skills through a lot of emailing and calling (also video) which in the end contributed to improvement in my English which I will test during the period of self-study next month. My supervisor did a great job with providing me with an internship to my time of crisis and I believe no employee should blame him for the situation we all find ourselves in as he gave everyone the freedom to choose to go back home because of safety reasons.

Today I have had no major assignment so I kept myself busy with the companies LinkedIn account. I have been mainly busy with doing screenings for the marketing vacancy and forwarding potential candidates to my supervisor. 

Around 12 o’clock I decided to look for some motivating environment and moved together with my laptop to my friend Mandy who is also working from home. She received quite a long phone call so I continued my internship in the garden while I was tanning. To be fair today was pretty boring I made sure I responded to all the meals in coming from the marketing department and my supervisor regarding any questions. I also went through the server seeing all the files I uploaded were uploaded in good shape without any bags. I emailed my supervisor and he had no major task me for today so Mandy and I lunched together after her call meeting. On the picture below you can see my friend Mandy with whom I spend a lot of time when I needed motivation during the quarantine when I worked on my internship.

 

Doing today’s crisis management team my supervisor highlighted that he would like to have a look into the results of the questionnaires, which had been discussed a few weeks ago he would like to know the follow-up of the past three weeks. Also, he stated that he would like to take some measures in case there will be a second wave of the coronavirus during which the company could find himself again in this very complicated situation, and this time he wants to be prepared. I think it is very smart and responsible to already start to take measures in case of a second wave. Together with the team, we created a file in which our supervisor could any minute lunch a new crisis management team with new members as Sasha and I will most likely have our internship done by that time in the future. See below for CMT;

From the information (45 questionnaires) that have been gathered via the questionnaires of all employees interns and seniors, we can say that the data has remained constant for the past three weeks. No major changes have taken place in terms of motivation towards work (working from home). Although one conclusion can be drawn that interns are more literally likely to lose their motivation towards work while employees and seniors. See graph below;

Last week Friday I wanted to finish the assignment I started to work on Thursday regarding the working from the office doing Corona. I gave my supervisor a call because I had a few questions to him regarding the layout when he picked up he was surprised and it turned out that I had a day off. Last week Friday was the feast of ascension which we call Hemelvaart in Dutch. So, in theory, I was off from work, however, my supervisor said if I do not celebrate it I can work it’s all up to me so I decided to take a day off. It’s funny how I did not realize that I had a day off although I am Christian raised myself, even my mum laughed at me when I mentioned that I called my supervisor during ascension feast. At the end of the day, I didn’t send my supervisor the end of the week report which I usually sent him weekly around the same time of the day. He never asks about it so I just emailed it to him.

One of my other tasks for the day was clear; make a list of required products such as sanitation products, etc. And second but not least write out guidelines to follow for when the offices will open up again for employees. I was very excited to work on this since it is of high importance and a lot of responsibility is given to me with this task. I made sure that the form is applicable in both offices (small office upstairs 20m2 and big on downstairs 95m2) since it is still not certainly sure on whether my supervisor will cancel the rent of one of the offices to save some cash. For the time being, he informed me that he receives some kind of funding to get through this hard period we all find ourselves in. I didn’t bother to ask about financial information. I felt a little anxious in the end being worried that i might forget some very important information in the end. So just to be sure I called with my supervisor on the phone and he mentioned that he will have a look at the document tomorrow.

I like to highlight that it was very hard to find any information in English on how the businesses have to proceed during the pandemic, a lot of information came from either the government website which I translated through Google or information I heard about Spain on the Dutch news. Next time I would have asked a local with a business to inform me about the the different measures the government is putting in place for me to take into account. And if encountered ever again to make it realistic ask one of my peers from studies who are Spanish to ask their parents or friends and inform me.

In the morning I received a call from my supervisor asking if I could have a look into the absence of employees via the companies server. Then to set out a clear absence policy, which we had discussed during our call or at least the headlines which we had discussed and must not forget. Most importantly to not leave out any important information, therefore, I did some research first. There are many different ways of approaching such a task, and I decided to make it smart, simple, easy to read, and to the eye appealing. See document below;

I feel like I lack the knowledge required to perform this particular task and because of that I start to overthink again. I decided to not hesitate and ask my colleagues form the HR department for help and did some research myself online to support my findings. This contributes to my development in a good way both research and communication wise. The final product will be read by many if not all employees so asking for help was a good idea in my opinion. Next time I will contact a business proffesional from a different company to ask his/her opinion and that is what I will do if I find myself in the same situation next time.

During the phone call with my supervisor, we also discussed the current Corona situation in both the Netherlands and Spain. It seems directions are being used in both countries however in Holland much faster. Therefore it’s going to be very important to set up some clear guidelines and rules which would have to be followed until further notice. Taking into account restrictions set by the government and those very important for the organization itself. One of my other tasks was to provide my supervisor eight overviews of regulations which have to be strictly followed by the government as the quarantine will be east and the office will open again the document is required to be in a format which would be very easy to hang up at the office so everyone can see it. I didn’t manage to finish my research by the end of today however I will certainly have it done by the end of tomorrow morning.

In the upcoming period the company will focus on recruiting interns for departments such as marketing/finance. These individuals will need a familiarization program through which firstly, they will get to know the company. Secondly, get guidelines on tasks and thirdly receive feedback from their supervisor. Together with the CMT my supervisor has laid plans to the IT department create such a program, or a draft to be exact. The draft is expected to be done by the upcoming Monday which we will be able to value and estimate its effectiveness. Unfortunately Monday is my last day so I hope the draft will be done by the end of the afternoon so that it would be possible for me to assist everyone during the evaluation. 

My other task of the day was working through the vision factories premium LinkedIn account to recruit a screen potential future employees, which is one of the task I conducted multiple times during my internship. My second task was rather strange, my supervisor asked me to conduct research and playing a detective. Allow me to explain, my supervisor found that there is a weird company which can be found on LinkedIn with the same name as his company ‘Vison Factory” located in Soesterberg, the Netherlands. I heard from my peers Dominique and Bart that Piotr had reach out to them asking me if they had anything to do with creation of this companies account maybe by accident to which they responded they are not. In the end I found nothing and was just cruising through Internet looking for information, the only thing that I did is report the profile to LinkedIn itself via a mail.

Today I started the day off with my Tuesdays crisis management team video call meeting, to sum up the conclusion of today we need to open up vacancies for employees not only for interns. Piotr has taken a lot of responsibilities from other departments which at the beginning seemed doable however he is facing a lot of pressure in the end. Vision factory employed a few part-timers which are crucially needed in the company’s current situation. The newcomers would have to be incorporated in the online way of working get familiar with the server and have some working background in the marketing or human resource management. My assignment for the day is to create a strategy on where, and how to recruit, which platform to use and place detailed ad. See my strategy below:

Nonetheless, I stepped down from participating in the finance department. The finance department involved a lot of reading and understanding of fluctuations in the economy which are of no value to me and do not interest me. I would love to finish what I have started however in my current situation I don’t think it is responsible to divide my focus time and effort among two departments. I do rather progress well in one then average in two. 

This evening I will have dinner with Angelique which I’m very excited about and we look forward to. I agreed to help her cook for me, her, and her two roommates, which I have been socializing a lot with lately since I spend a lot of time with Angelique at her place. It might sound a little crazy to some, but I started to read the Bible which never really appeal to me. However, as you get older your mindset also changes and I am very curious on what story the next chapters will tell.

In the late morning, I had a phone call with my supervisor in which he stated that there is a need for demons of department records and reports. Right after our call, he granted me access to the records and reports on the previous partnership with different companies and the records of the different events which vision factory has been a part of. I was responsible for the efficient and systematic control of received, maintenance, use, and disposition of records. These records are being saved in case of a  government lead control. It’s also a great opportunity for me to see how the company has developed its business strategy of the course of the past four years as records from earlier are being erased. From this information, I can tell that the vision factory has grown into a healthy business who is business strategy has widened significantly. The company started with providing financial and business solutions and nowadays it’s also involved in offering marketing, generating leads, event organization, and different sorts of finance solutions such as investment, forex, and accounting. From the records, I can also say that the company has also grown significantly in partnerships as it attracted bigger companies year by year. My supervisor says that transparency ensured strong and stable economic development. One of its major partners in the year of 2019 was OMIO which is the biggest train operator in Catalonia for which vision factory organized a work outing for the security department.

My task of the day was emailing all interns who decided to go back home because of the pandemic and see if they are willing to go return to Barcelona and back to the office after the quarantine has been lifted. From what I know my supervisor it’s paying rent for office it’s currently not being used. He has decided to give up the rent is less than 10 workers are willing to return to office. He said that the Spanish economy has received a critical hit which bot he and the government were not prepared for. Based on the sound of his voice I could tell that he was very stressed and had a lot on his mind. During our conversation he has said that first two weeks he was more worried about his health, than financial situation and now it affect him mostly mentally.

It was my job to reach out to my colleagues and investigate their willingness to return to Spain. If less than 10 employees are willing to return my supervisor still renting office from which he launched the company as a start-up. At the end of the day I haven’t heard from most of the employees I expect to receive an answer latest by Tuesday. I would prefer everyone to inform my supervisor about the progress that day so he can give up the rent as quickly as possible and isn’t faced with expenses which are not needed. I believe my supervisor is struggling a lot these days himself so I want to offer as much help as possible before my internship ends. I already know from Bart and Dominique that they will not return to Spain because they’re in the ship will end soon, and Sasha who is still in Spain will go back home in Germany in July.

+ end week report to my supervisor 

This morning I once again pass by my previous employer restaurant to have a cup of coffee and a little chat. The government announced that some restrictions will be lifted and some will be eased. This means for hospitality that restaurants, bars, and cafés can open from the 1st of June only if they can provide the 1 ½ m rule. It came to me as a surprise as my previous employer offered me a job at the new restaurant which he intended to open at the beginning of this year. He invested a lot of money into it and is keen on trying to see if he can make the work in these hard times. I told him that I’m interested and when he will have a concrete plan ready that he has to reach out to me so we can discuss the details. 

I had a video call meeting with my assistant Floor de Groot and one of my peers Merel Abels. During which we discussed how my internship is going and how Merel is doing these days, I really like that we have this video called sessions because I am also interested in how other people are doing these days and you can ask questions if you have any doubts or do not know how to proceed with writing your journal. During the session, I figured out that I had approached PLP’s wrong and that there is a lot of space for improvement which I will focus on from now on. 

Last week I deleted old job offers on vision factories official website LinkedIn and Facebook, today my supervisor assigned me to search for all the old job advertisement which I can possibly find online from vision factory and make sure to delete all of them. This is because vision factory only posts vacancies on websites like LinkedIn indeed and social media. Therefore all other vacancies from the company are invalid and may cause misunderstanding. I have to confess I spend a lot of time searching on my browser for vacancies and I hardly found anyone which had me wonder what my supervisor was talking about. It turned out it is all about the words you use in the search engine which is a valuable lesson for the next time. For example, instead of searching ‘vacancies vision factory’ in Google, you should also try other things such as ‘job vision factory’ or ‘employing vision factory’ which increases your chances of finding what you’re looking for. After finding some of the old vacancies it was very hard to access the profile from which the vacancy has been posted since my supervisor himself did not do that in the work employees who do not work for the company anymore. For the most part, I managed to delete some, and those who I did not manage to delete I emailed the website/company on which the vacancy is posted if it would be possible to delete it.