Site Visit to KEANE's London Office

We had our first site visit this afternoon so we met in the lobby and walked to the Gloucester Road tube station together. When changing trains at Notting  Hill Gate tube station, one of the students did not make it on to the train. She was too far away to get to the train before the doors shut and the rest of us were too far into the train to get out before the doors shut. We waited at our final stop and her train arrived just a few moments later.

We went to KEANE located at the Royal Exchange in the City of London . We met with Ian Miller, the executive VP, and Julie Downing, the VP of HR for Europe.  They graciously shared their time and expertise with the students.

Page and Emily took the lead today and they asked 9 questions from the Professional Writing Committee's Communication in the Workplace report.

Communication in the Workplace Questions:

1. Are oral and written communication a part of your performance appraisal?
2. What percentage of your work week do you spend writing (planning, drafting, revising)?
3. What percentage of your time is spent working with others to plan and write documents?
4. What percentage of your writing time is spent composing the following: Email, Chat, IM, Text, blogs, wikis, short internal documents, short external document, long/formal documents? Other?
5. What type of documents do you write?
6. What percentage of your time communicating on the job is with people from other countries?
7. How did you learn to do the writing you have to do in your work – on the job, workplace training, college course, etc.?
8. In what ways has technology changed the way you communicate at work, especially over the past five years?
9. Please describe any examples of the consequences of effective or ineffective writing within your organization.

Page and Emily added some context to each question and Ian Miller answered each one and provided examples from his experience at Keane and EDS and offered helpful career advice.  Julie Downing discussed the importance of following codes of ethics and how international communication can be complicated due to regulations and laws.

It was a successful site visit. Mr. Miller was engaging and even funny at times. It was a worthwhile experience for the students and for me!