Updating Results

Westpac Group

4.4
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Ed

I spend 30 minutes chatting to my coach, going through my problem statement, and narrowing down on the scope of my project I’m going to attempt to run using Lean methodologies, before drafting up a list of deliverables within the next week prior to the next meeting.

7:00 am

1

I would love to say I got up and went to the gym before work, but I am such a night owl and if you knew me, you would know that that would just never happen! What my morning really looks like is laying in bed, listening to Melbourne breakfast radio in Sydney, because that makes sense? Before getting myself sorted, trying to snatch the bathroom before my housemate gets up, and then making myself presentable enough to walk down to central station and jump on the train off to Barangaroo! I still get a kick out of the fact that you can switch which way the seats face.

2

8:45 am

I arrive in Barangaroo, and knowing me, I’ve probably decided to treat myself to a slice of banana bread for breakfast from the lobby café before heading up to level 23 to grab a cup of tea and check my inbox whilst overlooking the beautiful Harbour. After settling in, I’ll have a morning check in with my People Leader where we’ll discuss today’s priorities, and I’m just like my Mum in that I love a list, so I’ll take today’s tasks down on paper before uploading them into my Microsoft Teams prioritisation To-Do list.

3

9:30 am

Chances are I’ll probably be jumping on some meetings, either running our project ‘stand-up’s (which is like a status update) on a task tracking software called JIRA, or sitting in on meetings with my People Leader to get a bit of visibility of how our portfolio is planning its 3 year strategic review. Working in a Transformation project environment, our work can be very dynamic and requires a lot of input from multiple stakeholders across the bank. We have plenty of meetings and workshops throughout the day to discuss different project solutions and ensure that we’re all working toward the same goal in the same timeframe!

11:00 am

Time to catch up with my Lean Yellow Belt Coach! As part of the Transformation grad program, we complete a Lean Project Management Accreditation in our second rotation. I spend 30 minutes chatting to my coach, going through my problem statement, and narrowing down on the scope of my project I’m going to attempt to run using Lean methodologies, before drafting up a list of deliverables within the next week prior to the next meeting.

4

12:00 pm

I’m tidying up any loose bits of work, reviewing the project plan, and finishing up some changes on process flow maps from this morning before heading down to the lobby to meet whichever other grads are in the office that day for lunch! I have no self-control and am only in a few days a week, so I’ve probably decided to treat myself to lunch too, and you just know it’s going to be Crispy Pork Bahn Mi from the ground floor of Tower 2. Us grads will all grab something from the food court and go sit by the water in Summer, or back up on the staff area on level 15 in Winter, chatting about our different rotations, and organising any drinks plans, or weekends away we’ve got planned together!

5

1:00 pm

After lunch, I’ve got stakeholder meetings to run my redesigned process flows maps by legal, compliance and risk for feedback and workshopping. What I love about my current project is the delicate dance between complying with new compliance measures we’re introducing, whilst ensuring that we keep the customer experience as seamless as possible. There’s a million different possible scenario outcomes when dealing with customers, and it’s my job to create new compliant processes that capture 98% of them in the simplest and most straight forward way possible, so that we can effectively retrain all our frontline staff when our new rules kick in later this year.

2:00 pm

I quickly finish up a meeting with IT before jumping on our monthly Executive Committee meeting for GLOBAL (Westpac’s LGBT Employee Action Group). As Secretary for GLOBAL, as well as Deputy  for Membership Engagement, I provide updates on how our planned drinks went last week at Bungalow 8, provide feedback on what we have planned for the upcoming Wear it Purple Day Campaign, and pitch a new sponsorship opportunity I’ve come across to hopefully get Westpac to support a local LGBT business.

3:00 pm

Time to review the budget! It’s change of month so I’ll need to make sure our forecasts reconcile with our actual spending for the previous period. Whilst I did do maths at High School and University, I am still terrified. Getting a 0 in the wrong place is a lot more daunting when you’re actually dealing with someone else’s money… and a lot of it!!

6

3:37 pm

Tea break… of course. I’m only human.

4:00pm

My brain is probably melting a little by this point, but in a good way I swear! I’ve set aside some time to catch up with my mentor and head off to grab a coffee with her over in the other building. I tell her about what’s going well, what I need help with, and discuss how I can best manage my workload to make sure I’m never over-promising and underdelivering. She provides me great advice, before realising in a side conversation that we were both at the same bar on the weekend!

4:30pm

Where has the day gone?! I check my inbox and reply to anything urgent, flagging anything for review and discuss any new outcomes with my People Leader before drawing up a little to do list for tomorrow. I look at my to-do list next and pick some low hanging fruit to quickly smash out before home time.

7

5:30 pm

Home Time! And maybe the gym… but let’s be real.