Hit by a typhoon

Unlike my other colleagues who joined REPH in November last year I didn't spend my first few days meeting new colleagues and settling in. Instead, I was dealing with the imminent landfall of Typhoon Ulysses in Manila.

I’m a business continuity manager. So, it was a case of welcome, but can you get busy right now because a storm’s coming…

My first few days were taken up with keeping the leadership team informed on developments to ensure that our people were safe and there was no service interruption for the wider RELX business. Many areas were without electricity for a couple of days and a few of our people needed rescuing by boat, the flooding was so bad in some places. It was a quick way to learn how things work around here and rather than being an overwhelming experience, I found it empowering.

Business continuity can be a hectic role here in the Philippines. We are no strangers to tropical storms, flooding, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Nature conspires to keep us on our toes. And then, of course, like everyone else reading this I have been heavily involved in ongoing management of issues around the pandemic.

I found the whole remote interview process just fine. At least I could avoid the dreadful traffic in Metro Manila. Seriously though, from being interviewed to receiving the offer, to officially starting and being introduced to colleagues - all done remotely - was exciting. I feel grateful for the trust and opportunity because it isn’t easy to join a new organisation during a pandemic. But I am looking forward to meeting more people face to face. There’s no substitute for that.

Reflecting on my first few months, I feel empowered to share my ideas without judgment, I have become even better at what I do and the support I have received has been second to none. I look forward to more challenges and opportunities which will contribute to realising my full potential. But what I am most looking forward to is being able to take an active role in our corporate responsibility programmes and give back more to our local communities here in the Philippines.

I joined LexisNexis Risk Solutions in July last year at the height of the first peak of the pandemic here in Brazil. To say it was an extremely difficult time is an understatement.

Joining a new company at such a time, during lockdown, was totally different from anything I had experienced before. The whole process, from interviews to onboarding, was online. To be honest, the interview process being remote, for me, was better that way. Our office in Brazil is situated in Sao Paulo and, at the time, I was living in Curitiba, a city that is five hours away by car. That gave me the opportunity to evaluate the position more easily and without unnecessary cost, and being at home also made me feel less nervous during the conversations.

After I was hired, I was immediately impressed by how the company had adapted so fast to the situation in which we all found ourselves. All the information and documentation flowed smoothly and quickly.

When I actually started work, everything was perfectly organised by our human resources colleagues, with an established agenda that helped me to orientate myself within this great company. All the benefits, the systems and our different areas of work have all been clearly explained. And, I had a chance to be introduced to every different sector of the company here in Brazil.

But it was weird not actually meeting members of my team in person. When you start a new job, you must learn a lot of new things and consequently you have doubts, so it was strange not having someone there that I could just pop around and see if I had quick questions.

I am a data scientist and very visual. So, explaining concepts and ideas by drawing works well for me, but it was not possible to do it effectively at the time remotely. Although challenging, I think my team did a great job with my onboarding and were concerned about me settling in, so I felt at home very fast.

What excites me about working here is the opportunity to learn new things, to work with innovation in a solid, global company and to be able to use the power of data to bring new insights and value to companies in Brazil.

The first few months have been surreal, for sure, but I feel settled now. My managers and team have been brilliant and I would like to thank them for that. I’m a bit tired of the constant ‘you’re on mute’ and ‘can you see my screen?’ but hopefully this will pass when we start to return to some degree of normality and we return to offices.

The catering and hotel industries, for which I mainly write, have been particularly affected by the pandemic and lockdown. I started in September 2020. The mood was not very good and last year I could hardly announce any good news. So, I'm looking forward to being part of the industry's big comeback. Our exhibition halls here in Austria have also been closed long enough now. I can hardly wait for our trade fairs to start again. Especially because I have so far not been able to experience a single trade fair live. I'm also excited to finally hold real team building events with my colleagues and have coffee together during the breaks and just chat about trivial things. I miss that very much, even though I am still a big fan of my home office.

I am the new content manager of the ‘Alles für den Gast’ (Everything for the Guest), the trade fair for gastronomy and the hotel industry and also the largest fair that we organise at Reed Exhibitions Austria. My job is to write for our website with exciting stories from the industry, to do media work and to fill our social media channels. I am also responsible for our visitor newsletters and smaller video projects. My goal is to create many digital contact points with our visitors and exhibitors so that they not only think of the ‘Alles für den Gast’ at the time of the fair, but 365 days a year. I want the reach of our content platforms to grow in such a way that our exhibitors want to present themselves digitally throughout the whole year. I find the change that the company is currently going through very interesting.

I guess I’m what people would describe as a millennial and am therefore used to communicating with other people through technology. That's why I think the current situation has been easier for me than for some. In addition, Reed Exhibitions Austria and Germany were recently merged. From now on we will be working closely with our German colleagues, which is why most of the communication has to take place online anyway.

Nevertheless, I think it's more than a shame that I have rarely seen my colleagues in person so far. Team building is currently only possible online and not as easy as it would be without the pandemic. This is even more noticeable with a team as new as ours. In order to still allow the team to get to know each other, we keep playing games and doing challenges, that work online and serve as ice-breakers. On-boarding was also more difficult. Instead of just asking the person sitting next to me in the office, I had to call or write to someone when I needed help.

‘Alles für den Gast’ should have taken place in November 2020. Instead, we hosted a digital event. So, I was thrown in at the deep end because I had only started at Reed Exhibitions two months earlier. I had to help develop and maintain a completely new digital format. But these are exactly the situations in which you surpass yourself the most. I learned in a very short time what my tasks are and how I can best implement them. I also grew together with my operations team very early on.

At RELX I have the feeling that I can offer value to our customers and our business. So far, I've never been bored and every day is different. I love my various tasks, each one challenging me differently in its own way. I am heard, taken seriously and valued. And that's what matters to me the most.

I’m the new chief technology officer for Elsevier in China. I started in Shanghai in September last year and was brought in to build out the new Tech Hub. The first few months were very busy and full of meetings. In my first few weeks, I had many one-on-one meetings to connect me with all the key stakeholders and I learnt a lot about the Elsevier business, our customers, products and processes.

As the leader of a newly set-up technology hub, I also spent much time defining a vision, mission, strategy, priorities and organisation structure with all the stakeholders. In addition, I was busy interviewing and hiring new Tech Hub members. Now we have around 40 colleagues in the Shanghai Tech Hub with all the key positions and functions in place, including the management team, architects, security officer, user researcher, UX designer, software engineers, quality engineers, DevOps engineers and agile coach. And we are still hiring.

We already started development work on two clinical solution products for China customers and we partner with global technology team to adapt global products to the China market and started to investigate solutions to improve China performance and customer experience of global products.

When I started, the Shanghai office was already open, and while most of my interviews for the role were done remotely, I was lucky enough to be able to start my first day actually in the office and meet my team in person. I feel lucky as so many colleagues around the world have not been able to do that.

The opportunity to work in the medical industry attracted me to Elsevier, especially during the pandemic. Also, the fact that Elsevier decided to set up a Tech Hub in Shanghai, shows great commitment from Elsevier to our customers and the Chinese market. I believe it’s a great opportunity for me to lead this new Tech Hub to make this initiative a success by using my experience and capabilities.

So far, it’s clear that the culture and people in RELX are perfect for me and I have enjoyed every minute since I started.

I joined LexisNexis in June 2020 in the middle of the pandemic as part of the new Aspire programme, focused on recent college graduates. I am a software engineer, currently working semi-remotely at the office in Raleigh, North Carolina as my team meets in the office around one or two days a week. As a software engineer within LexisNexis, I help develop Lexis and Lexis+ while also currently redesigning part of the content system that is a backbone of a majority of the LexisNexis Legal software.

Before interviewing, I initially took part in a hackathon at LexisNexis. During the event, I met many of the current software engineers and loved the atmosphere. All the engineers and management were extremely helpful during the hackathon, which led me to believe that LexisNexis would be an amazing company to work for in the future.

I never imagined starting my first full-time job fully remote. Getting to know my team members was a challenge; however, everyone was extremely welcoming and helpful. A few of my colleagues meet each week and play a remote board game which has helped us bond and get to know each other.

I’m looking forward to conference room meetings. I believe meetings in person can help inspire innovation and allow teams to problem-solve more easily. Our team recently had our first conference room meeting, and it was refreshing to be in person with everyone.

The initial learning curve was pretty steep; however, I’m now finally getting the hang of the software architecture and design patterns. I’m learning from world-class developers and enjoy advancing the rule of law through LexisNexis’s software.

I’m glad I joined the RELX family because of the flexible work environment and not feeling like a number within the large organisation. Upper management and senior engineers listen to my ideas and help guide me to correct solutions. This helps me grow as a person and a professional software engineer.

I moved within the group, from LexisNexis to the RELX Corporate Communications team in April 2020. About a month after the first lockdown. This gave me some time to adjust and settle in working from home before starting my new role. Plus, I knew that my physical working environment would not change once I started, so it would be one less thing to navigate and worry about when I started. Little did I know that my working set-up would be the same more than a year on.

I was already aware of RELX and its different businesses. I knew I wanted to stay at RELX due to the positive working environment and company culture. I began to search for new jobs within the company in February. Luckily timings aligned and my new role came along just at the right time.

Fortunately, I had my interview at the end of February, a few weeks before the first lockdown. This gave me the opportunity to meet my manager in person and visit the office for the first time. The closer I got to my first day it all started to feel more real. I first met my team remotely during a Friday coffee morning. I remember being very nervous and stumbling my words when I had to introduce myself. However, I did not feel as anxious as I had expected. I think this was because some members of the team had already messaged me a week prior to introduce themselves and let me know they were there if I had any questions. It felt good knowing they understood how I was feeling and how the whole process was a bit overwhelming. More importantly they explained that learning things could take a little longer than usual, and that was okay. The rest of the call is a bit of blur to me now, I don’t remember much of it at all, but I do remember how I felt afterwards. Reassured, relaxed and raring to go.

I am excited to meet my team in person. Although I have worked alongside them for a year now and I feel that I have built good relationships with all of them. I think meeting them in person will help develop these relationships even further as I will get to know all those little things about people that make a difference. I suppose, I am excited to get to know them all over again, in a different way.

The first few months went by so fast, particularly the first few weeks when getting to grips with everything. But I never felt that I was alone doing anything. Someone was always there to help me if I had any questions or if I ever felt a little lost. No questions were deemed trivial. My team also had a good structure to ensure we kept having face-to-face, virtual chats. We still do. We have mini catch ups every day. This structure has given us the ability to speak about any issues or queries with work. Or catch up about things that aren’t always work related, allowing more organic conversations to happen.

My team made the entire joining experience straightforward. If it was not for them and their openness to help and guide me the first few months, I think this entire experience would have been a very different story.