Work Experience at Lorax Compliance
by Max Markham at 12:25 in Team
Hello, I'm Max and I have spent the past week working at Lorax Compliance as part of my work experience placement. Along with 3 other new employees, we had a range of short, introductory talks introducing us to the unique set of IT programs used by Lorax. I then spent the week completing a variety of tasks including HTML work, problem sets teaching programming and smaller IT tasks. During my placement, I learnt a lot about the world of work as well as more specific knowledge into the atmosphere and workings of a small company. This has given me transferable skills useful across all careers as well as specific knowledge helpful within IT based companies.
The first three mornings were used to introduce us to the IT systems in place at Lorax. Being a small company, the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed, helping to welcome the new employees. The talks given were informative and helpful as well as being persuasive in the company's decisions in using their IT systems. An office tour was also given to help us settle in and to point out the necessary health and safety knowledge required in the building.
A highlight of the third day was when I was tasked with creating an email newsletter from a text document. This allowed me to practice coding as well as calling for creativity and design skills to give the email a fresh look in keeping with the Lorax style. Being relatively new to programming, I also needed to do further research into methods of coding to achieve the effects I wished, such as image resizing and use of CSS, whilst also working around the limits of the Outlook interface. This required inquisitive thinking and strong problem-solving skills to implement my ideas despite the limitations of email.
On the Monday after my work experience placement I was kindly invited to take part in a teambuilding day for all the Lorax staff. We spent the day at a local campsite and participated in outdoors themed, teambuilding activities such as knife skills, fire building and cooking. We spent the morning learning many new and interesting skills and then went on to apply these to prepare a meal and light a fire to cook our food. For lunch, we had chicken and pepper kebabs with homemade flatbread and salad. Then, for dinner, we made a chilli. Across the camp the food was amazing, defying some participants expectations of camp cooking. In the afternoon, some of us went on a short hike around the area. The sunny weather and interesting landscape helped to distract us from the rough terrain and dense vegetation, made worse as some of us had worn shorts. We returned for a relaxing evening spent around the campfire to rest ourselves after our hike.
The Lorax offices had an open and friendly atmosphere. The office itself was open and bright, with large windows. The building also has a modern but natural feel with an open courtyard and plant life in the corridors. On Wednesday, we decided to eat in the courtyard due to the nice weather which was relaxing and helped to rest our eyes after computer use. The office also has many decorations ranging from awards and planning boards to potted plants and a fridge magnet collection displaying magnets from all the employee's holidays.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed my week working at Lorax Compliance, both for the experience and the value in later life.
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