Manulife

Work Term 3

Position: Engineering Community Coordinator

Semester: Summer 2020

Location: Waterloo/Remote

About Manulife

Manulife is an international leader in the financial industry aiming to help individuals make better decisions for a better life. This organization has been a strong leader in the industry for over 130 years, operating with global offices in the United States, Canada, Asia and Europe. Manulife continues to grow and push the limits by putting customers first using more digitization and innovation while fostering an inclusive and engaging company culture.

With the size and reach that Manulife operates under, the organization's integrity is always maintained by creating and prioritizing a clear mission throughout the company. Their bold mission can be supported by their values to work together and succeed as a digital, customer-focused market leader. Values like Own It, Get It Done Together and Share Your Humanity can be seen through the actions of many employees every day to create a supportive and engaging environment.

Manulife is committed to improving and finding new innovative ways to solve problems for both customers and employees. Through working in Canadian Division Technology at Manulife, I have seen the leaps they are taking through digitizing many of their projects including their Manulife Bank app becoming the number one banking app in Canada.

While working at Manulife, I had the opportunity to build on their employee experience and help bring their mission and values to life.

My Contributions


Overview:

As Engineer Community Coordinator, my role allowed me to get involved in various projects focused on employee experience while improving the overall tech culture at Manulife. Through leading and managing many of these projects in the various stages I was able to develop creative ideas, pitch clear project proposals, implement projects on schedule and create summarizing reports to evaluate the success of the project. I even had the chance for some of my reports and presentations to be shared with the Global CIO of Manulife. Some of these projects included hosting virtual engagement events through zoom, fun Slack programs and developing a program to better support women in tech at Manulife. I also had the opportunity to take on extra leadership roles and training with the co-op hiring committee, co-op tech challenge, and Pluralsight learning platform.

Project Tasks

  • Create and manage communications across Slack, Yammer and Email
  • Organize and structure event schedule and flow of presenters
  • Develop post-event summary content to present important feedback and data for the executive team
  • Organize participants while leading Security Hackathon Team Building session through Zoom
  • Use the platform Bright Ideas to create and maintain hackathon event webpages
  • Leverage Zoom to display content and support teams throughout the event
  • Research strategies from different organizations to develop a stronger community for Women In Tech at Manulife
  • Help identify the key requirements for future programs leveraging the Slack app Donut
  • Create a visually appealing and informative training manual for mentorship program participants 
  • Listened to company needs and desires to research, identify and recommend optimal products.
  • Talked with vendors and suppliers about product orders and issues.
  • Coordinated and oversaw the shipment of over 250 employee merchandise packages
  • Developed a "Summer of Fun" and "Pluralsight Leadership" challenge to promote employee engagement
  • Designed virtual badges and program look book on Canva
  • Create and maintain workflows in Slack to track badge completion for each participant
  • Took the role of scrum master working in a team of full time and co-op employees
  • Facilitated kanban framework - project planning, backlog management, stand-up meetings and project retrospectives.
  • Planned Agile best practices and encouraged team cohesion, overcoming impediments and hurdles to productivity.
  • Proactively identified and found ways to resolve issues to prevent distractions and keep projects on track.
  • Collaborated with product owners and team members to define solutions and drive progress.
  • Participate in training to earn a certificate as a Manulife recognized Agilist
  • Took extra training on Pluralsight to learn more about Jira, project management and Agile methodologies
  • Completed Tour de Tech challenge to complete Pluralsight training through Skill IQ and Role IQ tests

My Goals

Creativity

I developed this goal to encourage myself to think outside of the box when developing plans for different programs and events to implement within the company. I successfully used brainstorming sessions on my own and with other colleagues to develop unique programs and project ideas to address company goals. The ideas we developed lead to increased employee engagement and positive feedback specifically for the team building events and badge collection challenges.

Leadership

Throughout my term, one skill I wanted to improve was to ensure the development of clear, organized project plans with effective communication channels to everyone involved in these projects. Through different planning sessions, I was able to determine project requirements and develop project schedules to stay organized throughout the project. Specifically for our Security Hackathon, I developed clear instructions and was in contact with all coaches, participants and event organizers throughout the project to ensure that everyone was clear of how the event was progressing. This was also a helpful skill when it came to the development of our Co-op Award Ceremony as it allowed our team to constantly collaborate with clear ownership of different tasks and roles for the event.

Leadership

In addition to my regular day to day work tasks, I wanted to make the most of my term by getting involved in other opportunities throughout the organization. I was able to participate in multiple programs including the co-op hiring committee, co-op tech challenge and co-op HackerRank challenge. As part of the co-op hiring committee, I worked with many other full-time employees outside my immediate team to evaluate resumes and conduct interviews with prospective co-op students. The co-op tech challenge gave me the unique opportunity to work in a team of other co-op students to help solve a current problem Manulife is facing. Within my team, I was able to further take on the leadership role to ensure all our ideas were presented effectively and keep the project on schedule.

Personal Organization/Time Management

With the large scope of tasks and projects I wanted to get involved in throughout my term I know it would be important to ensure I am using my time effectively to prioritize and deliver high-quality work. To stay on top of my various commitments, I created a Trello board for myself to track the progress of various tasks through to-do, doing, to be approved, implementing and done. I also reviewed my project commitments and deadlines daily and weekly to adapt and structure my schedule accordingly. This system allowed me to deliver all projects on or ahead of time while ensuring the quality and creativity in each project was well above expectations.

Conclusion


I have learned so much these past few months through different leadership opportunities, working in different teams and participating in creative brainstorming sessions. One thing that made this term stand out the most was the support and connection I had from my team and Manulife as a whole. Being able to work with brilliant minds every day on my team to make real change in the organization was truly inspiring. The openness from all the Manulifers allowed me to participate in coffee chats and mentorship sessions with leaders not only in my team but throughout the organization. Building this support system while enhancing my skills has made a monumental impact as I start my career and I am so thankful for this wonderful experience.