Target Executive Internship Week Five

Again, this week just blew right by. This week I officially chose what project I will be concentrating on in the next three weeks. At the end of each internship, an intern must choose a project that relates to an opportunity within the store that needs improvement and come up with a sort of action plan to a solution. My project focuses on their best team survey which is conducted every May by all of the team members at that store. Out of all the work centers that took the survey, the backroom was the work center that had the highest increased levels of dissatisfaction compared to last year. After looking at these metrics, my project will be to come up with an action plan to improve the satisfaction levels of the backroom team members and ultimately make a positive difference in the next three weeks. So far, this week I have talked with my mentor to see what has already been addressed from these issues. The backroom team has talked with the Human Resource Manager and addressed their concerns in which she has passed on her notes to me. With those notes, I sat down and came up with a sort of a plan to stick to. I then went to their team leader where I explained my project and its purpose. She was happy to see that I had chose that specific project, and I then preceded to talk with the rest of the backroom team members. So far, I have made good progress so it will be interesting to see my results in the end of the three weeks and whether I had made a difference. To measure the results, I would re-administer the survey to see if their levels of satisfaction had increased.

The beginning of the week started with a phone chat session with the internship coordinators which gave us a chance to give our feedback on the internship so far. I think it was a great idea because it allowed us to reflect on all that has been happening in the past few weeks. I also went down to Eugene with the other Portland interns to visit the Target store there. All of the interns in our district met there for a chat session that was led by the district team leaders. This chat session gave me a chance to see the other interns and see how they were doing while also being able to share my experiences with the district team leaders. The district team leads were all really impressed with our responses and can see how much we have grown within the first five weeks of the internship. I was also impressed how open they were about our feedback and that they wanted to help out in any way they could. I think Target has a great internship program because of this. Not only am I able to interact with my peers at my Target store, but also the other interns at other stores and also the district team leaders. And the fact that they know us by name is awesome. Getting this much "face time" shows us that they truly do care about their interns and the internship program.

This week I also was put on the role of LOD which stands for leader on duty. The leader on duty is basically the manager of the store for that certain shift whether it is in the morning, afternoon, or evening. This is a big responsibility. As the leader on duty, you are in charge of making sure guests are being serviced, operating the store, strategically thinking of which tasks should be completed next, and keeping the store looking good. Although I had shadowed with the leader on duty before, it was entirely new to do it on my own. It was very overwhelming at first, but I got the hang of it after a few hours. I get a little nervous with whether or not I can answer people's questions if a team member or a guest asks for me, but I know I can always ask one of my peers for help if need be. This definitely helps my development as a leader and has given me a lot of experience with what it takes to be a manager.

I also feel that the Store Team Leader and my mentor have taken on a new perspective of me. Although I appeared on the shy and reserved side at first, they now know I can take on a leadership role in the building after having done the LOD shift. Since my first status with them had been in the first three weeks with them, I think I really have shown them that I am open to all these new opportunities and can be seen as a leader. These past weeks, I have interacted with the district team leaders in a chat session, have led morning team huddles, and have taken on the LOD role on my own. They as long as myself have seen a lot of improvement in my growth here at Target.

This upcoming week, the interns will be going out on store visits to Salem and Keizer, so it will be interesting to see what those Targets look like. While in Eugene, I could see major differences between the Clackamas store and the Eugene store. Eugene is a smaller volume store so it appeared a lot less busy. In fact, when I walked in, we had thought they were closed because there was almost no guests there! So it will be interesting to see how Salem and Keizer are. We are also participating in a Habitat for Humanity volunteer event so I am really excited for that as well!