Shelley

During summer 2022, HEIW took on 15 students for an eight-week internship. They each spent time in a specific department within HEIW to gain an insight into what it’s like to work for the NHS in Wales.

Here you can read about Shelley’s internship experience at HEIW.

Name:                                Shelley

Studying:                           Computing

University:                        University of South Wales

Internship with:               Workforce and Organisational Development Team at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board

My overall experience

My name is Shelley and I am a second year computing student at the University of South Wales.

My internship has taken place in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB), through HEIW, in the Organisational Development department. I have been working on updating the intranet pages for the department and have also been asked to review their current external recruitment website.

I hope to become a web developer or software engineer in the future. I haven't quite decided yet, which is the reason why I applied to do this summer internship in order to gain some real-world experience.

I'm a proud supporter of more women in STEM, which is science, technology, engineering and maths. Trying to get more women like myself into technology.

I will consider the NHS as an option for the future, as this internship has really opened my eyes to the many different paths. I will also ask future employers about using SharePoint as there are still more parts of it I would like to learn about.

Shelley’s Project

Project summary

I'm one of two HEIW interns placed outside of HEIW and into ABUHB, specifically into the workforce and organisational development department (WOD).

I've been working on updating the intranet pages for WOD and specifically organisational development. I was also asked to take a look at the external facing recruitment website and provide some feedback as a web developer and training.

Project objectives

My goals for the project were to improve the efficiency of the intranet and the external recruitment website. To help me achieve these goals, I had a vision of helping users navigate both sides effectively and be able to use the intranet to find resources needed much easier.

My key milestones were that I updated the organisational development intranet page. I adjusted the layout, added a Twitter feed and I removed any outdated information.

I also wrote a guide on maintaining pages which is a collection of PowerPoint slides to help novice users make sense of updating SharePoint pages. It contains a few observations I made while viewing and updating pages myself. It is in addition to staff guidance provided by the other ABUHB teams.

I also wrote a report on how the external website could be even more efficient.

Project delivery

Using techniques I learned in university, I spent the first two weeks of my internship doing scoping and research, such as a navigation diagram for different intranet pages. I ended up creating three navigation diagrams to map out the paths users could take through the WOD intranet hub.

The action plan development mainly happened in the form of two documents, a recommendations document where all my ideas were distilled into a focused document. This helped me gain approval for what I wanted to accomplish and then keep track of my tasks. The other document was a proposed changes document. It contained the physical changes I wanted to make to the intranet pages during my time here.

I learned how to use SharePoint features to create internal website pages with great success. Then I wrote a guide to pass this knowledge on into the future. I provided valuable feedback on the external facing live website. I enjoyed using my web design module techniques and applying them to a real-world situation and I adapted to working with the remote team.

Outside of work and university

In my spare time I enjoy watching anime and playing computer games.