What does Communications look like at the WSIB Innovation Lab?
Originally Posted August 20th, 2019
When people think about working in tech, the majority of people would assume that the team is comprised solely of students who are developers, designers, and hardware specialists. The truth is, these are only a portion of the jobs available within the industry.
At the WSIB Innovation Lab we have two Communications students, Rachel and Jacqueline, driving awareness initiatives for the Lab and actively engaging with the community of tech and startups present around the Lab.
Throughout the term Rachel, a fifth-year Psychology major at the University of Waterloo, had been working on engaging with the startup and corporate innovation community by planning events, creating and handing out physical marketing materials. Rachel also helped to flesh out the communications / engagement plans for the following terms. Jacqueline, a fifth-year English and History double major at the University of Waterloo, has been writing blogs for the Lab’s website and articles for the internal WSIB website Connex, updating the language on the Lab’s website, creating presentations, managing the Lab’s LinkedIn profile, creating engaging email campaigns, and more!
Arts students are crucial to the tech world. Not only do products need to be developed, but for these products to be a success there needs to be people who communicate and talk about them. Relaying the technical information so that every audience member can understand is very important. Can you imagine having the most ingenious tech, but not being able to reach the customer in an impactful way? Or what if the solution is overly technical and difficult to understand?
Communications students are able to de-code technical information and jargon and make it understandable. With the rise of technology, the internet, and social media, people educated in arts are constantly finding new career paths. Communications and Marketing as a field are growing exponentially because the need to talk about products and market them to consumers digitally is growing. Every company from a startup to a large corporation relies heavily on effective communicators.
This is the first time the Lab has hired two communications students and has been able to dive a little deeper into communications and community engagement. Engaging with the community is one of the ways in which the WSIB Lab plans on moving forward with some of its projects as the Lab is attempting to build relationships with startups and other corporate innovation Labs to build effective solutions that help injured workers.
With a bunch of new projects on the go for the Lab, Communications will only become a larger part of the Lab, and there will always be new things to talk about, new startups, and new Lab’s to collaborate with.
