A glimpse into the everyday life of lobbying
One winter day, as I was browsing through the internship ads, one stood out above the rest: the Blic brainee search. As a social scientist, I have always wanted to work in a place where I could have an impact on the society around me. Now I had the opportunity to get to the heart of political decision-making and to get to know the social agendas of companies.
When I started my traineeship, I really didn't know what lobbying was all about. So it's great that at Blic you can get involved in almost everything right away. As an intern, I work on client projects as well as on internal development within the company. I'm also involved in policy reviews, organising events and organising and participating in client and decision-maker meetings.
At Blic, we always start the working week by getting together as a team and analysing the current political situation. Working together and working as a team is also emphasised throughout Blic's culture. We all come from different backgrounds and everyone's expertise and specific skills are seen as enriching our work together. In particular, my attention has been drawn to how the core of the work is built around finding and implementing the best opportunities for each client to make a difference.
Although I myself have been active in various organisations and youth politics, the knowledge of Bliccians' politics and extensive networks made my head spin at first. The week is filled with incisive analyses of EU energy policy, the sustainability gap in Finland, social policy and business support. In our office, politics and business meet - and by all accounts, they should be talking more to each other. It has been instructive to watch how Blic speaks the language of politics and business fluently, which has helped to create an excellent basis for reconciling different interests.
During my internship, I have noticed how dedicated Blic is to its customers: working hard to solve customer problems and achieve goals. Customer engagement agendas are embraced, studied in depth and genuinely passionate. The best thing has been to see that everything we do is done with an eye to transparency and that discussions must be based on the best available information.
Lobbying often has an unpleasant ring to people's ears, so the whole industry needs to invest in process transparency. During my internship, I myself have been able to peer behind the scenes of lobbying, where I was pleased to find a group of lobbying professionals whose activities are guided not only by their clients' objectives but also by a strict code of ethics to which they adhere.
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