Plan and Complete Personal and Workgroup Schedules

Plan and complete personal and workgroup schedules

Identifying, collecting and analysing relevant information from internal and external sources

Goals

Reaching agreement with others

Personal goal-setting in a team context

Benefits of goal-setting

Collaborative goal-setting

Specific techniques for collaborative goal-setting

Allocation of tasks and job descriptions within a team

Work objectives and priorities

Prioritising and scheduling

Factors affecting the achievement of work objectives

Efficient and effective use of business technology

Workflow planning and monitoring

Identifying, collecting and analysing relevant information from internal and external sources

The information needed for making decisions about personal and organisational goals can come from various sources. Internal sources, within the organisation, include accounting information and sales and production figures. External sources of information include all sources outside of the organisation such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, research reports and so on.

/ Activity 1

To start this topic you might think about what your job involves on a day-to-day basis. List some of your daily tasks.

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Have you ever considered how your organisation’s goals and objectives are being met by what you do in your job? In order to do so, investigate the goals of your firm or of a firm with which you are familiar.

Goals

Goals are desired long-term outcomes for individuals or groups, or for your entire organisation. Organisational goals provide direction for management and are the basis of corporate planning. Goals are achieved by setting and attaining objectives.

Objectives
Objectives are clear, specific measuring posts indicating progress towards achieving a goal.
Multiple goals

At first glance it may appear that your organisation has one single goal, for instance to make a profit, or to provide a service efficiently. But if you look closely, you will probably find that your organisation has multiple goals.
Firms may seek to increase their market share and to provide employee satisfaction, as well as to be profitable. To identify your organisation’s goals, you should look at corporate or business plans, mission/vision statements outlining to the public the performance goals of the firm, annual reports, and public relations announcements.

As you do so, however, you should be aware that an organisation’s published goals may not always be reflected in various work activities. Goals will only be achieved when these activities are performed effectively and efficiently.

Important goals for organisations could include the following:

greater profitability
increased sales
increased market share
improved image as a good corporate citizen
fewer customer complaints
a better return on investment.

Goal-setting at different levels

Your organisation’s goals should guide the things you do now and what your work group aims for. Goals determine what needs to be done. The old saying, ‘If you don’t know where you are going then any road will get you there’, suggests that if you have no clear goals you may not make the best use of your resources and your efforts may be wasted.

Your work goals may be set at a number of different levels in the organisation. The following set of goals will give you an idea of these different levels in a sample organisation.

The organisation’s mission

to produce the best quality mobile phones in the world

Directional goal

to have all presently available technology features in our mobile phones within two years

Departmental goal

to develop design specifications for the use of video features in the current model phones within six months

Team goal

to design a video system for the mobile phone within three months

Individual goal

to research the dimensions and requirements for incorporating the video capacity to the screen of the mobile phone within one month

As you can see, goal setting is a vital function in any organisation, and is undertaken at various levels. Regardless of the level, there must be consistency across goals for the organisation to achieve it’s mission.

/ Activity 2 Relating an individual’s job to organisational goals

1Consider the imaginary Computers-R-Us Corporation, whose main organisational goal is to provide superior customer service in the computer retail industry. Can you think of any ways in which the job of a security guard for Computers-R-Us might support the organisation’s goal of superior customer service?

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Did you consider that the security guard’s presence makes the customer feel safer, and perhaps discourages pilferage of goods, thus keeping prices down?
Customers may interpret both of these examples as part of quality customer service.

2Now consider your own organisation. Nominate one major corporate goal of your organisation, and try to show how your job contributes to its achievement.

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Now that you have considered your own job and how it contributes to organisational goals, consider how you do your job. The way you plan and schedule tasks will be affected by guidelines contained in corporate policies, sectional or departmental requirements, and personal plans.
In turn, the way your work group schedules tasks in order to meet agreed objectives must also fit in with personal schedules and organisational guidelines.

The way you do your job is influenced by industry standards, various legislation such as Occupational Health and Safety regulations, and by company policies, processes and procedures.
Guidelines for job behaviour may be found in the following:

1minutes of an Annual General Meeting (AGM) of your organisation

2your organisation’s Mission/Vision Statement

3industry standards recommended by experts such as the International Standards Organisation (ISO) *

4industry codes of practice **

5your manager’s expectations and standards.

*Note on 3 above:

Many of the guidelines of the ISO, for instance ISO 9000/2000, are used by Australian organisations as benchmarks for gaining quality accreditation. You may wish to access the following website to explore industry standards.

**Note on 4 above

With regard to industry codes of practice, the following website provides a number of different codes of practice for various financial service organisations. These contain the standards that customers expect when dealing with finance companies.

+codes+of+practice?opendocument

/ Reflect
In the following scenario, reflect on the way the above five sources of job behaviour guidelines influence the way the job is done.

Imagine you are a customer service operator for a service provider. You are a sales assistant in a hardware store which is part of a chain of such stores; or you are working as first customer contact in a call centre.

Your job tasks must first reflect your organisational goals. These may be outlined in an organisational Mission Statement, and may state that your firm will offer excellent customer service and ultimate customer satisfaction (AGM and Mission Statement).

So the way you greet the customer and how you handle any inquiry must support your organisational goals. Obviously, you will need to be polite and accommodating (just put yourself in the customer’s place and imagine how you would wish to be treated). You may also need to observe privacy laws, so as a call centre operator, for example, you may need to inform the customer that the conversation may be recorded for training purposes, and ask if they have any objection (Privacy Act, ISO 9000).

You may also need to consider safety issues—particularly in a retail business context—such as locating electrical cords and office furniture according to current WorkCover regulations (Occupational Health and Safety).

Finally, your manager may require you to answer each telephone call within three rings and to complete the call within 60 seconds. Floor sales personnel may be required to keep customers waiting no longer than 30 seconds (manager’s expectations, corporate standards and industry benchmarks).

Measuring progress towards achievement of goals

From time to time, organisations need to assess their progress towards achieving corporate goals. To do this, they look closely at key result areas, those parts of the business operation which are crucial to its success, and at key performance indicators (KPIs), agreed yardsticks of satisfactory progress in particular areas of the organisation’s activities.

/ Activity 3

1Look up the following organisational web sites, and note the way they present key result areas and key performance indicators (KPIs). You could then extend your search to organisations in the same industry or business as your own.

2Can you suggest two examples of guidelines that you are expected to follow in your job, and state how they affect the planning and scheduling of your day-to-day job activities?

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Reaching agreement with others

Personal goal-setting in a team context

You may have heard the saying: ‘dream, believe, achieve’. But it is only by setting goals and establishing action plans that we can start to realise our dreams.

When we are working with other people, we need to co-ordinate our own plans with those of others. Working in an organisation, our own performance goals and measures of success need to harmonise with those of the organisation itself, and with those of our work colleagues.

Planning involves setting goals and deciding how best to achieve them. A very old saying still rings true today: ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. Planning is like a ship’s rudder. Without it, it is impossible to control the effects of the environment and unexpected occurrences, while still reaching the goal.

Planning does not guarantee that you will reach your goals, but it will keep you focussed, and you have a greater likelihood of goal achievement if you make detailed plans.

Establishing appropriate and realistic goals is a pre-requisite for the planning process. Various tools for beginning the planning process will be described later in this module. One of them, which is worth mentioning here, is brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a technique designed to stimulate creative thinking and generate new ideas within a short period of time. It is a process whereby individuals or groups write down any and every creative thought that comes to mind when focussing on a task or problem. The aim is to collect as many ideas as possible. After all the ideas generated have been written down, the next step is to evaluate all ideas and discard those that are deemed to be least useful for the task or problem.

Once you have identified your goals you must consider those of your work team members. You will need to negotiate team objectives and allocate available resources. This will require gaining the agreement of all team members on their personal goals, the team’s objectives, and how their performance will be measured and against what criteria. You may consider involving your manager in this process.

It is imperative to have a clear understanding of what personal work goals are, and what they involve. We set goals for ourselves every day, some simple, others complex, some long-term, others short-term. If we are going to achieve our goals they must be clear and concise.

Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-framed ie SMART goals, provide focus and direction and are more likely to be achieved. By the use of action plans, we are able to monitor and control our activities to achieve our goals.

A six-step approach to planning goals as set out by George & Cole (l992) in Supervision in Action–the Art of Managing, Prentice-Hall, Sydney suggests the following:

1Establish a realistic target.

2Use the 5 Ws and H triggers (What? Who? Where? When? Why? How?) to determine what needs to be done, who will do it, when will it be done, and so on.

3Sequence activities in the order in which they should occur.

4Communicate your plan to those who will be involved in it or affected by it.

5Implement your plan.

6Check your progress against the plan to make sure that your original target is being achieved.

Benefits of goal-setting

Setting goals has some major benefits. It can assist in production or output, as staff are more aware of their firm’s expectations. Goal-setting makes the efforts of people more focussed. Goals assist in the monitoring process. Work activity standards can be set and individual output or behaviour can be measured against them and corrections made if necessary.
Another benefit of goal-setting is increased motivation. A sense of accomplishment can be gained from meeting goal targets, and often additional recognition and rewards will follow.
Setting individual, personal goals gives you a sense of direction and purpose. Goals that are realistic and yet challenging, are critical to the continued success of the organisation. Coordinating individual goals with other work group goals is necessary to achieve the organisation’s overall goals.
Setting goals should be done in a logical and orderly manner. By following the steps provided below your goal-setting is sure to obtain the best results.

Identify the goal you want to achieve. Be specific about what you are aiming for.

Be clear on how performance will be measured.

Set objectives or targets along the way to increase motivation.

Set the time-span involved. Goals need to have a completion date if they are to have a positive impact on performance.

Set goal priorities. Goals need to be prioritised so that effort and action can be proportional to the importance of the goal.

Determine co-operation requirements. Before determining your goals, check whether achieving them depends on co-operation from others. If so, you will need to co-ordinate tasks with others and consider the impact of personal inter-relationships. Plan ahead.

Collaborative goal-setting

The way team goals are set is determined by your organisational culture, the time-frames your organisation’s work cycles may require, and the sort of activities your organisation is engaged in. Some work group goals are given to the group in detail by senior managers. Elsewhere, management may give the work group a general target, and then as a group exercise the team may need to work together to define specific goals that need to be met in order to achieve the broader organisational goals.

An important principle of teamwork in goal-setting is that the more people are involved in defining the goals they have to work on, the greater their commitment and motivation to achieve those goals.

Specific techniques for collaborative goal-setting

There are various different ways that groups can arrive at agreed goals. Two of these are the Nominal Group Technique and the Delphi Method. Using these techniques, groups can systematically and logically solve problems and reach agreement.

/ Activity 4

1Using the assistance of a search engine (google.com.au or yahoo.com.au) or the management section of your local library, investigate the Nominal Group Technique and the Delphi Method. Can you briefly summarise what you understand by these techniques?

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2From your own workplace or one which you are familiar with, can you find examples of individual, team and organisational goals? How are they different?

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3List three or four of your goals, whether personal or work-related. These may include places you would like to see, people you would like to meet, or perhaps what you would like to achieve in the future: for instance, are you aiming for promotion within your organisation, or do you see yourself working somewhere else?

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4Are your personal goals, as you have written them above, clear, concise and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-framed)? Do you need to re-write them so that they are?

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Allocation of tasks and job descriptions within a team

Once the members of the work group have decided what their goals are, they must then decide what role each person in the group or team is going to play in order for the goal to be achieved. This requires not only the identification of job tasks, but also of ways in which those tasks can be done collaboratively with others in the group.

First step: the job description

The first step is to consult your job description, in order to identify what is expected of you in your own job. A job description is a document outlining the tasks, duties and responsibilities of a position. It describes job content, work environment and the conditions of employment.

Person specifications, on the other hand, record the knowledge, skills and personal requirements for an individual employee to adequately perform in a particular job.

Some organisations use key performance indicators to specify job achievement expectations. You may wish to access the following websites to view how different organisations present their requirements:

The key performance indicators or job description for your own position may be obtained from your human resources manager or line manager.

You should consult your job description as a starting point when setting personal work goals.

/ Activity 5

Find key performance indicators, or a job description, for your own position or for a position you are familiar with. Use this job description to list some work tasks and identify some SMART goals and sub-goals that could be set using the job description as a basis.