Question:

PART A

1. Describe how a person’s good work practices can encourage others.

2. Explain how you would make sure that your personal work goals, plans and activities work with organisational objectives, responsibilities and accountabilities.

3. How would you measure and maintain personal performance in varying work conditions, work contexts and when contingencies occur.

4. Describe a situation where you have had to take initiative to prioritise and manage competing demands to achieve personal, team and organisational goals and objectives.

5. What kinds of technologies can you use to increase efficiency when managing work priorities?

6. Explain how you maintain work-life balance, manage stress, and stay healthy.
7. Develop a personal development plan which includes career objectives and an action plan about how you will implement this plan.

8. Describe a new professional skill you’ve learned recently.

9. Assess your personal work performance over a day and compare it to competency standards and seek feedback on your work. Write a short report on the outcome of this exercise.

10. Outline your workplaces performance policies, plans and procedures.

PART B – Career Development

1. Assess your personal knowledge and skills against competency standards in chosen career and determine development needs, priorities and plans.

2. How do you seek feedback from employees, clients and colleagues and use this feedback to identify and develop ways to improve your competence.

3. Identify, evaluate, and select a development opportunity that you can use to progress your career.

4. Identify and select 2 networks you can join to enhance personal knowledge, skills and career contacts. Participate in at least one networking session and write a paragraph about your experience.

5. Identify a training program you wish to take and explain why it will help you become more competitive in your industry.

6. Explain principles and techniques used in the management and organisation of:

• performance measurement
• personal behaviour, self‑awareness and personality traits identification
• a personal development plan
• personal goal setting
• time

7. Explain your learning style and how you use it on the workplace.

8. What types of methods do you use to improve your work performance?

Answer:

PART A

A majority of the people need role models. One’s good works can, therefore, work as an inspiration and as an example to the rest. Good works inspire others. People have the tendency to emulate other. People are always watching and those who lead by example become role models for others to follow. By doing great work others get inspired to work harder as well and this leads to a lot of improvement within the organization too.

For purposes of achieving productivity, the need to align personal goals, plans and activities with those of an organization is in evitable. To achieve this, it is important to set personal goals within the company’s framework. Individual goals should operate and work to promotes individual goals without going against the organizations laid down principles, goals, and objectives.

It is important to measure personal performance. It helps build on current success. Performing a self-appraisal on oneself is one of the surest ways one can measure personal performance. Through personal appraisal, one has the opportunity to look at individual strengths and weaknesses. When doing self-appraisals, the possibility of exaggerating one’s ability is minimal since individual appraisals are not subject to any competition, therefore, there is no incentive for exaggerated results.

Another best method to use to measure and maintain personal performance according to Yang et al (2017) is via comparing one’s, plans and goals against the results obtained. One can collect data and then measure it to verify if the intended goals were achieved. In order to maintain performance, there is the need to makes and adjustments where necessary as early as possible.

One of the events that required taking initiative to prioritize and manage competing demands to achieve personal, team and organizational goals and objectives was during a past recruitment. Under this instance was the need to ensure that the new recruits were trained in order to start working to serve the organization’s customers. In so doing personal achievements were realized such as play the role assigned which was to train individuals and the organization’s goals were met since through training the recruits, the organization was able to add to its workforce new energy that helped realized quick service delivery.

Virtual reality is one of the best latest technologies that can effectively increase efficiency when managing work priorities (Aalbers & De Lange, 2015).  Through the use of virtual technology, it can be possible to create employee portals. These portals are essential in increasing workers efficiency and productivity irrespective of their physical location across the globe. The use of this technology will effectively eliminate what has been known as “corporate silo” which have in many ways contributed to ineffective communication. Another important technology is the use of business productivity software. This technology helps in maximizing the productivity of a business while at the same time giving individual satisfaction. With a business productivity software, an organization is capable of coming up with its own tools to be used in overcoming challenges arising from executing daily strategies. The use of this technology can help realize significant business success.

Maintaining a work-life balance is very essential for purposes of individual health and business productivity. The best way to maintain a good work-life balance is by setting boundaries. It is essential to define where personal life begins and where professional life begins. This involves not carrying office work home. In order to maintain a good balance, there is the need for having enough sleep to avoid having stress and ill health. A good work-life balance begins by setting aside individual hobbies and prioritizing them. One must take a vacation and delink from work but this calls for complete consistency and accountability while on duty. Lack of consistency and proper time management is what leads to work-life imbalance.

For purposes of personal development, there will need to incorporate a few changes.

On-Site Training or Course

Taking on-site training course will be very important for personal growth and development in the current field of choice. These on-site training will not only provide more opportunity for more learning but will also be a launching pad for future career advancement.

Seminar or Conference

Seminars and conferences will help in boosting career growth and individual development for career progression.

Networking

Networking will form a key part in personal growth. It is important to network given that the society today is networked and the only way to rise in the business world is through having a strong trusted network of friends and collogues.

One recently learned skill is time management. Time management is one very important soft skill that is very important for today’s business environment. Time management skill is important given that today’s organization has various roles and responsibilities and juggling between these require a good knowledge of time management.

Outstanding

There was an exceptional performance in all areas of responsibility. Planned objectives were achieved well above the established standards and accomplishments were made in unexpected areas.

Exceeds Expectation

Personal consistently exceeds established standards in most areas of responsibility. All requirements were met and objectives were achieved above the established standards.

Meets Expectation

All job requirements were met and planned objectives were accomplished within established standards. There were no critical areas where accomplishments were less than planned.

Needs Improvement

Performance in one or more critical areas with regard to time management does not meet expectations. Not all planned objectives were accomplished within the established standards and some responsibilities were not completely met.

Does Not Meet Minimum Standards

Teamwork does not meet minimum job requirements. Teamwork performance is unacceptable. Responsibilities of the team are not being met and important objectives have not been accomplished. Needs immediate improvement.

Workplace performance policies

Performance planning

There is the need for a instituting a collaborative process within the organization between the organization’s supervisors and employees. This will also call for the need to review employee performances and employees job activities. All performance plans will have to be documented.

Performance feedback

Within the organization, non-official feedback will be required constantly while a more formal feedback will be scheduled to be submitted regularly.

Performance management

Apart from the normal performance feedback, the organization’s supervisors will be required to carry out constant coaching for other employees to ensure that the goals and objectives of the organization are met.

Performance appraisal

A formal and more frequent performance appraisal will be conducted in order to evaluate how best the management cycles are performing. The performance appraisal will be documented after being conducted on a one to one kind of meeting.

PART B

Personal knowledge and skills assessment

Personal knowledge and consistently at work exceeds the organization’s conventional standards in nearly all areas of responsibility assigned.  Personal knowledge satisfactorily meets all requirements and objectives of the organization as laid down in the organization goals, objectives and requirements.  Personal knowledge in service delivery required within the organization as well as communication skills meet the organization’s standards for purposes of handling its needs.

The areas that need improvement is in time management. Performance in in time management is wanting. Time management is a critical area with the organization and this needs a lot of improvement. It is the number one priority that needs fixing since time is of the essence as far as service delivery is concerned. Without proper time management, the organization’s objectives and laid down goals cannot be achieved easily.

Action plan

In order to succeed in time management, it will be vital to do constant practice while on duty. Learning on the job with the help of the organization’s supervisors appears to be very practical and most convenient.

The best way to get information from clients is by asking the clients to comment about the services they have been given as soon as they receive it. The importance of doing this is that it helps to notice as fast as possible any unhappy customers and the cause for such disappointments corrected. On the other hand employees and colleagues can voice their concerns and their opinion sort after in a one on one setting. According to Palvalin, (2017), “These opinions and feedbacks can then be used to improve services delivery as well as to enhance employees work experience” (p.77).

Amongst all development opportunities available, the best one that can help further one career is through further studies. Knowledge is dynamic. It is constantly changing. Carrying on with further studies is a sure way to secure one’s future given that new knowledge is highly sort for as old knowledge is getting depleted and the business environment is also fast changing. In order to adapt to new changes, it is, therefore, important to acquire new knowledge and to advance as technology also advances.

Joining a professional body and other employees self- made groups is very important in order to keep up with new knowledge in the field of choice.

In a professional body, one of the benefits that stand out is the issuance of current and timely job updates. A professional body will ensure that all its members are updated on current events. This saves one the pressure that comes with trying to look for current updates at an individual’s level. On the other hand, a group composed of colleagues is important in enhancing ones professional knowledge since such groups are composed of individuals with several years in the profession.

A training on soft skills such as communication and time management is very important and can make one be high ranking employee. Soft skills are not obtained from school. They are largely ignored in school as people concentrate on the technical parts of the training. However, soft skills make the difference when all has been said and done. How to communicate when dealing with a customer and how to communicate when dealing with a colleague are totally different. How best one handles this makes the difference in an organization. This is because these soft skills are largely ignored in most training. Few employees have them.

A set of principles used in the management and organization of performance measurement, personal behavior, a personal development plan, personal goal setting, time, self-awareness and personality traits identification must be in line with the organization’s principles, goals, and objectives. These principles are always to provide quality service that is affordable to clients in a convenient and effective manner that makes the organization to stand out amongst its competitors. These principles must not compromise the organization’s profits and images in the market. But rather they should promote the organization’s brand image. These principles must not compromise but rather recognize the need for giving back to the society. The community around the organization is, therefore, be recognized as stakeholders (Yang & Bozzon, 2017).

The workplace is a busy environment. There is little room and time to concentrate on other things apart from the work at hand. This, therefore, calls for intelligence if one is to learn anything and learn it effectively at the workplace. The best and most appropriate criteria for learning while at the workplace is learning by asking questions. There is little room and time to carry out a research and so the best method is the use of questions. Asking questions from those who already have the knowledge on a particular idea or subject not only saves time and money but also other resources that might have been used in carrying out the research.

Improving work performance is the goal of each and every individual within an organization. In order to improve individual work performance, the following methods proved essential and very productive.

Avoiding distractions

Maintaining focus is very important if one is to improve personal work performance. Focus is the most important characteristic of highly effective people. The brain is made in such a manner that it works best when it focusses on one task at a time.

Avoiding multitasking

Multi-tasking does not improve the productivity of an individual. While is possible to multitask, the quality of service and productivity goes down as the brain cannot effectively handle multiple tasks equally.

Works cited

Palvalin, M. (2017). How to measure impacts of work environment changes on knowledge work productivity–validation and improvement of the SmartWoW tool. Measuring Business Excellence, 21(2).

Aalbers, T., & De Lange, A. H. (2015). Sustainable work ability and cognitive functioning through lifestyle improvement. Handbook of Research on Sustainable Careers, 254.

Yang, J., & Bozzon, A. (2017). On the Improvement of Quality and Reliability of Trust Cues in Micro-task Crowdsourcing (Position paper). arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.03385.

Yang, J. X., Hunt, T. D., Ting, H. H., Henderson, D., Finkelstein, J., & Davidson, K. W. (2017). Improving value-add work and satisfaction in medical residents training: a resident-led quality improvement project employing the lean method to improve hospital supply usage. Postgraduate medical journal, 93(1098), 193-197.