Work Priorities

When planning for your personal work schedule, a work plan must be prepared. A work plan is a document that provides a framework for work tasks; it contains a breakdown of task requirements to complete the work task. Task requirements refer to needs that should be identified in order to accomplish a work task. Generally, task requirements include the following:

• Stakeholder needs
• Resource requirements
• Workgroup targets

Stakeholder needs

“Stakeholders” refers to people or groups directly or indirectly involved in the work task, or those who have an interest in the outcome of the work task. Relevant stakeholders of a work task are typically those who are managing the overall task, those who are completing what is needed in the work task, and those who are affected by the results of the work task.

You need to address the needs of such stakeholders for an accurate preparation of your work plan and implementation of the work schedule. These needs also help you address the next task requirement in preparing a work plan. This includes information to be provided and any outputs or deliverables to be submitted at each stage of a work task.

Resource requirements

Please use existing accordion Cert IV Leadership/Management subtopic 5.1.1

Workgroup targets

A workgroup refers to a set of people in an organisation that complete work tasks together. Since these people work together, they have a collective set of goals that they are aiming to reach; this refers to a workgroup target.

Think about the people you work with within your organisation: what are your workgroup’s goals? If you are to achieve your goals as a team you need to be aware of what those goals are, you need to be able to manage your resources in such a way that you are able to meet those goals.

Workplace targets vary among different workgroups or teams, but they typically include the following:

• Timeframes for goal completion
• Budgetary targets
• Production targets
• Reporting deadlines
• Sales targets
• Team and individual learning goals
• Participation requirements for each member

Define project stakeholders

Thus, stakeholders can be internal or external. Every stakeholder, regardless of the level of hierarchy they belong to and their level of involvement, expects something from the project. It is important to identify the stakeholders so that you can determine how to best manage their expectations. To help you identify the stakeholders, you need to consider authority and causality.

• Authority: Who is the project for? Who do you report or provide updates to? This will usually be the delegating authority or sponsor.
• Causality: Causality refers to causes and effects or the relationship of one element or task to another. Who will be affected by a project’s activity or outcome? What are the risks to the project if stakeholders are omitted? What functions are affected by project tasks? What resources are needed for the successful completion of the project?

Stakeholders may include:

• Client
  The person for whom the project is created.
• Sponsor
  The person who funds the project. This person can also be the Client.
• End-users
  The people who will use the end product.
• Project Manager
  The person who oversees the project.
• Project Team Members
  The people performing the tasks to complete the project.

Stakeholders can be further classified according to how engaged and hands-on they are to the project:

• Core stakeholders are those who are actively involved in the project. They have tasks and do actual work.
• Primary stakeholders are those who must be engaged during the project and have direct interest in the project.
• Secondary stakeholders are those who expect to receive reports and updates.

Analysing stakeholder needs

Once the stakeholders have been identified and classified, ask them what the success of the project means to them. You will find that as their interests vary, so do their needs. To set the baseline for your analysis, ask the stakeholders what they want, need or expect, and what stake they have in the project. Ask them what they think success for the project means and what criteria they judge it on.

There are several ways to get the information that you need from the stakeholders. The easiest is to ask them straight up or shoot them an email, a call or a memo. Make sure that your information is first-hand. Do not assume that you know what they think. If personal dialogues with stakeholders are not possible, you can delegate the task to managers or supervisors.

Make sure that you confirm the needs you have identified with each of the stakeholders/ stakeholder groups. Examine what work needs to be done before the project, what resources are required and the milestones you must achieve. You can use a project scope document to help you organise each of these items and document them in a way that allows you to work on the project efficiently.

Case Study

Green Leaf Café – Meet Gary Aziz

Gary is the owner of the Green Leaf Café in Wellington, which incorporates indigenous New Zealand ingredients on its menu. He and his wife Rena have owned the café for five years and have a permanent staff of five, which includes three chefs and two produce growers. They also have 15-20 casual staff they need to manage, including part-time students.

They lease a large garden plot on which they grow most of their produce. They also have an arrangement to source indigenous food ingredients, organic milk and cheese from boutique famers from Martinborough and the Kapiti Coast.

The Green Leaf Café is hoping to expand and as a result Gary and others in the team have been focusing on project managing new initiatives. This includes increasing customer awareness, expanding into providing catering services to corporate clients, overseeing the design and building of new facilities including a larger eating premises, refurbished food preparation areas and building new cool rooms and refrigeration.

Gary's duties include:

• confirming the quality of project outcomes according to expectations of the Green Leaf Café
• consulting and communicating with relevant stakeholders and team members to generate their input and engagement in planning, implementing and reviewing the project
• providing support to Green Leaf café team members involved in a project to achieve their deliverables and to transition them back to their normal work duties after the project has finished.

As one of the owners Gary is often responsible for signing off project documentation as the delegating authority.

Scenario

Gary has recently started a project to have a new cool room built to accommodate the growing demand for vegan products. He has identified the following core stakeholders for this project:

• himself as the sponsor and delegating authority who will sign off on all reports and approve funding and budget
• the building company
• the local council.

He has identified the following primary stakeholders for this project:

• the Green Leaf Café Manager who will ensure that all staff are able to work safely while construction of the new refrigeration unit
• staff who will use the new unit.

He has also identified having a risk management plan in place and communicated to all staff before construction begins to avoid any accidents as a critical success factor. 

Organisations thrive when they communicate and engage stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement is crucial to a successful project, especially in the early planning and development stage. An organisation must have a clear vision which can be derived from a well-rounded strategic planning process, coupled with an effective strategic plan or marketing plan which can only come from stakeholder engagement.

To engage the project stakeholders, here are ten practical tips to better engage and influence them at the right times during the project lifecycle.

^{(Based on “10 Ways to Engage Project Stakeholders”. Project Risk Coach)}

When it comes to the means and tools for stakeholder engagement, the more traditional way is through face-to-face meetings and communications through emails and the like, but take into consideration any cultural preferences for ways to communicate if working with people from other cultures. Nowadays, there are a variety of online management tools that will help you collaborate and engage stakeholders such as Trello and Asana project management tools.

Reviewing your personal work schedule is an important part of the development process. Consider that you may encounter some unexpected changes during the implementation of your work schedule. Such changes may not be foreseeable during planning and preparation, so you have to be prepared to catch on and adjust accordingly.

In order to begin your review, you will need to seek feedback from those in your workgroup. It is important to consider other people’s perspective on your performance. This allows you to observe any aspects of your work performance that you may have missed. However, you also need to consider the feedback that is given to you. Not all feedback is good feedback, and you will need to be able to evaluate them accordingly.

Data that you have been gathering up to this point needs to be analysed to assess the progression of your assigned work tasks. With proper analysis, you will be able to find necessary adjustments in your work schedule. These action items will allow you to complete your scheduled work tasks at the expected level of performance. By incorporating these adjustments properly, you will still be able to accomplish work tasks that you set out to do within the allocated time.

Seek and Evaluate Feedback From Relevant Stakeholders on Own Work Performance

Documenting variations in expected and actual performance can be done using feedback. Feedback provides you with a variety of perspectives on your work performance. This gives you the opportunity to see areas of improvement that you may have missed out on and areas where you stood out.

Information

While the information may become overwhelming at first, note that feedback is typically structured with the following information.

Highlights

These parts of feedback focus on reinforcing actual work performance that is in line with the expectations set by the role and the organisation. Feedback usually begins with highlights to encourage you to be more positive about your work performance. These allow you to take note of the things that you were doing right in order for you to keep in mind during the next time you perform at work.

Lowlights

These are the direct opposite of highlights. They focus on actual work performance that did not meet expectations. Although this part of the feedback looks at the downsides of your performance, it is important that you receive it well. Understand that this is not an attack on your character, but another point of view in observing your performance.

Areas for improvement

These usually come at the end of the feedback as a summary of things you need to look out for. Areas for improvement would be the main talking point in the next feedback that you will receive. These are based on the lowlights of your work performance and would serve as an added expectation or accountability in your work tasks moving forward.

Methods

Seeking feedback in the workplace and among members of your workgroup can be a lot to handle. There are a number of ways to gather feedback, considering that there are many avenues that you can take advantage of to gather this information. Some methods of gathering feedback include:

• Formal/informal performance appraisals
• Customer questionnaires
• Interviewing colleagues
• Personal, reflective behaviour strategies
• Routine organisational methods for monitoring service delivery

Relevant people

Note that, while feedback can be gathered through a range of methods, you must ensure that the person you are receiving feedback from should be relevant to the work task assigned to you. Those who are not involved with what you are doing might have no idea what to tell you when you refer to them for feedback. Some examples of relevant personnel to ask feedback from include:

Yourself

One means of feedback is to provide it to yourself. This generally takes the form of a self-review. A self-review involves you describing the work you have done, measuring it and looking at it against the required work standards. This type of review allows you to get an idea of your entire working life. The previous section provides ways of gathering information for self-review, while the next one will discuss analysing it.

Managers or supervisors

Managers are often charged as a part of their role to provide feedback on performance to their staff. This feedback may be given at many times. You may have formal performance appraisals during which feedback is given, you may have meetings with your manager on a regular basis, or you may actively ask for feedback from your manager. Often, you may find that such feedback is negative. Perhaps your manager feels that there could be room for improvement. It is important to remember that this should not be taken as a personal criticism; it is meant as a learning aid. Focus on what the manager told you, ask the manager to explain how you can improve your performance and spend time discussing the problem. If you feel the feedback is too vague and you are not sure what to do with the feedback, do not be afraid to ask for help.

Co-workers

It is not just your manager who is in a position to provide you with feedback; your team members and co-workers can also provide you with valuable feedback. Think about who sees you at work most often. Your manager is unlikely to spend a lot of time right beside you and see what you are doing and how you are doing it, but your team members and co-workers do. This means that they are likely to have feedback on your performance that is very valuable.

However, it is important to remember that co-workers are unlikely to have been trained in providing feedback, so it is essential that when you ask them to provide it that you ask about specific things to give them some guidance in what you want to know. It is more useful to ask for feedback in a private setting, as this is likely to make everyone feel more comfortable. Finally, never tell the co-worker they are wrong in the feedback that they are providing to you.

Customers or clients

Customers and clients are valuable sources of feedback. They can tell you these things:

• How well your product or service is meeting their needs
• Whether your product or service is competitively priced
• How well you and your staff are meeting their needs when they contact you

However, getting feedback from customers can be a difficult proposition. Therefore, you may find that the use of a questionnaire to ask questions formally works more effectively.

Not all feedback is good feedback. Some will not be of much use to you, while other feedback will be crucial. The critical point is knowing how to tell what feedback is useful and what is not. Feedback is all about attempting to improve performance. You need to spend some time evaluating the feedback that you receive and analysing whether or not it has real value. In order to determine whether the feedback is useful feedback should be evaluated according to:

While evaluating the feedback given to you from a range of sources, you may notice some information tends to repeat, whether they are highlights, lowlights, or areas of improvement. It is wise to take notice of similar feedback because it means there is something about your work performance that many people have felt the need to mention.

Now it's your turn

Prior to moving on to the next topic, have a conversation with someone that is not in Human Resources or studying this qualification and in your own words:

• Describe how you schedule and prioritise your own work tasks.
• Explain why is important to review your personal work schedule.
• Identify who the stakeholders who are involved in your work tasks.
• Describe how feedback is offered and received in your work place.