Managing Work Priorities Performance Outcomes & Professional Development

Establishing work goals and plans

The key purpose of this report focuses on describing the performance outcomes, requisite skills and knowledge for managing own performance and professional development besides emphasizing on to set and met priorities, evaluate information and using different strategies for  developing further proficiency. To study revolves around managers focusing on their need of being organized, systematic and skilled for managing the others work effectively.

1. Review your job description and your organization’s business plans, business goals, policies and procedures.

It is assumed that I work in the Event Centre at Star Sydney as Assistant Manager.

Job Description

Positioned as an Assistant Manager in the Event Centre manage staffs, providing leadership and supporting the team members are what my primary responsibilities besides the management of operational and administrative functions for ensuring efficient delivery of various events with exceptional customer service and quality. Additionally, looking after the venue setting communication and maintain timelines and event priorities, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders relationships on also part of the responsibility.

The Star Sydney has announced many development plans for transforming the harbour side property over next five years, with currently investing $130 million in refurbishing Astral Tower & Residences besides proposing development plans for the Event Centre and adding a new hotel tower. According to Shen, Cotton & Kram (2015), making profits like any other business is the business goal of Star Sydney by fulfilling the entertainment needs of its customers and the principles of corporate governance are strongly supported by its policies and given the highly regulated environment it operates into, is committed to maintain the standards within the Group besides ensuring sustainable businesses.

For meeting the best practices and company needs, the policies (compliance policy, minimum shareholding policy, diversity and inclusion policy, securities trading policy, privacy policy, environment management policy and whistleblower policy) are annually reviewed. According to Theodore (2014), the Group’s support procedures and plans are helpful in fostering increased vertical alignment and horizontal integration and coordination across all departments contributing into setting the personal and team goals required to attain improved outcomes through an effective and efficient business planning process.

2. Based on your job description (and following your organisation’s business plans, goals, and applicable policies and procedures), establish four to five goals (including both personal and team goals).

Personal and Team Goals
Goal 1	Getting promoted to General Manager
Goal 2	Increasing the Event Centre’s revenues
Goal 3	Creating best working culture for staffs in the workplace
Goal 4	Seek opportunities of advertising the Event Centre

According to Lasker, (2016), for personal and teams success goal are critical in making both responsible for achieving certain organizational outcomes. Setting goals helps in deciding where the team wants to go and what is needed to be done for getting there. Working with teams in designing definite and challenging goals literally helps them in achieving high performance levels. 

Importance of personal and team goal-setting in an organization

Goal-setting is important for clear direction and the assessment of organizations progress and are established for increasing the performance of employees and tying them to company’s overall strategy. The goals, according to Postu?a & Majczyk (2018) are established by considering what is wanted to achieve and committing to it by setting SMART goals (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) for keeping both self and team motivated

3. Develop KPIs to measure performance related to work goals.

According to Ishaq Bhatti, Awan & Razaq (2014), KPIs are used for measuring organisations progress and performance towards the attainment achievement of their business goals and objectives. Most KPIs fall in improving revenues, reducing costs, improving process cycle-time and increasing customer satisfaction. For measuring the business process of Star Sydney, the KPIs are:

• Processes percent where windup falls in +/- 5% of the approximatedcompletion
• Process long-overdue time on average
• Percent of overdue processes
• Process age on average
• Percent of processes where actual number of resources allocated is lesser than estimated
• Sum of costs of  quelled/ interrupted active processes
• Task completing time on average
• Sum total of time variance ( in days) against planned schedule of projects running

KPI, according to Sangwa & Sangwan (2018), is a quantifiable metric reflecting personal or team’s achievement of assigned goals. Star Sydney, being a service industry for measuring the goal-related performance will look more to KPIs measuring specified performance areas like Mean Time to Repair, First-Time Fix Rates, customer satisfaction index etc., which are critical in organization’s success.

To maintain performance under varying conditions and contingencies, according to Qadeer, Ahmad, Hameed & Mahmood (2016), measurable targets will be set taking considering varying work conditions for example, at home and office, a manual journal will be maintained besides observing the areas of problems, taking part in a task. The effect of personal strengths like good communication and social skills will be capitalized in taking feedbacks from colleagues and manager while that of the weaknesses like poor time management will be minimized by creating a daily schedule and staying committed to it.

4. Consider a range of activities to advance work goals. Prioritise possible activities. Choose two work goals to develop work plans for.

	Work Goals	Prioritized Activities
Goal 1	Expanding professional knowledge and training	Getting enrolled into different courses (e.g. knowledge management, negotiation Skills professional and services marketing), attend workshops and training programs
Goal 2	Strengthening professional relations	Leading others professionally, asking opinions (superiors/subordinates), taking blame for failures
Goal 3	Improving presentation skills	Research the audience, structuring the presentation, practice, improving verbal delivery
Goal 4	Gaining new experiences	Volunteering for special programs at work, exploring the current field, talking to people never spoken earlier, learning from mistakes

Prioritize the Goal

Goal	Rank
Goal 1	2
Goal 2	3
Goal 3	1
Goal 4	4

Work Plan
Goals	Person Responsible	Phase	Time Period
1	Self	In progress	2 months
3	Self	In progress	1 month

According to Tong & Razniak (2017) for prioritising the activities advancing work goals first of all a to-do list was prepared followed by establishing the durations (due dates). Once this was done the consequences were considered for identifying the activities that are of higher importance. After this the to-do list was reassessed for keeping up with my changing priorities. For achieving the goals I will need to manage the competing demands and for doing so I plan to maintain a diary or daily planner of what is needed to done every day, which will be checked numerous times throughout the day and will be marked of once it is attained. On day end the time plan for the next day will be worked out. This process will be repeated till all goals are achieved.

Developing KPIs to measure performance

5. Referring to the template provided in Appendix 1 as an example, use Microsoft Word to develop two work plans to achieve the two goals you have prioritized.

work plan 1

Work activity	Description	Goal/s	KPIs	Timeframe	Person responsible
Research the audience, structuring the presentation, practice, improving verbal delivery	Presentation skills  needed to improve for building robust customer relations	Improve presentation skills	How well  the objective, audience and message is known How well the presentation is planned, prepared and performed How intuition, improvisation and innovation are used	1 month	Self

Work plan 2

Work activity	Description	Goal/s	KPIs	Timeframe	Person responsible
Getting enrolled into different courses (e.g. knowledge management, negotiation Skills professional and services marketing), attend workshops and training programs	Professional development is important for improving efficiency, reenergizing the staffs, building confidence and creditability and easing succession planning	Expand professional knowledge and training	Are the learned competencies (knowledge) been demonstrated? How it contributed to business outcomes?	2 months	Self

According to Gyanchandani (2017), the process of developing plans to manage the work priorities revolved around stepping back for looking at the bigger picture in terms of the purpose of my position and accordingly what the priorities should be followed by establishing and categorizing them by urgency and relevance for deciding which needs immediate attention. After this time was allocated and daily routine was planned. To manage time efficiently I have used this plan for giving directions and motivation to achieve the goals.

6. In your journal, describe:

a. How you will ensure you serve as a positive role model through work planning and organisation. Give examples. Describe how your work plans serve as examples to follow in your workplace.

According to Leahy, Wegmann & Nolen (2016) to serve as a positive role model through work planning and organization I will ensure that my subordinates often get chances to see me how a daily planner or diary is maintained for noting down the every bigger or smaller work and then prioritized based on urgency and importance. For example, executives working under me value my ability of working everything by planning for organized flow of works and keep clam even under pressures. My work plan motivates the subordinates in preparing then same to be organized.

b. How you will maintain appropriate work–life balance, manage stress and maintain health. 

According to Koubova & Buchko (2013) for balancing work-life, managing stress and maintaining health I will prioritise my time having a to-do list with 20 tasks that will be prioritized based on urgency and importance followed by structuring the day around them. Short breaks will be taken for managing stress besides turning to exercise and getting enough sleep while to maintain health, I will eat healthy and nutritious food.

Conclusion

From the study it can be concluded that by managing personal work priorities and professional development, employees can determine ways of balancing the competing demands of work and life.

References

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Ishaq Bhatti, M., Awan, H. M., & Razaq, Z. (2014). The key performance indicators (KPIs) and their impact on overall organizational performance. Quality and Quantity, 48(6), 3127- 3143. Retrieved from https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11135-013-9945-y [Accessed on 5 Nov. 2018]

Koubova, V., & Buchko, A. A. (2013). Life-work balance. Management Research Review, 36(7), 700-719. Retrieved from https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/MRR-05-2012-0115 [Accessed on 5 Nov. 2018]

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