Unit/s of competency covered

People Performance

National Competency
BSBMGT502 Manage People Performance

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Objectives and learning Outcomes of this
subject:
• Allocate work to staff
• Assess performance of staff
• Provide feedback to staff
• Manage follow up and provide support services
• Establish team performance plan
• Develop and facilitate team cohesion
• Facilitate teamwork
• Liaise with stakeholders

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Consultation

• When allocating work to others, it is important to give them as much information

as possible about the work you require them to do and make sure they understand
and accept the delegation you are giving them.

• In order to gain this information yourself, as a manager you will need to consult
with others to find out what the requirements are.

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Consult with relevant groups

• It is difficult for people to meet expectations if they are not fully briefed an have
clear understanding on what is required of them – this included the standard of
work to be created, the time that is required and the resources available to
perform the tasks allocated.
• As the manager, it is important that your staff are well informed about the specific
nature of the work you wish them to undertake and its overall objective, but also
the timeframe in which the work must be completed and any other special
conditions or requirements of the work.

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Consult with relevant groups

• Establishing a channel of clear and open communication is also essential if you

want your people to be committed to, and excited about, achieving their own
particular objectives and the organisation’s goals. A policy of open and honest
communication on all issues relating to work plans and strategies will enable each
employee to know exactly what he or she is meant to be doing at any given time,
and why, and encourages interaction and constructive problem solving.

• Being ‘available’ for your staff is extremely important, as is keeping them ‘in the
loop’ about any important decisions you make, why you are making them and how
they might affect the team.

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Consult with relevant groups

• When you give instructions and allocate work, make sure the individuals to whom you
assign the work are realistically in a position to commit to the project or task and not
simply taking on too much work because they don’t know how to say no to a manager. If
you have a positive organisational culture and your team feels they can talk openly to
you about any difficulties or concerns they may have, then these situations will be rare.
• However, you should periodically review workloads to ensure that the distribution in
your department or section is fair and manageable all round.

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Consult with relevant groups

• In your role as a manager, there will be many situations where you need to consult
with other individuals and groups in order to successfully implement your work
plans.

• These individuals or groups may be either:

– Internal
– External

• Remember, few teams work completely in isolation and workload issues within
your section often affect other individuals and groups working in or with an
organisation. Therefore, keeping all relevant stakeholders up-to-date with your
plans will really help to avert misunderstandings and problems later on.

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 Consult with internal groups and individuals

• It is important to bear in mind that the decisions you make as manager of a team or
department within an organisation will also have an impact on the rest of that
organisation to some degree, so consulting widely on issues of mutual interest is
vital.
• Individuals and groups within an organisation need to communicate regularly to be
efficient. Organisations are essentially just networks of people, each having a
particular skill set, who rely on each other to get the job done.
• No single person in any organisation is fully equipped to perform every task required
by that organisation. Individuals—indeed, whole departments—need to work
collaboratively in order to fulfil their own work requirements so you should always
consult with colleagues with regard to any areas of mutual concern and keep them
abreast of your timelines and all significant developments they should know about.

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 Consult with external groups and individuals

• In most management jobs, you will not only need to interact

regularly with other departments and their managers, but also with
a range of different external stakeholders.
• Some examples:
An IT manager might interact with: A fashion manager might interact with:

Software and hardware distributors Clothing suppliers

External training organisations Other stores in the shopping centre

Network providers Members of the public

Outlets in other locations

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Deciding who to consult and when

• Deciding which internal or external stakeholders need to be consulted on your work allocation
plans largely depends on their level of involvement. If you happen to work in a high-volume
business where you deal with a large number of suppliers, you would not be expected to consult
with every single supplier on all of your work plans and strategies.

• However, do consider that in some cases, a long-term or regular supplier can play a significant
role in helping an organisation achieve its objectives and a manager in these instances would be
wise to consult externally

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Deciding who to consult and when

• For instance, a grocery store that contracts to one major delivery company would have
a valuable operational partnership, so letting the delivery company know in advance
about changes to work plans and to discuss any concerns that they may have would be
good business practice in this situation.
• Keeping the delivery company informed throughout the consultation process provides
their management with an opportunity to re-schedule their own internal workflow
accordingly and, as a result, the delivery company would be better placed to meet its
client’s future operational needs and requirements.

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 ACTIVITY

• Consulting with internal and external stakeholders presents different challenges .

• What are some of the challenges you may encounter?

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Communicating your plans

• Individuals, groups and even entire sections of an organisation need to

work together to achieve organisational outcomes; effective
communication and the ability to collaboratively schedule activities are
therefore paramount.

• Communication is a fundamental element of all organisational work,

and a winning work plan requires a good communications strategy.
The way people communicate in the workplace can take many forms
but despite today’s high level of technology, workplace communication
still revolves around the principles of basic conversation.

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Communicating your plans

• Conversation and communication skills are extremely important when interacting and
negotiating with relevant groups and individuals both internal, and external to your
organisation. To operate effectively as a manager you need to apply the same positive
principles of consultation and open communication that you encourage from your team
to all of your dealings in the workplace.

• By developing your own communication skills, and setting up a basic communication

plan, you will help to minimise confusing situations and unexpected obstacles from
impeding the success of your work plans.

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Communication methods

• Once you have identified everyone who might be affected by your work allocation plans,
you must decide on the most appropriate way of keeping them informed about your
intentions and timelines.

• Your communications strategy may be formal or informal depending on the situation.

Some work plans or projects will function more smoothly if you schedule short, regular
meetings with all key stakeholders to discuss areas of mutual interest or concern.
However, it may be more expedient in other cases to simply send an occasional email
or memo updating your plans.

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Communication methods

• Some of the most common forms of workplace communication include:

– Email
– Scheduled conference calls
– Group briefings
– Memo
– Bulletin board
– Intranet
– Individual meetings
– Group meetings

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Developing the Work Plan

• Now that you have consulted with stakeholders to understand the work to be
carried out, you will need to develop a work plan so that you have a clear
understanding of what is required, who you are allocating it to and how you will
measure progress.

• Taking the time to develop work plans allows everyone involved to have clear
expectations on what is required of them.

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Developing the Work Plan

• Most work activities, regardless of their size, can be broken down into smaller
components. Once you have consulted with your stakeholders you would
undertake the development of these work components (or work plans) in line with
your organisations procedures and any industry or legislative requirements.

• A work plan helps you to plan by:

– Identifying resources required

– Assigning responsibilities to team members

– Sequencing and scheduling activities

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Developing the Work Plan

• Essentially, a work plan allows you, as the manager, to keep track of what needs to
be done, by whom and when it’s due.

• An example of this would be if you are planning a conference, you would need to
find out how many people are expected to attend prior to booking a venue or
arranging catering or booking accommodation.

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What to consider
When you are looking at work plans for your team, you need to collect a range of
information such as:
– Duties and Tasks: The basic unit of a job is the performance of specific tasks
and duties. Information to be collected about these items may include:
frequency, duration, effort, skill, complexity, equipment, standards, etc.
– Environment: This may have a significant impact on the physical requirements
to be able to perform a job. The work environment may include unpleasant
conditions such as offensive odours and temperature extremes. You may also
need to consider if the work can be done in an office environment or as a
work-from-home undertaking, in some instances you may need to assign team
members to a client site with a very different work environment to what they
are used to.

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What to consider
– Tools and Equipment: Some duties and tasks are performed using specific
equipment and tools. Equipment may include items such as protective
clothing or access to a particular type of software. These items need to be
specified in your work plan.

– Relationships: what supervision is required for the tasks and who will provide
it? If the supervision is to be external to your organisation, what arrangements
need to be put in place?

– Requirements: The knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform the job.

Once you have created your work plan you will be ready to allocate tasks to your
team members.

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 Activity
• Practice Work Plan: You have been asked to create a work plan for an annual
stock take.

• What do you need to consider as you allocate tasks to your team ?

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Allocation of work

• Everyone who manages people needs to know how to allocate work and delegate
duties. Deciding who should undertake work, explain the work and ensure they
have enough knowledge to do it well isn’t as simple as selecting the first team
member you see and handing the task over. A little more planning is involved to
ensure common understanding is required.

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Allocation of work
• Most people respond more willingly to a request rather than an order – although
individual work circumstances will determine the most effective way to assign
work.

• The words you use, your tone of voice and body language all make a big difference
to the way your staff “hear” and respond to your requests. Simply hearing and
accepting allocated work isn’t necessarily as straight-forward as hearing what’s
required and rushing off to complete it.

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Allocation of work
• Many employees who are uncertain of the reasons behind instructions and work
allocation find it difficult to carry them out. When allocating work to others it is
important that you take the time to give each team member an understanding of
why the task is important and where it fits in the work of the department, project or
organisation.

• Often, seeing tasks in a wider context gives employees a better understanding of

what is required, why it is needed and an increased commitment to achievement.

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Allocation of work

• Delegation is one of the most important management skills. Good delegation

saves you time, develops your people and motivates. Poor delegation will cause
you frustration, de-motivates and confuses the other person, and fails to achieve
the task or purpose itself.

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Allocation of work

The Steps to Delegating:

• Define the task: Confirm in your own mind that the task is suitable to be
delegated.

• Select the individual or team: What are your reasons for delegating to this person
or team? What are they going to get out of it? What are you going to get out of it?

• Assess ability and training needs: Is the other person or team of people capable of
doing the task? Do they understand what needs to be done? If not, you can't
delegate.

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Allocation of work
• Explain the reasons: You must explain why the job or responsibility is being
delegated. And why to that person or people? What are its importance and
relevance? Where does it fit in the overall scheme of things?

• State required results: What must be achieved? Clarify understanding by getting

feedback from the other person. How will the task be measured? Make sure they
know how you intend to decide that the job is being successfully done.

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Allocation of work

• Consider resources required: Discuss and agree what is required to get the job
done. Consider people, location, premises, equipment, money, materials, other
related activities and services.

• Agreed deadlines: When must the job be finished? Or if an ongoing duty, when are
the review dates? And if the task is complex and has parts or stages, what are the
priorities?

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Allocation of work

At this point, you may need to confirm understanding with the other person of the
previous points, getting ideas and interpretation. As well as showing you that the job
can be done, this helps to reinforce commitment.

• Support and communicate: Think about who else needs to know what's going on,
and inform them

• Feedback on results: It is essential to let the person know how they are doing, and
whether they have achieved their aims. If not, you must review with them why
things did not go to plan, and deal with the problems. You must absorb the
consequences of failure, and pass on the credit for success

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Allocation of work

Before delegating the work, you must decide on who are the appropriate personnel to
complete particular tasks in the store and indeed the cost involved. This includes
consideration of the following questions:

Which personnel are already trained and competent in that task’s completion?

• It may be advantageous to select a team member who is already trained and

competent at performing the task. By allocating the most experienced team
member to complete the task it will be done more efficiently therefore at a
reduced labour cost.

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Allocation of work

Who is not currently competent at completing that task, but needs to learn how to do
it?

• It may be an opportunity to train another team member at this time. This may cost
more in the short term, however, to ensure that particular skills are not held by
only one team member, it is appropriate to use a new task as an opportunity to
teach another employee how it is completed.

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Allocation of work
Can the tasks be shared evenly among team members?

• When tasks are seen to be either particularly enjoyable or unattractive, it may be

appropriate to share them with the team so no-one feels that other team members
receive more favourable treatment. This may also result in increased productivity
therefore reducing labour cost.

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Allocation of work

What current work-load needs to be taken into consideration?

• The current workload of team members needs to be considered when allocating

tasks. For example, A staff member who is already struggling with a delivery of
new merchandise may not be the appropriate choice to complete another task.
This may result in the work not being completed to standard therefore labour costs
will increase when it needs to be completed again.

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Allocation of work

What workplace requirements need to be considered?

• Workplace Industrial Relations and/or Health & Safety requirements must be

considered when allocating team members to particular tasks so that all business
and legal obligations are being met. Mistakes in this area can be very costly to
you, your team and your business.

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Do’s and Dont’s of Delegating
Do’s
• Be consistent with what is to be done and the standards required.
• Be sure the employee has the skill’s to carry out the allocated task or be ready to
provide training and guidance.
• Distribute work allocation’s evenly among team members.
• Check the employee's understanding of what is expected of them.
• Follow up to see that the employee is completing the allocated work task to the
agreed timeframe and standard’s .
Dont’s
• Be careless when allocating work.
• Give all the good work task to the same people all the time.
• Over work some employee’s that accept your direction’s with less fuss than others.

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 Activity
• Personal Reflection.

• Reflect on a time you were asked to undertake a task for which you had low
skills.

• What was the result ?

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 Summary and close
In this session you have learnt how to:

• Identify stakeholders to consult

• Gain information from stakeholders

• Identify who best methods to communicate with them

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 Summary and close

• Develop work plans

• Communicate and allocate work tasks

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