Supervise a Team in a Business Environment

1.1, 1.2:
By working together as a team towards a goal/ objective helps the team become stronger and more focused towards targets/aims. This is due to individuals being able to build personal confidence while working together and enables people to be more assertive in their strong areas. By supervising the team you can help build a confident and able workforce by learning their strong/weak points. When working towards goals or targets the most productive/efficient members or staff will be used according to expertise/confidence in the area. This will help achieve business objectives as everyone is working towards the same goals. This will improve business and staff effectiveness towards agreed goals.

2.1, 2.2:
When working together communicating effectively is important. It helps a team understand what is expected of them as well as outlining important information and goals. A variety of methods can be used to achieve this i.e. meeting, email, bulletins and information boards and the most important decision required is “What is the best way to relay this message?” A consideration is also required as to who the audience is as this will affect the decision on how information is relayed. In some circumstances communicating via email is acceptable, this is generally best when the information needs to be passed quickly to a lot of people, or if it’s an update that can be read when they have free time to do so.

If an urgent update is needed or change to work it is always best to use face to face in a meeting. This will enable you to be able to answer any queries or even to seek ideas from the team if required. It is always best to communicate with your team regularly to ensure that any problems/issues can be caught early and acted upon. For statistics to measure areas of concern/ productivity an information board displaying these in a visual display could also be useful. By communicating effectively within a team you and the staff will always know exactly where you’re up to and what the plan is to achieve objectives. This helps towards effective planning and achieving goals and targets.

3.1, 3.2, 3.3 :
When working together as a team it’s important for the team to be aware of the goals and targets. The benefits of communicating plans and informing them of objectives are that all members of the team will then be working towards the same goal. By having a meeting to discuss the work goals and agreeing a time plan with the staff you can then work towards a goal by scheduling activities for individuals or the team. To do this you need to identify tasks and estimate duration for each task. By doing this you can allocate resources to ensure everyone is working effectively towards the agreed time plan. By agreeing quality measures and timescales within your team it keeps staff working the same and producing work of the same high standards. It helps to reduce loss of resource due to rework as they know what is expected of them. It ensures that all individuals from management to staff have agreed expectations and what is required to deliver these.

4.1, 4.2
The benefits of recognising individual strengths within a team are an important factor of any team leader’s role. It helps the team leader delegate tasks to work more effectively and ensures that the best person for each task is used. By pooling together the strengths of your team you can achieve targets easier by deciding who would be more suitable for each task required. This helps the team to identify with their role and the role of others on the team and work more efficiently together. When assigning work or tasks to individuals or teams it is good practice to consider individual capabilities as well as strengths/ weaknesses. When I have to assign work to staff I decide what type of work it is and what the priority of the piece of work is before considering the member of staff to give it too.

This is because in some instances the work can be quite complex and require more specialised attention in a particular area. I.e. Appeals require quite in-depth scrutiny of all of the facts and attention to detail; I would assign this to one team member who is experienced in this area as this would assure that the work is done correctly and also efficiently. If another member of the team is more experienced in housing costs I would try to assign more of this type of work to them as it would achieve a more productive task as opposed to someone who would need more coaching to do the task effectively. On some occasions it is not always able to give someone’s preferred type of work due to staff sickness or annual leave and in these cases I would have to consider the abilities of the attending staff and assign to the most suitable in these circumstances.

4.3, 4.4, 4.5
Diversity within a team is beneficial as each person brings together their own unique views and ways of working. When managed effectively this can help bring together different ideas and build a strong team. By having a diverse team there is opportunity for views / ideas to be seen that could help make the business better. This is due to each person seeing the task/ result from a different light. By listening to all people you can gage a better understanding of the end result. The benefits of respecting others on a team are that all individuals feel valued and confident to communicate easier with each other. When people feel respected they work more effectively together towards the same goals. When respect is given it will be relayed back to you. This is an effective way of ensuring good team values are held.

Team members may need support for work issues. I.e. they may be struggling with a particular area of work. To support them I would assist in finding support for the area in the form of either an accuracy member to coach or an experienced member of the team to mentor the member of staff. I would also have regular meetings with them to discuss any areas of concerns. Other issues of support required by team members may be personal issues outside of work. In this instance I may not be able to be actively involved in helping sort out the problem but I would be available to talk confidentially and also direct to any help they could get via 3rd parties through the workplace. I could also help in ways by reducing workload for a period of time or a change to working hours for an agreed amount of time if this would make things easier for them. In all examples discretion and confidentially would be of the utmost importance.

4.6 When working on a team, problems can occur with clashes of personalities, some people might disagree with others ideas or ways forward/ ways of working. To deal with this I would be respectful of everyone’s opinion and let each person discuss in the group what the pros and cons of each idea are. If personal issues of this type occurred I would speak to each individual privately in a professional manner before it started to affect the team. Teams can have problems if one particular member of staff doesn’t work the same way as others or even if they don’t work as hard.

To deal with this I would ensure that all members of the team were aware of what quality measures were expected of them. By reviewing targets with the team regularly this would give assurance that they knew what is expected of them. If these targets weren’t being met I would speak to individuals regularly during one to one meetings. During the meeting I would advise of my expectations and give guidance on how these could be met. Other problems could be availability of staff to schedule meetings etc. this would need to be considered if an important update was required as I would need to advise everyone at the same time. Ensuring that staff were kept up to date I would like to do this at a time that was suitable for all.

5.1, 5.2, 5.3

The purpose of a work assessment is to fully gage whether the working instruction, quality of work is being met. It can identify areas of concern either with training needs or with a flaw in the work process. If quality is measured in the form of expectation or assurance that work is completed correctly then if there are any issues it can identify them early so something can be done about it ie training, possible change to work instruction etc. To assess the work of individuals or teams there needs to be quality measures in place. To measure if an individual is performing efficiently daily statistics on completed claims would be kept. If an individual’s target was 5 claims per day and an individual was only managing to clear 3 a day, this would be measured and then tackled during one to one meetings.

Accuracy is an important part of the role also and this is measured via the accuracy team who would obtain data on claims that have been checked. The quality measure of accuracy would be that individuals had to reach 96%. If this isn’t achieved this would demonstrate a learning need and would also be tackled during one to one meetings. Teams have targets that need to be met and these outline where any shortfalls are for each individual team. This can point to any under achieving teams but the individual assessments are where you can pinpoint where the problems are i.e. possible changes to guidance can cause accuracy issues due to a lack of understanding of the new direction.

This can demonstrate a learning requirement for the business area if the error is being made throughout the command. The purpose of giving team members the opportunity to assess their own work is to give them the chance to measure their competency and also seek to improve any areas. Verbal discussions on how the staff member feels certain areas of work are going and where improvements can be made give them the independence to gage their learning path and allows a good working relationship to develop. It can also improve trust as management and staff are working together to make improvement’s or changes to the way individuals work.

5.4, 5.5

The purpose of giving and receiving constructive feedback is to improve the way in which we work and to let each other know how effective we are in what we do. It’s also a way in which we can learn what we can improve upon. The benefits of this are it helps us gage how we are seen by others and how to improve this. To do this effectively open ended questions are best to get the participant to join in the conversation. For example “ how do you feel about ….” Can you see it from my point of view?” The feedback should never be directed towards the person as that could make them feel they were being attacked.

It should be given in an encouraging manner and should always be based on events or specific behaviour’s and not the person’s personality. Negative feedback should always be given in private. Constructive feedback should always be given sensitively. To make use of feedback to improve the work of others can be used by obtaining the information given i.e. strong points, weak areas as a learning curve. It could be used to identify training needs as well as boost confidence and build morale by emphasizing the person’s strong points. Building morale by giving the team positive feedback in public is a good way to boost team morale and performance.