Assessment
What you have to do
Read the scenario about Sunshine Advertising and complete the tasks.
Scenario - Sunshine Advertising
You are a manager in a lucrative advertising company and have a team of 15 staff members but at the moment two of them are working closely with you to complete some very important jobs.
Tasks
Pretty Boutique is a key client of yours and has asked for your company to prepare some advertisements for their fashion showcase. Today is Tuesday, and you know the draft brochure will take at least one day to be ready for the Boutique to look at. The fashion show is scheduled for Wednesday in two weeks time.
After looking at the draft brochure, Pretty Boutique advises you on Friday of a problem that needs fixing. They informed you that the venue had to be changed as it was not big enough for their showcase. You now realise that the advertisements will need to be changed which will take at least 2-3 hours to fix so you will now have to get Joshua to help you.
You are also on a very special project for Movers and Shakers and although you still have three weeks to finish, you feel there is another solid week's work left to finish.
You also have your normal management tasks to complete.
Staff jobs
Currently, you have two staff working with you and their normal tasks are:
Grace's tasks Time needed Joshua's tasks Time needed
Receptionist
Clerical assistance to you Make travel bookings for representatives
Word processing for company
Order stationery
every day 3 hrs per day
2 hrs per week
3 hrs per day
1 hr per month Assist the desktop publishers
Update webpage
Incoming and Outgoing
Mail
Banking
Assist you 3 hrs per week
3 hrs per week
1 hr per day
1 hr per day
2 hrs per day
Staff workload
Grace arrives late to work very upset. You asked her what her workload was like for the day and she bursts into tears. She said that she is not up-to-date and still has the following outstanding tasks to complete in addition to her normal day-to-day work: book a rental car for you to picked up in Melbourne next Monday
Melbourne travel arrangements and accommodation for you and the two sales representatives the Power Point presentation for you to present at a Conference next week last month's stationery order.
Grace is very behind with her work and you need to arrange for someone to help her.
You check with Joshua and find out that he is up-to-date with his tasks, but mentioned that the desktop publishers are snowed under with work and have asked him to help out longer than the usual three hours allocated each week).
He mentioned to you that Grace had broken up with her husband, is very stressed and therefore behind with her work.
The Director of the company has indicated in a recent email that no staff members were allowed to do any more overtime so you are now faced with a dilemma as to how to deal with this situation.
Team Activities to be completed
Task 1
Use the table format below and make lists of Joshua and Grace's work. Prioritise these work tasks for the next week using the "URG-IMP" system of Prioritising by importance and urgency.
Task Importance Urgency Priority Estimated time Deadline
Task 2
Using the information in Question 1, prepare work schedules for yourself, Grace and Joshua for the next week showing the team priorities and resource availability.
You may use Microsoft Outlook to create a schedule or use the sample calendar below for each staff member i.e. one for you, Grace and Joshua.
Work plan for ...............................................
Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
9 am - 10 am
10 am - 11 am
11 am - 12 pm
12 pm - 1 pm
1 pm - 2 pm
2 pm - 3 pm
3 pm - 4 pm
4 pm - 5 pm
Task 3
1. What realistic contingency plans would you use should the following situations arise:
a) Grace takes two days sick leave.
b) The person working on the problem for Pretty Boutique takes three hours longer than planned?
What steps can be taken to prevent the situation of staff being so far behind, from happening again?
c) Prepare a report for your next team meeting that covers the following:
reviewing the problems of the past weeks identifying opportunities for improvement and learning rebuilding morale some stress management techniques.
Task 4
Prepare a professional development plan for Grace addressing some of the areas you would like her to improve and include the following types of self-development activities:
1. mentoring
2. on-the-job learning
3. formal studies
4. formal or informal networks.
Assignment checklist
I have:
? prioritised Joshua and Grace's work
? prepared work schedules for myself, Joshua and Grace
? completed the questions on contingency planning in Task 3
? prepared a report for the next team meeting
? prepared a professional development plan for Grace.