Introduction to Woolworths
I am the senior manager under whose supervision the various teams will be working. The organization as you know, we all are working for is Woolworths. It is one of the premier retail companies in the country and provides daily groceries and all other important daily needs to the customers. The mission of the company is to first in customer and first in culture, stay connected with our people, differentiate our products, accelerate innovation and unlock value (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2019). Our vision is to become the largest retail store in the country that provides all kinds of commodities to the customers. Our objectives are to become number one choice for the customers, provide differentiated items that are not provided by any competitors and building a retail team that understands the customer’s issues. To achieve all these goals including the last goal we need your help and support. You will be the face of the company for the customers and it is up to you now to lead the store to success.
-Workplace health and safety is very important as the organization wants all its workers to work under healthy conditions. In order to facilitate the same the organization has implemented the workplace health and safety standards.
-The customer service expectations that our retail team will come across will be very high as the customers have daily retail needs. The team would need to communicate with, assist and guide the customers to the right kind of products.
-The company values quality, teamwork, exceptional service, innovation and social responsibilities. Along with the management, it is up to each and every person related to the operations of Woolworths to uphold these values.
-As Woolworth’s business operations consists of a large number of products. The responsibility of the organization towards improving environmental standards increases (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2019). The organization is committed to animal welfare, sustainable products and green marketing.
The company has witnessed growth over the years due to the hard work and dedication of the employees. Hence, our employees are our biggest asset and you can achieve any goal for the company.
A short introduction session will now be held to know the team members. This will be formal for now and within the teams another introductory session will be held.
The targets are a bit difficult to achieve but all the selected personnel have been carefully chosen as they have the potential to overachieve even the most difficult targets.
Workplace Health and Safety Standards
Mutual trust is necessary to be strong in the work we do. We will organize session and events through which trust and bonding can be emphasized.
The organizational culture in Woolworths is based on personal development, group coordination, mutual trust and a relationship of symbiosis between our employees
The retail teams will be present at the various areas of our shops and will assist the customers with their buying. The sales team will be present at various counters and will sell items that are newly launched to the customers. Each team will have a supervisor who will manage all the team members.
There will be special mentors that will assist the teams in doing their responsibilities. Training teams will be providing special trainings throughout the season to anticipate events.
The retail teams have members from all backgrounds hence diversity and mutual trust and respect should be maintained.
All the members of the team have their say in the operations of the company. They are free to express their views and hold discussion with the leadership whenever they face any issues. All members are accountable for their own actions as well as their respective teams.
A positive place of work helps to enhance productivity. Hence, all members are to strive to create an engaging and mutually beneficial work environment. All employees associated with the organization need to live up to the standards of ethical conduct.
The risks that we can face are improper coordination, excessive customer demands, lack of coordination and other issues that can arise from time to time.
All the members of the teams are now free to ask any questions in regards to the information and instructions that have been provided.
- Role of a leader
The role of a leader in an organizational environment becomes much more than simply leading people. There is more to management that I have to understand than just the basic elements. I think that being a role model in a retail organization is important as through passing time the workers have to develop various skills. Retail chains also hire a number of youngsters. Many of whom are part time and pursuing college degrees. Hence, it becomes important that leaders become people that can be followed and admired. The most important aspects for building positive role modelling are hard work, dedication, determination, innovativeness, perseverance and ability to work smartly and flexibly whenever required. These are the aspects that I think a leader should nurture within himself/herself. Positive communication requires the ability to easily put forward ideas and coordinate effectively with others.
- Various Workplace cultures
Customer Service Expectations
Two important workplace cultures that would be focused towards improving are taking ownership and flexible teamwork. Firstly, taking ownership is important as in large organization people can easily pass on the responsibilities on others. This needs to change as the organization needs to work as a unit. The individual needs to realize his/her duties and when required the individuals need to take responsibilities even for the unfinished work of their colleagues. Good amount of skills are required for the same. Secondly, flexible teamwork means that teams will work as teams and not as individuals. Team members need to work together and one member has to take on the role of the other in their absence. Flexible team work will also improve bonding which will be effective for the organization.
- Steps taken to ensure conduct and performance
The steps taken to ensure conduct and performance was focused on enhancing the aspects related to team functioning. Sessions were held more often within the teams and sometimes with individual team members to discuss the prospects of the team and grievances. Each individual was assigned some specific duties above their normal work functions. Flexible teamwork and taking ownership for the work of the teammates were greatly emphasized. Ethical standards were repeated often to establish strong conformity with the same. Trust building was done by understanding each team member. The teams are taken for group outings so that even lighter moments can be shared between teammates which can facilitate essential trust building.
Past background
My past background is good with experiences that have been diverse and vivid. My educational endeavors as well the experiences that I have gained in various stages of my life have shaped everything that encompasses my personality, my outlook and my abilities. After completing compulsory schooling I enrolled into the college with Marketing and Accountancy being my principle subjects. I was able to enhance much of my essential skills through my academic endeavors in college. This was also the time in which I participated in a number of debates, workshops, quizzes and also sports events. I was able to pass the course with distinction marks along with many accolades such as winning many of the quiz competition and certificate of leadership in sports. After this I entered into MBA. I was able to complete MBA again with distinction marks. Through the course of my MBA, I participated in two separate internship programs. I was able to get positive reviews for my internships from the employers and got my important internship certificates. By the time I completed my MBA, I had already acquired great number of professional and personal skills.
Company Values
Future Opportunities
The opportunities available for me in the future are good. My background is strong enough to help me to get a decent job profile in any financial or retail organization of good reputation. There is also the opportunity to ensure fast growth as some of the larger organizations in the city have only recently started their operations. I have an opportunity to enter these firms and help them to realize their growth potential. The growth potential in these organization in the current corporate environment is huge. This can be an advantage for realizing by future potential. There is also a huge scope for developing optimal potential through effective learning that I can gain through my organizational endeavors.
Short and long term professional aims
My short term professional aim is to get into a large organization. The organization is preferably either a highly reputed financial or large retail firm. I want to enter as a junior manager. However, within a short time I would like to become a senior manager for this organization. I would like to climb the ladder in the corporate sector with the organization. I would like to become the operations head. Moving forward in corporate life my long term aim is to start my own business venture. This is ideally a financial or marketing consultancy firm. I would like to make this firm one of the most reputed firms in the country.
Personal and financial goals
My personal goals are to marry and settle down after I have been able to gain essential amount of financial stability. I want to have children and provide them with good education. My financial goals in the initial phases of my corporate life is to have a decent salary through which I can take care of my financial responsibilities. Mostly, I would like to give my family a fair amount of financial security in a short duration of time. Another of my aim is to contribute towards the society. Hence, I would like to associate myself with organization that serve the underprivileged people and contribute a certain portion of my income towards their causes. Moving forward, after gaining a certain level of experience I would like to have an annual salary of At least 90-95,000 Australian Dollars. At the peak of my corporate career my goal is to earn around 500,000 Australian Dollars per annum. An important part of my financial goal is to gather a significant amount of funds for the future of me and my family. Half of this fund I want to spend towards starting by own entrepreneurial venture.
Environmental Standards
Work- life balance
I believe one should always have a healthy work life balance. Hence, I would like to have a fair amount of leisure time despite working hard for my organization. I want to work in the day and take my evenings off. However, exact requirements of my-life balance might be difficult to meet due to the work pressure that organizations have to bear for a fair amount of the year. Hence, I want to give my best performance to the organization as and when required and in the months of lesser work pressure I would like to go on vacations with my family. I want work life balance that can help me to grow as a person. This in turn will improve my life in a holistic sense.
Health
Health is one of the main factor that can affect my future. My future goals depend greatly on how much healthy and fit I am to overcome the challenges of corporate and personal life. I would need to look after my health to move forward in life. I would like to plan my health and change my lifestyle in accordance of the same. It is important to keep a check on health from time to time and religiously avoid lifestyles that can potentially cause harm to my body.
Career Objectives
- To enter a reputed organization as a junior manager
- To become the senior manager in a short amount of time
- To achieve all the significant targets for the organization
- To climb up the organizational hierarchy to become senior operations manager in the long run
- To start own marketing and finance consultancy enterprise
Action Plan
- Developing essential skills required before entering the specific corporate organization
- Developing effective communication, personal, interactive and professional skills
- Practicing healthy lifestyle for maintaining essential levels of health standards required for corporate life
- Develop effective cognitive skills and learning oriented attitude to facilitate better development
- Acquiring essential knowledge about work processes and corporate functions
- Acquiring essential leadership skills
- Providing assistance to colleagues and subordinates
- Striving towards early growth through enhancing communication and knowledge of the work processes
- Being always focused towards the crucial goals and objectives
- Living up to the essential standards of health to avoid dangerous health issues
- Develop a step by step course of actions for achieving corporate excellence
Ans 1: Being a positive role model at workplace would require me to be a good communicator, an effective worker and a balanced individual. Being a role model will also require me to develop skills through which I can easily understand work related requirements. Additionally, effective leadership skills are necessary to be an effective role model (Donate and de Pablo 2015).
Ans 2: Business networking helps to improve the prospects of business for any organization. It helps to develop relationships that in the long run contribute towards gaining mutual trust and benefits and result in profitability. Some of the business networks that can be joined are casual contact networks, community service clubs and professional associations.
Ans 3: SWOT analysis means the analysis of any individual, group or organization on the basis of its identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The analysis helps to provide a complete picture of anything that it is used against. It helps to identify both the present strengths and weaknesses and the future opportunities and threats.
Ans 4: Goal setting is an important aspect of corporate life. It helps to identify the growth and development standards that need to be maintained in order to succeed in any given corporate setting. The process can be applied in regards to the developmental needs that I have in the organization. Specific time periods can be assigned with specific goals and milestones need to be set accordingly.
Role of Employees at Woolworths
Ans 5: Three techniques of effective time management are prioritization, time management goals and keeping logs. The first aspects helps in organizing time, the second helps to create value for time and the third helps to understand how time has been utilized.
Ans 6: Three given leadership styles are 1. Bureaucratic 2. Autocratic 3. Democratic.
Bureaucratic- This kind of leadership concerns fixed duties for leadership personnel. The hierarchy is managed through effective authority and implementation of skills. It is mainly applied in organization that are under some kind of regulatory authority
Autocratic- This leadership type depends greatly on individual control and a single person makes all the important decisions. This leadership is applied in cases where democratic leadership can cause delay in implementing decisions.
Democratic- This type of leadership takes into consideration consensus between the team members while taking any leadership decisions. This type of leadership is applied in organizational settings where a decision can impact many stakeholders.
Ans 7: Four different leadership theories are:
Transformational leadership- In this theory leaders focus on achieving success by changing the existing systems to better more effective systems of leadership.
Transactional leadership- In this kind of leadership focus is on organization, supervision and group performance.
Situational leadership- This is a theory that focus on choosing the right form of leadership based on the situation an organization is going through.
Trait theory- This theory is based on the assumption that certain essential leadership skills are inherited by people that help them to be effective leaders. The theory is based on characteristics that makes a person a better leader (Dinh et al. 2014).
Ans 8: 10 Traits of great leaders are:
- Integrity and honesty
- Inspirational
- Effective communication
- Decision making ability
- Empowerment
- Innovativeness and creativity
- Commitment
- Accountability
- Empathy
- Confidence
Ans 9: Change resistance can be caused by:
- Lack of required skills
- Loss of autonomy
- Surprise factor
- Uncertainty
- Competency concerns
- Increasing work requirements
- Uncomfortable environment
- Face loss
- Uncomfortable ripple effects of change
- Resentments from the past
Ans 10: Family upbringing affects a person’s outlook of the world. Conservative upbringing can cause a person to be more change resistant. Similarly liberal up bringing can help a person to be more change oriented.
Ans 11: Five separate reasons for people reacting differently to change are
- Differences that people have in expectations concerning change
- Amount of stability that a person has in a current situation
- Difference in personal corporate outlooks
- Difference in opinion
- Requirement for change
Ans 12: Ethics is a very important point of business. Without proper ethical standards businesses might not be able to function in the long run. It helps to establish goodwill and improve quality standards.
Ans 13: In order to maintain positive representation in media and community it is important that organizations participate more in corporate social responsibility oriented activities. A dedicated Public Relations team need to be created to manage the public and media functions. Through associations with non-profit organizations companies can further boost their image.
Ans 14: Strategies that can be formed to interest people towards the risk management process can be formed. The strategy will take into consideration showing employees educational videos in relation to the various risks that can affect the organization (Linkov et al. 2014). The employees can also be taken through risk management drills to facilitate risk management implementation. The information provided have to be based on accurate and important scenarios. The scenarios will be taken from the historic occurrences in the organization.
Ans 15: There needs to be an effective grievance redressing system. This system can detect the exact grievance that are being reported through participative arrangements and in accordance of the same provide solution. Better communicational arrangements can be used through the implementation of better ICTs.
Ans 16: Information that need to be included in an action plan for risk management action plan are:
- Event evaluation plan
- Risk issues information
- Risk precautions
- Risk Avoidance
- Information for tackling risks
- Risk issue action plan
- Risk oriented leadership plan
- Risk classification
Ans 17: The steps that need to be taken are:
- Identifying risks
- Analysis of risk
- Evaluation and classification of risk
- Risk treatment
- Risk monitoring
References
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014. Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.36-62.
Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S., 2015. The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), pp.360-370.
Linkov, I., Anklam, E., Collier, Z.A., DiMase, D. and Renn, O., 2014. Risk-based standards: integrating top–down and bottom–up approaches. Environment Systems and Decisions, 34(1), pp.134-137.
Woolworthsgroup.com.au. (2019). Woolworths Group: Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au
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