Unit 1: Principles of personal responsibilities and how to ... · PDF fileIn a PR environment you are ... a team or individual diary to identify ... Principles of personal responsibilities

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Unit 1: Principles of personal responsibilities and how to develop and evaluate own performance at work

By controlling your time you can cut out non-essential activities and achieve more, thus enhancing your career and getting more out of life.

Time and workload management is a highly important matter for most professionals as demands are placed upon any hardworking person with responsibility – demands that can strain your diary and your character. If you are sometimes too busy, if you have deadlines that are impossible to meet, if you are disorganised and just cannot seem to find the time to sort out your inbox, then time and workload management can help you.

Managing your work1.3

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1.3: Managing your work

1 The importance of managing your workloadIn a PR environment you are accountable for how you plan and prioritise your work. However, the way you manage your work affects the work of your colleagues and clients, who rely on you. Consequently, it is important to be clear about:

• how urgent the task really is • which stakeholders and other task owners need to be kept up to date with

progress • what the tasks are, and who the task owners are • whether there are third parties involved, such as contractors and media

contacts • who the audience is – this will affect how you approach the task, and if you

have the wrong audience in mind it may mean that you need to redo the task • what the objectives and success criteria (e.g. attendance of an event, online

sales or a news response to a story) of the task are.

How to plan and prioritise your workAccording to the Pareto Principle, 80 per cent of the effect of your work will come from 20 per cent of the effort you put in. This sadly means that 80 per cent of your time will be spent on that other 20 per cent. Consequently, it is important to plan and prioritise your work effectively in order to make the most of your time and effort.

Identify key points

The first step in planning and prioritising your work is to identify the key points that will influence what you do. For example:

• How does this relate to company goals and targets? • Who is the decision maker on the project and what priority are they assigning

to this? • Is the priority of this likely to remain in line with consistent plans, or is it

variable? • Who is depending on you to do this work? For example, is there a task that

someone else cannot start until you have finished your work?

Use project management techniques

A Gantt chart helps to identify the project path between the start of the project and the final delivery, breaking it down into steps and identifying where tasks are dependent on other tasks. If you are working on a complex project with multiple people involved, this can help you to plan the activities and time frames involved more effectively.

A Gantt chart can be generated using specialist project management software, such as Microsoft® Project®. However, for less complex projects you may find that a spreadsheet can be equally useful.

You will learn more about Gantt charts in Unit 11: Plan and manage your own workload.

LinkYou will learn more about managing your workload in Unit 11: Plan and manage your own workload.

Key termPareto Principle – also called the 80:20 rule. It is referred to in many business situations, and states that roughly 80 per cent of the effects come from 20 per cent of the causes, for example 80 per cent of a company’s profits come from 20 per cent of their customers. The rule reminds you to focus on the key 20 per cent to achieve 80 per cent of the desirable outcomes.

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Measurement

Most, if not all, PR projects aim to measure their impact. Before you create a project plan, it is important to identify firstly what you need to measure, and secondly how you are going to measure it.

Some common campaign measures are below. • Response to a new campaign: depending on the audience, this can be

monitored through mentions on social media, Google Alerts™, etc., which will alert you to when someone mentions your campaign. It is then up to you to assess their verdict of the campaign and how important their verdict is (for example, are they a competitor, a key customer, the target audience?).

• Impact on sales: to measure the impact on sales you need to build traceability into your campaign. This could be as simple as asking customers to quote a code when acting on your campaign, or scanning a QR code that takes them directly to a page on a website that will track their actions through web analytics tools such as Google Analytics™.

• Opinions and awareness: this is often best measured by a survey before the campaign and a survey after the campaign. To be more accurate, you should use roughly the same sample size for before and after the campaign, and make sure respondents are within your target group.

Task planning

When planning a project, it is important to start with your end goal: what are the success criteria for your campaign? What does your client want to achieve? What dates are required for the campaign?

Once you know your success criteria, you can work out how you will achieve the end goal. From this point, you should identify the tasks that are necessary to work up to this and allocate timescales and people to each task.

You may find it useful for the team to use a project diary to keep track of tasks that have been completed. An alternative to this is to use a regular catch-up to report on progress against the schedule and to keep the whole team updated on actions.

Where a task is particularly important or a timescale is fixed, calendar alerts in Microsoft® Outlook® or blocking out time in calendars for specific tasks may be effective methods for getting tasks completed on time.

Key termsTraceability – being able to identify the history, location or application of an item.

QR code – QR stands for quick recognition. It is a type of barcode that can be read by smart phones. The code provides a link to a specific web page, which automatically opens when the code is scanned.

Web analytics tools – software which captures, measures and analyses internet data. The tools are used to track the ways websites are used, spot trends in usage, and help to improve a site’s effectiveness, e.g. to increase the number of visitors or increase the number of sales.

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ChecklistYou will find more information on planning and prioritising your work in Unit 11: Plan and manage your own workload. Use the following checklist to identify ways of improving your workload management.

Identify your priorities. The company targets and goals may help you identify which of your projects is highest priority, but you should also regularly review your priorities to make sure you are working as effectively as possible.

Use project management tools such as Gantt charts and spreadsheets to identify tasks within a project and keep track of these. When doing this, it is good to work backwards from the client’s deadline: identify what the successful campaign would achieve and then work out what you would need to do to achieve this.

Think about how you will measure the achievement of your objectives. This may be through website tracking statistics, sales figures, surveys, etc.

Think about how you will keep track of progress on the project. You could use a team or individual diary to identify deadlines and time allocated to tasks, and calendar alerts to remind yourself of when tasks are due, etc.

Remember the Pareto Principle: roughly 20 per cent of your work will produce 80 per cent of the effects.

Keeping others informedIt is important to keep others informed of your progress as your work impacts on the work of your colleagues and your clients. If you miss your deadline it means that whoever has a task dependent on your work will either have less time to complete their task or will miss their deadline.

You should be aware of the time frames for the project as a whole and the project goals, and should know how your tasks relate to the project. This will help you to identify any potential crisis points and to focus on achieving the ultimate deadline.

However, sometimes it is not possible to complete a task to the ultimate deadline. Project teams should have regular catch-ups to monitor the progress of tasks and monitor any changes in the time frames. If a change occurs, the team will usually try to identify areas where time can be made up in order to keep the project on the original deadline.

Communication is also an important part of working with a client. Clients should be regularly updated with progress on the project, which helps to provide them with a better service and makes them aware of the work the project team is doing. This can help to provide a sense of value for money, and generate goodwill, which will help you if you pitch for another project with the client.

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Dealing with pressurePR can be a high-pressure environment with long hours and tight deadlines. However, effective self-management can take some of the stress out of the work by making you more efficient and therefore able to achieve more in your working hours.

If you find that you are struggling with stress, make sure you ask for help. In the first instance, talk to your line manager. They should provide pastoral support, which involves helping you with stress, and may be able to reallocate some work. If, for whatever reason, your manager does not help you, you may need to discuss your workload with human resources or, in extreme circumstances, your union.

As you will probably have realised by now, working in a busy PR office can generate high levels of stress. For junior members of the team this can be quite worrying, especially as this might be your first job.

Your employer should be on the lookout to reduce and help you deal with stress. However, if you find that work is becoming too stressful, make sure you ask for help.

Negotiating changeAs discussed above, sometimes it is not possible to meet a deadline. You may find that the timescales are too tight, you have conflicting demands on your time or there are unrealistic expectations. Any changes to deadlines need to follow the change monitoring processes your employer uses.

When negotiating changes to deadlines, you should consider the following. • Are you changing a major deadline, or an internal deadline that will not

affect the overall project delivery date? If you need to move a major date, the decision is likely to be much more complex.

• What are the office politics involved in the deadlines? For example, is the problem caused by clashing deadlines, and if so, which is really more important?

• If the deadline is for a client’s project, what are your employer’s customer service policies around managing this kind of change request?

Key termPastoral support – looking after the personal and social well-being of staff under the care of a senior manager.

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ChecklistThe following may help you to deal with pressure:

Practise effective time management – set aside time to focus on specific tasks, but also remember to set aside time for a break. We can only focus intensely for a limited amount of time, so breaks help us to refresh and make us more productive.

Seek information efficiently – know who can provide you with the information you need, or where you can find it. Avoid going off-topic and getting drawn into a non-work conversation.

Delegate tasks when suitable – you may have been allocated a task, but do you need to do it? Could it be broken down into smaller tasks so someone else could contribute?

Be assertive in communication and deadline negotiation – sometimes there is room for manoeuvre, particularly if you think a task will be much larger than it might at first appear.

Manage interruptions – be relentlessly focused! If necessary, close your email, do not answer the phone and let colleagues know that you are not to be interrupted.

Manage your own expectations – remember that you are not superhuman. Although you might be keen to impress by taking on lots of tasks and trying to complete them in record time, it is important to balance ambition with pragmatism to avoid burning out.

Portfolio activity 3.1–3.4

In order to complete the assessment for this unit you will need to demonstrate your understanding of how to manage your own work. To prepare for this part of your assessment, address the following questions.

1 Explain why it is important to plan and prioritise your work.

2 Identify methods you could use to plan and prioritise your work.

3 Explain why it is important to keep other people informed about progress on projects.

4 Describe the methods you could use to deal with pressure in a business environment.

CreditsProduced by Pearson on behalf of the Skills Funding Agency.

The publisher would like to thank the following for their kind permission to reproduce images: Dmitriy Shironosov/Shutterstock.com, Goodluz/Shutterstock.com.

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Unit 1: Principles of personal responsibilities and how to ... · PDF fileIn a PR environment you are ... a team or individual diary to identify ... Principles of personal responsibilities