Week 9: Perception

Week 9

Perception

My wrong perception

When I left 6^th form I went to work from small firm accountants. When I went for my interview they seemed to come across really friendly and chatty. In the interview we seemed to be able to talk without it being awkward and they come across to be a company where they put a lot of work into training their staff. These leads to me think that they were the right place for me to train to be an accountant. I only stayed at the company 6 months. The reason I left so quickly was once I began working their and spoke to a few of the sub contractors I found out what working there was really like. I was employed along with another girl and after a few weeks they focused a lot of the training on her and I was used as a handy man around the office. I was quickly being pushed out and after spending time with the MD my perception changed an I did not think she was friendly, good to be around or working for so I left. To try and avoid making the same judgment again I would ask more questions at the interview to try and find out more about the company and who I will be working for, as this was my only second formal job interview so I was quiet reserved and just pleased to be offered a job. I would go away from the interview and think about what was said and the general feel I got.

3 Ways to improve communication between University and Students.

Below is a link to an article I read in which I got my three suggestions on improving a University communication with students.

Idea 1 

           

I believe that students would benefit from meetings with a tutor say every quarter or term. This tutor should be someone who understands the work and has experience teaching the course they are doing. The reason they should do this out side of lectures is so they can discuss the course as a whole and how things are going. The student I think should also select who they want to have the meeting with so they can make sure they feel comfortable talking to the person in order to get the best out of them.  The tutor can also see how well they are getting on with the work and if there is any problems which need to be resolved.  The benefit of this is its face to face communication which is believed to be valued, but in order for it to work the lecturer and student must have the confidence to talk about the course and work etc. which I why I put forward that the student chooses the lecturer they want and being a lecturer they will already have the skills  and experience in communication with students. This idea is in the article under the subtitle “keep the personal touch”.

Idea 2

After a time period the lectures can get an understanding of the student’s capabilities and can make a suggestion of what level they should be aiming i.e. 2.2, 2.1 or 1^st. This aim should be put from lecture to the student and they both should agree on the target. Once this is agreed the work set to the student and feedback given should all be aiming towards getting the target grade. This will mean that both the student and lecture are working towards the same goal. In the article this comes under the sub title “have a shared purpose”.

Idea 3

The final idea for improving communication is to look at other channels for communication such as communicating on blackboard instead of emails. For example if there was jut a group on black board for the lecture group then it would make it easier for students to communicate when working together and also the lecturer can see that teams are communicating. This idea would mean it would be like a academic version of a social networking site. This means that they can access it 24/7 and they will also be able to have instant access to each other and the teacher but it is kept in a academic situation. 

ref:   Clake,Rebecca;People and Management Magazine,15/7/2010, http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/07/how-to-improve-staff-communication.htm

Week 8 Enterprise Week

Week 8

Enterprise Week

Enterprise week is a couple of weeks where there are various events and speakers attending the university to discuss their experiences, companies or other topics. As my degree is Accounting & Finance I wanted to attend events where the speakers was talking about their experiences is setting up a business and also hear what advice they had for us. In this blog I will discuss two events which I went to “Ella’s Kitchen” and “If it all goes wrong, ill get a proper job”. These two events where visitors talking to us about how they set up their own companies and the problems they had to overcome.

Ella’s Kitchen

Paul Lindley (Ella’s Dad) is the founder of Ella’s Kitchen and he gave the discussion  on the company.

Paul’s Background Brief

Paul is a chartered accountant and after getting his professional accounting qualifications he  worked for KPMG. After many years at KPMG he moved to Nickelodeon children’s channel. He built a career here and worked up to the head of the UK. He left Nickelodeon to set up Ella’s Kitchen.

What Ella’s Kitchen is

Ella’s kitchen makes organic healthy food for children. The idea for the company come from his daughter Ella not wanting to eat fruit and vegetables as they did not taste good and weren’t fun and exciting, this is where Paul got his idea.  The company make and target them to children through using fun packaging and great tasting food. They are a person to person brand and they sell through supermarkets to their consumers. When the company was first set up is was just Paul and he invested £20,000 into getting samples done and doing research into the market, after this he re mortgaged and then began to get the ball rolling to start trading. The company has been set up for 5 years and have 4 years of trading. Below are some facts and figures on Ella’s Kitchen.

• 46 products
• 25 employees (employees mostly are people who have got in contact with Paul to ask about jobs and are often customers, parents or food experts wanting to get involved)
• Last year £30,000,000 Sales
• 6 Countries- UK, Ireland, USA, 3 Scandinavian countries
• In 4 Years trading has 10% of baby food market (£200 mil Market)
• 9^th Fastest growing company
• Food and Drink brand of the year

Brief history of company

This speaker discussed how set up his own studio producing audio and film advertising. His brief background was that he went to college and then wanted a career as a TV Director. After he began working with TV he realised that you struggles to make it your own work. This led him to change his focus to audio. After this He went to work at radio Luxemburg and then moved onto capital radio. He was sacked from capital radio for doing free lance editing work, the speaker claims this to be best thing that ever happened to him as he got a job offer the next day. This job was in a studio mixing audio with visual media but he quickly thought that he could do it better and went on to set up his own studio.

• He got two other partners- Tommy Vance and David Tate and they all invested £10,000 each.
• The speaker put his house up as security for finance
• He built a number of studios as his company grew
• Sold in 2010 to someone who was a ex employee in the past

The two speakers after discussing their company they then began to talk and give advice on setting up companies and making it work. I found the advice they both gave to very similar even though they were breaking into very different markets and very different times. Below I have constructed a table of the advice given and which speaker said the advice.

Advice Given	Ella’s Kitchen	If it all goes wrong, Ill get…
Have to have passion and focus for the business in order to make it work	X	X
Have to be willing to take a risk in order to receive the reward	X	X
Went alone as thought I can do it better than the others	X	X
Taking on staff difficult decisions as tend not to have same passion as you	X	X
Stand Back and look from client point of view	X	X
People do business with people, so people skills are key	X	X
Experts aren’t always best people as they are mostly just working for a salary.	I believe that Paul doesn’t agree or give this advice as he is a expert and professional accountant and he said that his accounts knowledge is “invaluable” to his company	X- I believe the speaker said this as he has never worked in a professional environment such as- Legal, Accounts, etc so he has a very one sided view.
Always be ready for Sale	I don’t believe that Paul is thinking about seeling his business as its very personal to him and revolves around family, but also its only be going 5 years so its still new and he has other ideas he wants to do with Ella’s Kitchen.	I believe the speaker made this point because his personality lead him to enjoy starting new things, and when he sold his business it was 31 years old.

Conclusion - Why I think they were a Success & What impact it has had on me

My views on my career have changed after listening to the two talks. Before I had always been worried about starting a my own business for security reasons as you are not guaranteed your monthly salary. However now I can see that if you have the correct idea and can make it work then you have to take risks in order to get high rewards. I also have learnt that people skills are just as important as qualifications and experience. When talking in one of the events they were discussion what's more important qualifications an experience, and from what was said for the career I want to peruse you will need professional qualifications in order to get the experience needed before going alone. 

Ella’s Kitchen

If it goes wrong, Ill get proper Job

I believe Ella’s Kitchen was a success due to many reasons. Pauls expert knowledge in finance and business is a huge factor as he already has the tools needed to get great advice and knowledge about the business side of Ella’s Kitchen. He also already has huge amounts of experience when working with children through nickelodeon.  He used this experience and contact to get a great deal of TV advertising on the channel. The passion of setting up the company alone and also having the inspiration for Ella’s kitchen coming from his own family made I believe to 3 key factors to this success; Passion, Knowledge and Experience.

This speaker may not of been a professional in his type of business when he started but he had a lot of experience and skills in his work. This was demonstrated early through being giving private work from some people at capital radio. He also has the ability to get things done and look outside the box for example he did not have the money to build his first set of studios, so when a competitor asked him to do work for them he arranged a deal where for every hour of his work they would give him 2 hours of their builders to build his studio, through this he got his competitors to build his first set of studios. Again he had the passion and drive to make his company work as not only because he led what he was doing but also the fact that his house was on the line. Again he had the 3 key factors Passion, Experience, Knowledge.

Week 6: Conflict

Conflict

When playing for a football team their were two players that had a clash of personality and different views and perceptions on how their positions should be played. Both players had a high level of ability. The disagreements between the two players lead to them not being able to play along side each other, this meant we had to arrange the team around which player was more suited to the game in hand. The manager of the football team had to think of a solution to the stop the conflict in order to get the best out of the team. He decided to have team night outs and a lot of team bonding sessions such as quiz nights etc. This meant the two players spent time out of football i.e. where the conflict was rooted. By doing this the two players began talking and this lead them being more accepting of each other.

The sources of conflict

Personally I believe in the work place change is the main cause of conflict. But the biggest factor is personality. I believe that people have a personality which leads them to accept conflict and be able to take part in conflict or they shy away from conflict and are passive. According to Mullins 2010 she believes the sources of conflict can be broken down these are:

·         Difference in Perception: This source is when one person has a different view to another person which then leads to conflict. A good example of this is what I spoke about in the beginning of the post between the two football players.

·         Limited Resources: The London underground workers when on strike because they believed the was not enough staff at the stations and this lead to it effecting the safety of their work (BBC News 2010). This is a example where there is a limited resource of staff which leads conflict to current staff and the business.

·         Division & Separation into department: this is where two departments in a business class and lead to conflict between them. This mainly occurs involving large businesses where each department wants to input views and options.

·         Overlapping and interlinking activities: This is similar to division in departments but this conflict is between people and can happen in where somebody else is taking over a role of another. A example of this is when I was in a team for young enterprise is secondary school person A took completed person B’s job as they believed they would do it better. This lead to verbal conflict and person B then giving all his jobs to person A which lead to person A having to much work to do and could not get it done.

·         Role Conflict: This style on conflict is where two roles clash or can even be where one role interferes with another.

·         Inequitable Treatment: When a person feels discriminated against and feels they are being miss treated which leads to conflict this is inequitable treatment. In a survey done by TMP Worldwide in 2005 it showed that 25% of workers in the UK believe they have been a victim of discrimination, bullying or harassment.

·         Violation of territory: When a person feels like someone else is “treading on the toes” and taking over their work or the space/ role.

·         Environmental changes: this source of conflict can be a change in the working environment. This can lead to people being out of there comfort zone.

·         Individual Conflict: This is were one person has a issue with another person. A example of this is also in my sports team as it was the two individuals that had conflict between each other.

The common issue with the sources of conflict tends to be change. Also for conflict to occur there only has to be on party with an issue. Brooks (2006) said that conflict is apparent when at least one party perceives that it exists.

Sources of Power

·         Coercive

This source of power is used when a punishment is used in order to get a job/ task done. A example of this happening is when a Chairman/ owner of sports club say to the manager you have to win a certain amount of games, get a certain position of we will sack you.

·         Reward 

This is when some uses their power to offer a reward for the work to be done. A example of this is when the football team I played for also had a rule where if we won the game with a clean sheet then the our fines (e.g. for muddle boots, turning up late, wrong clothes) would be scraped and we would not need to pay them.

·         Expert

This power is held b the person who is most knowledgeable about the task/ aim. This power comes from the fact that they are intellectually superior to the rest of the team. A good example of this is in a small firm or when a sole trader has a apprentice, the guy who has the most expertise has the most power.

·         Legitimate

Legitimate power is often used in forces. This is when the person has the power through the right reasons i.e. because they are qualified to have the power or have worked up through the ranks and gained the power over time and experience.

·         Referent

5 Strategies to over come conflict

Policies can be put into place to make people feel they are treated fairly and have equal opportunities. This can be done by HR and they also can get a range of views from across the company to see what should be included in the polices and procedures.

Conflict can be reduced largely by communication. This doesn’t just mean people talking but also can be people consulting senior people, leaders and other people. Companies can also use people when making decisions in order to make people and their views feel valued by the company.

Clear goals and aims make employees have a good understanding of what they are aiming for and what they are expected to do in order to reach them. This again is linked into good communication

It’s a legal requirement that companies have an a grievance policy. This gives employees opportunities to bring their issues to attention early and correctly, instead of letting it build up which could lead to a bigger scale of conflict.

Its also a legal requirement to have a disciplinary policy. All employees should be aware of this so it acts as a deterrent to actions which could cause negative conflict. These legal requirements both link back to having good communication through out so all employees or aware of them and how to use them.

Conclusion

Conflict is always going to occur in a organsation. Conflict has a range of sources but it only takes one person to have a issue for conflict to arise. If conflict is occurs in a orgamnised enviorment and is dealt with quickly and fairly it will have a positive impact. In order for this to happen people have to feel comfotable to bring up their issues, this is vital as if the dont then a persaon can hold the issues in and it then can build up on come out on a larger scale of conflict and will have a negative impact. I also belive that people have to have certain characterstics to be able to handle conflcit, these people often have to be confident, strong minded but also have to be open to idea of them being wrong in order to be able to be able to cope with  conflcit and the possiable solutuions.