Professionalism and Personal Skills

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Professionalism and Personal Skills 10
• New Technology Employment
• Report Writing

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Objectives
• By the end of this lecture the student should
• Understand NT in perspective
• Understand the viewpoints of NT and Employment
• Appreciate the main points of the Deskilling
  Debate
• Appreciate the Industrial Relations implications
• Understand the essentials elements of a good
  report
• Appreciate how reports have the same fundamental
  structure

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• NT and Employment Overview
• There are many debates concerning NT and its
  impact on the working environment whether
  positive or negative
• It is the aim of this lecture to examine these
  debates and stimulate responses to them

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Introduction
• NT in perspective
• Viewpoints of NT and Employment
• De-Skilling Debate
• Why Introduce NT?
• Industrial Relations Implications
• Trade Union Roles

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Viewpoints of NT and Employment
• (See Chapter 3 Rowe and Thompson)
• Optimistic Viewpoint
• Pessimistic Viewpoint

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Impact of Technology on Work Tasks
• (The Deskilling Debate)
• The Deskilling of Work tasks Argument
  
• The Reskilling Argument

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Why Introduce New Technology?
• Changing Patterns of Work
• Time/Space Considerations
• Discussion Point
• What are the main reasons organisations introduce
  NT?

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Why Introduce New Technology? (cont)
• Buchanan and Boddy, give 3 categorisations
• 1 Strategic
• 2 Operating
• 3 Control Objectives
• Other Studies have broadly confirmed these
  categorisations
• McCloughlin Clark "Technological Change at
  Work" suggests control is too simplistic a view

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Industrial Relations Implications
• Daniel W.W. (1987) argues that Technological
  Change is a Technical Matter
• Should involve people
• So why not personnel managers?
• Executive level decisions on IT
• Overall
• In many cases the implementation strategy for NT
  can leave managers considerable scope for
  manoeuvring

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Trade Union Roles
• Highest factor against NT and Change
• Modern Trade Unions are seen to have had a
  Luddite attitude towards NT
• Bargaining position of Trade Unions affects
  outcome
• Quick to realise implications of NT
• TUC produced a checklist for NT agreements

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Trade Union Roles (cont)
• TUC urged Trade Unions to negotiate over
  introduction of NT
• TUC tried to maintain the Status Quo
• Unions drew up their own responses
• Most bargaining used old procedures, not new

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Trade Union Roles (cont)
• General Conclusion Not Effective
  (McCloughlin Clark, 1998)
• Why did Trade Union response have so little
  impact?
• Government Change
• from Labour to Conservative
• TU Membership fell

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Trade Union Conclusion
• Managers in non-unionised companies consult less
  than in unionised
• Non-unionised employees seem to do just as well
  as unionised
• Trade Unions have little influence of course of
  technological change

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• What is a Report?
• A Definition
• A report is a communication of information or
  advice, from a person who has collected and
  studied the facts, to a person who has asked for
  the report because they need it for a specific
  purpose.
• Using this definition what reports have you
  produced?

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Types of Report
• Reports can be transmitted in the forms of
• Conversations
• Demonstrations
• Letters
• Memos
• fill-in-forms
• many-page documents

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• How can we Classify a Report?
• Length
• Tone
• Subject matter
• Timing
• Importance
• Style
• Distribution

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Essentials of a Good Report
• It should be -
• Unified
• Complete
• Accurate
• Planned
• Styled
• Clear

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• What is the purpose of the Report?
• Why is the report required?
• Who exactly is it for?
• What do they want it for?

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Fundamental Structure

Parts
Elements
Title Page /Abstract
Terms of Reference or Objectives. Procedure or
Method
Introduction
Body of the Report
Findings
Conclusions, Recommendations (if
requested),
Appendices and References
Final Section
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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Abstract
• Should be able to be read separately
• Not an Introduction
• A summary
• An advert
• Avoid future tense
• Avoid This paper
• No references

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Introduction
• Clear unambiguous statement of the subject
• Indication of the purpose
• Brief description of the methods to be used
• Announcement of the plan

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Body of the Report
• This is the report proper
• Several sections
• All of the facts
• the character of the investigation
• detailed explanation of methodology
• procedure followed
• results obtained
• Critical Analysis

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Final Section
• Characteristics
• Introduces nothing new
• Harmonises with the introduction
• Harmonises with the body of the report
• Leaves final impression

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Format
• Layout
• Headings
• Numbering

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Section Headings
• Typography and Spacing
• Fussiness
• Independent
• Words or phrases
• Concise

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Long Formal Reports
• Typical Structure
• Preliminaries
• Title page
• Authorisation
• Table of contents
• List of tables and figures
• Acknowledgements
• Summary

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Long Formal Reports
• Typical Structure
• Main Report
• Introduction
• Findings and discussion
• Conclusions and/or recommendations

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Long Formal Reports
• Typical Structure
• Supplements
• References and bibliography
• Appendices
• Index

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• How to get started
• Setting objective
• Researching and assembling material
• Organising material and planning report
• Writing first draft
• Editing report
• Producing report

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Title Page
• What is it about?
• Who wrote it?
• For Whom?
• From where?
• When?

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• References - Five rules
• 1 Any work not your own should be clearly marked
• 2 Any quotations within quotation marks
• 3 Every reference in the text should be listed
• 4 Every item in the list must have a reference
  in the text
• 5 Every figure or photograph must have a
  reference in the text

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Format
• Author, title, publisher, date of publication
• For example
• Gowers, Sir Ernest, Complete Plain Words, Penguin
  Books, 1995

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• Bibliography
• Is optional, and provides a guide to background
  reading around the report

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Professionalism and Personal Skills

• SUMMARY
• Objectives
• Understand NT in perspective
• Understand the viewpoints of NT and Employment
• Appreciate the main points of the Deskilling
  Debate
• Appreciate the Industrial Relations implications
• Understand the essentials elements of a good
  report
• Appreciate how reports have the same fundamental
  structure