World of Work Session - Bronze and Silver

Liz Harrison kindly came in today to talk to the class about the World of Work section of the Work Based Learning module.
The bronze award in about self awareness, the silver is about organisational awareness and the gold is about making things happen. We don't have to do the gold until later on in the last part of the course so today was focusing on the bronze and silver.

Here are my notes from the session:

BRONZE
To be knowledgeable about your own strengths and areas for development, values and your ability to work with others and factors which motivate you to achieve.

• 3 key strengths with examples which are unique selling points for yourself
• 1 skill that I need to develop with a realistic action plan
• What are my values in the work place
• Being able to demonstrate motivation - example of achievement
• Example of working in a team and my own contribution
• Handling a difficult situation - dealing with a difficult person
• Future planning and identifying career options and aims to get there
• Use paragraphs and headings
• Use examples and reflect on experiences
• Structure the 1000 words
• Book a slot online for statement submission

SILVER

Pick an organisation, address the criteria, use a lot of resources and write 1000 words in your own words.

• Criteria 1 - Function, culture, size, sector and structure (intro)
• Criteria 2 - Understanding key duties and responsibilities you would expect to undertake in a role you are considering in your organisation
• Criteria 3 - What behaviour presents a professional approach to work
• Criteria 4 - Understanding of external factor likely to affect your chosen organisation - Political, economical, social, technological
• Criteria 5 - Awareness of a current industry topic recently covered in the media (Guardian)
• Criteria 6 - Understanding of the main customer/service users of your choice and why it is important to understand their needs
• Criteria 7 - Your understanding of the importance to your chosen organisation of actively managing its reputation with clients

Research

• Company website
• Annual report/business plan
• Employer insights
• Occupational information
• News websites
• Search engines
• LinkdIn/Facebook/Twitter
• Market research

My intentions are to get the bronze statement out of the way as soon as possible to I am going to book my date for submission as soon as possible. Then I am going to tackle the silver statement which seems to be a lot harder. I will have to set up a meeting with Liz Harrison for this statement because I think I will need a bit more help with it.

This session was great because Liz's presentation was spot on and went in to detail about everything that we need to include in both statements. I also like the way she didn't worry us with the details of the gold statement because that isn't for a while. That takes some pressure off but we still have a lot to do so I better get cracking!

Speak Soon!