Reference no: EM133701229

Manage team effectiveness 

Part 1 - Establish team performance plan

Performance objective:
For this task, you will demonstrate the skills and knowledge required for establishing a team performance plan.

Assessment description:

In response to a simulated business scenario ‘Appendix-1', you will build a work team, help assign responsibilities for a team project, develop a performance plan, and support team members to carry out assigned responsibilities. You will develop and propose strategies to ensure each team member participates in the project planning and develops policies and procedures for carrying out teamwork.

Assessment Questions:

Review the simulated workplace information for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd in Appendix 1.
In consultation with your assessor:
form a team
agree to meet to discuss team objectives and develop performance plans for each team member.
Prepare to work with your team and complete the following:
Consider several strategies to ensure each team member has input into the planning process, decision making and operational aspects of team tasks.
Consider several ideas for policies to ensure team members take responsibility for own work.
Consider team goals and how team can achieve goals. Foster shared understanding of purpose of team, roles & responsibilities of team members.
Model desired behaviour and practices as a leader.
Consider strategies for gaining consensus among your team.
Consider group behaviour and how best to present your ideas and work effectively within the group.
Review the third-party report in Appendix 3 to ensure that you are familiar with the team performance expectations.
Prepare to take notes to provide evidence of team meeting.
In team meeting, consult to establish ground rules for teamwork:
propose and agree on strategies for ensuring participation of team members
Develop policy and procedures to ensure team members take responsibility for own work; these should contain ground rules for group work to ensure fairness and high performance.
Discuss and determine team goals and how goals can be achieved.

Referring to the task requirements in Appendix 1, assign and agree on responsibilities to achieve team goals:
Determine outcomes, outputs and KPIs for each team member - for example, determine agreed responsibilities, quality standards and how performance quality or achievement of tasks will be measured, i.e. number of pages of research, number of network contacts, number of credible sources, hours spent on research, number of coaching sessions conducted to improve performance of other team members, number of inputs into team meetings.
Ensure work is fairly distributed among team members.
Determine and agree on specific duties to support team members with assigned responsibilities.
Using the template provided in Appendix 2, develop an individual performance plan in consultation with your team to help achieve team goals:
Include your support duties in your individual performance plan.
Your performance plan should be at least three pages long.
Note: Together, all individual performance plans must achieve all team goals.
Ensure each team member completes the third-party report, included in Appendix 3, to provide evidence on your team performance.
Meet with your assessor to discuss your participation in team activities.
Submit all documents to your assessor as per the specifications below. Ensure you keep a copy of all work submitted for your records.

Appendix 1: Apparel Brands Pty Ltd

Apparel Brands, founded in 1901, is an Australian based manufacturer and distributor of generic clothing and footwear. The company takes orders from retailers and supplies retailers with clothing products that have been manufactured to retailers' specifications. These clothing products are then sold to consumers under the retailers' various brands.
Recently, Apparel Brands has found its market share in decline due to a strong Australian dollar and increased overseas competition. In addition, labour costs are eating into profit margins. Trends in the Australian textile industry suggest that the company, although it is in a strong financial position now, will struggle to make a profit within two years.
To ensure the continued existence of Apparel Brands, the company has embarked on a bold new strategic direction:
develop own brands and product range and sell direct to consumers
Leverage e-commerce opportunities to reduce distribution costs and increase profit margins.

Company vision: In the next five years, Apparel Brands will establish a range of innovative and exciting online clothing brands and help secure a future for Australian clothing manufacturing.

Assessment Task 1

Your team has been charged with the task of identifying an e-commerce opportunity for Apparel Brands and developing a proposal to put to the board of directors. For example, your team could decide to propose setting up an online business in which customers design their own custom t-shirts.
Your budget for setting up the e-commerce venture is $30,000.
For your proposed e-commerce venture, your team will need to determine:
Value proposition: What will you offer consumers? What products? What price? What quality? How will the products benefit your customers?
Who your target market is: What are the characteristics of the people who will buy your products? What do they need or desire?
How you will gather necessary information for setting up the venture? Who you will consult or network with to benefit from others' expertise?
What steps you will need to take to set up the e-commerce venture? This will range from website design, to ensuring a system for payment, to establishing an online presence through web search engines, etc.
How you will determine the benefit to Apparel Brands: What is the benefit? Reduced costs? Increased productivity?
How you will determine cost?

Once you have determined the above requirements, your team will need to plan specific activities to carry out in order to obtain the required information for your proposal. Assign tasks to each team member. Consult with each member of the team to develop individual performance plans.

Part 2 - Develop team cohesion and facilitate teamwork

Performance objective:
For this task, you will demonstrate the skills and knowledge required for developing team cohesion and facilitating teamwork.

Assessment description:
In response to a simulated business scenario, you will carry out the assigned tasks, as detailed in the performance plan, and participate in a team meeting to support your team in achieving team goals.

Assessment Questions:

Review the simulated workplace information for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd in Appendix 1.
Carry out all tasks contained in the individual performance plan you developed in Assessment Task 1.
Consult with your team and assessor to determine an appropriate time for your teamwork to be observed in a team meeting.
Prepare for the team meeting:
Reflect on your achievement of team goals: Which goals have you achieved? Which goals have you not achieved?
Identify at least one issue you have encountered with respect to carrying out your tasks that you have not yet fully overcome to discuss with your work team so that they may assist you in enhancing your performance.
Consider possible processes for resolution of team issues. For example, you may consider leading a brainstorming session, or creating an issues matrix.
In consultation with team, develop a meeting agenda to ensure that all issues, concerns, and problems with carrying out performance plan activities are addressed in the meeting in order to keep team on track to achieve goals. The agenda should include opportunity for each team member to employ a process for resolution of team issues. Provide the meeting agenda to participants (i.e. other team members) and assessor.
Prepare to take notes on issues and solutions and any unresolved issues.
Participate in the team meeting:
Present your achievement of team goals and issue/s encountered.
Provide feedback to team members to encourage and reward efforts and build team cohesion.
Ask questions and encourage team members to contribute to meeting. Promote work team collaboration through individual behavior.
Lead or play a prominent role in a process to resolve team issues. Ensure you clearly signal each step in the process and explain your methods to model effective team behavior to emulate.

Identify performance problems and propose solutions during the resolution process to resolve team issues to keep on track to achieve goals. If applicable, you may suggest coaching, training formal and informal learning opportunities as needed.
Work through any issues that can be resolved during the meeting with team members.
Record notes on issues and solutions and any unresolved issues. Note unresolved issues or improvements to group work that you will propose later, after consultation with the manager (assessor).

Appendix 1: Apparel Brands Pty Ltd

Apparel Brands, founded in 1901, is an Australian-based manufacturer and distributor of generic clothing and footwear. The company takes orders from retailers and supplies retailers with clothing products that have been manufactured to retailers' specifications. These clothing products are then sold to consumers under the
retailers' various brands.
Recently, Apparel Brands has found its market share in decline due to a strong Australian dollar and increased overseas competition. In addition, labour costs are eating into profit margins. Trends in the Australian textile industry suggest that the company, although it is in a strong financial position now, will struggle to make a profit within two years.
To ensure the continued existence of Apparel Brands, the company has embarked on a bold new strategic direction:
develop own brands and product range and sell direct to consumers
leverage e-commerce opportunities to reduce distribution costs and increase profit margins.

Company vision: In the next five years, Apparel Brands will establish a range of innovative and exciting online clothing brands and help secure a future for Australian clothing manufacturing.

Scenario history (completed in Assessment Task 1)

Your team was charged with the task of identifying an e-commerce opportunity for Apparel Brands and developing a proposal to put to the board of directors.
Your budget for setting up the e-commerce venture is $30,000.
For your proposed e-commerce venture, your team has determined the following:
Value proposition: What will you offer consumers? What products? What price? What quality? How will the products benefit your customers?
Who is your target market: What are the characteristics of the people who will buy your products? What do they need or desire?
How will you gather necessary information for setting up the venture?
Who will you consult or network with to benefit from others' expertise?
What steps will you need to take to set up the e-commerce venture? This will range from website design, to ensuring a system for payment, to establishing an online presence through web search engines, etc.
How will you determine the benefit to Apparel Brands: What is the benefit? Reduced costs? Increased productivity?
How will you determine cost?

You have completed individual performance plans to achieve the determination of the above requirements.

Assessment Task 2

Now that your team has completed individual performance plans, your new task is to carry out all the actions contained in your performance plan to enable the team goal of developing an e-commerce venture proposal for presentation to the board of Apparel Brands.
You will need to meet to discuss achievement of individual goals and provide feedback on others' work. You will need to work through and resolve any issues with your team in order to achieve your team goal/s.

Part 3 - Liaise with stakeholders

Performance objective:

For this task, you will demonstrate the skills and knowledge required for liaising with stakeholders about the performance of the team.
Assessment description:
In response to a simulated business scenario, you will consult with your manager (your assessor in role-play), meet with your team to resolve any team performance issues, and write a report to your manager on the steps taken to resolve the performance issues.
Assessment Questions:

Review the simulated workplace information for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd in Appendix 1.
Initiate a meeting with your manager (the assessor) to ensure you obtain advice from outside the work team.
Consult with your manager (the assessor) to discuss team performance issues. Use your notes from Assessment Task 2 to provide the basis for this discussion.
Discuss your own solutions to improve team performance and achieve team goals. During your consultation:
note suggestions from your manager (the assessor) to implement with team/individual team members
note any information provided by your manager to be given to team members.
Meet with team members to resolve performance issues as discussed with the manager. For example, you may help or coach team members to improve their performance. Review the third-party report in Appendix 2 to ensure you are familiar with the task requirements.
Write a report for your manager on resolution of team performance issues:
Describe how you maintained an open communication process between stakeholders (manager, team).
Describe how you were able to initiate and maintain this communication process so that input from outside the team could contribute to team performance.
Describe your evaluation of team performance and rationale behind corrective actions in order to provide evidence of your knowledge of:
group behaviour to build team cohesion
how to support team members to achieve goals through coaching, mentoring, training, etc.
resolution techniques or strategies.
Describe corrective actions you have actually taken to ensure team goal/s are achieved.
Ensure each team member completes the third-party report on your corrective actions performance using the template provided in Appendix 2.

Appendix 1: Apparel Brands Pty Ltd

Apparel Brands, founded in 1901, is an Australian based manufacturer and distributor of generic clothing and footwear. The company takes orders from retailers and supplies retailers with clothing products that have been manufactured to retailers' specifications. These clothing products are then sold to consumers under the
retailers' various brands.
Recently, Apparel Brands has found its market share in decline due to a strong Australian dollar and increased overseas competition. In addition, labour costs are eating into profit margins. Trends in the Australian textile industry suggest that the company, although it is in a strong financial position now, will struggle to make a profit within two years.
To ensure the continued existence of Apparel Brands, the company has embarked on a bold new strategic direction:
develop own brands and product range and sell direct to consumers
leverage e-commerce opportunities to reduce distribution costs and increase profit margins.

Company vision: In the next five years, Apparel Brands will establish a range of innovative and exciting online clothing brands and help secure a future for Australian clothing manufacturing.
Scenario history (completed in Assessment Tasks 1 and 2)

Your team has been charged with the task of identifying an e-commerce opportunity for Apparel Brands and developing a proposal to put to the board of directors. For example, your team could decide to propose setting up an online business in which customers design their own custom t-shirts.
Your budget for setting up the e-commerce venture is $30,000.
For your proposed e-commerce venture, your team has determined the following:
Value proposition: What will you offer consumers? What products? What price? What quality? How will the products benefit your customers?
Who your target market is: What are the characteristics of the people who will buy your products? What do they need or desire?
How will you gather necessary information for setting up the venture?
Who will you consult or network with to benefit from others' expertise?
What steps will you need to take to set up the e-commerce venture? This will range from website design, to ensuring a system for payment, to establishing an online presence through web search engines, etc.
How will you determine the benefit to Apparel Brands: What is the benefit? Reduced costs? Increased productivity?
How will you determine cost?

You now have:
completed individual performance plans to achieve the determination of the above requirements
carried out all the actions contained in your plan to enable the team goal of developing a venture proposal for your presentation to the board of Apparel Brands
presented achievements of individual goals and provided feedback on others' work
worked to resolve any issues with your team in order to achieve your team goal
Recorded unresolved issues in notes.

Assessment Task 3

Your manager (assessor) has asked to meet with you to discuss issues regarding achieving team goals.
Consult with your manager (your assessor) to discuss issues and corrective actions.
Meet with your team to resolve team performance issues and to implement corrective actions.

Write a report to your manager (assessor) describing the corrective action you have taken to resolve the performance Liaising issues. Explain the rationale behind your actions.