Two companies can sell the same product, hire similarly skilled people, and still end up with completely different results — because one of them actually understands its own work system and the other is just improvising. A system, in the simplest sense, is a set of interacting elements working together toward a goal: a university is a system, an atom is a system, a ministry is a system, and a human resources department is one too. Every system can also be broken down into subsystems.

Inside an organisation, a work system is made up of people, records and both manual and automated processes that collect, process, store and distribute information — systematically, so decisions are backed by real data rather than guesswork. This course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy gives participants a practical grip on that system: how to read it, work within it, and — most importantly — how to review and improve the processes running through it.

Who Should Attend?

• Managers of commercial institutions and companies, and department chiefs.
• Employees in advanced leadership departments.
• Business Administration students at university level.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify a work system and know how to operate effectively within it.
• Understand rights and duties within a work system.
• Review and improve processes across the organisation.
• Produce more efficient, consistent process outputs while cutting down on errors.
• Apply an improvement methodology aimed at making a company's processes stand out.
• Balance value-adding steps against the ones that quietly slow work down.

Module 1: What a Work System Really Is

• People, records and manual or automated processes as the building blocks of any work system.
• How systems collect, process, store and distribute information to support decisions, control and analysis.
• Systems thinking in everyday life — from a ministry to a university to an HR department — and how any system breaks down into subsystems.

Module 2: Rights, Duties and Working Within a System

• Rights and duties that come with operating inside a work system.
• Practical habits for dealing with a system day to day.

Module 3: The Case for Process Improvement

• What "process improvement" actually means, and how an organisation benefits from it.
• Where a company should start when it decides to improve a process.

Module 4: A Practical Process-Improvement Method

• Some of the basic models used for process improvement.
• Putting together the right team, and simplifying the process before making changes.

Module 5: Making the Change Stick

• Setting a data-collection plan and gathering a baseline before changing anything.
• Planning the rollout of the change process itself.

Module 6: The Mindset Behind Better Processes

• Administrative creativity in building a development methodology, and the mental skills behind it.
• Innovative and analytical thinking for workplace excellence, including preparing work maps and designing better procedures.
• Managerial diplomacy and leadership in a constantly changing work environment.