Training Course: Reviewing and Improving Work Systems and Processes
1Summary
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.
2Objectives and target group
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.
3Course Content
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.