Tag: reflection

TEAMWORK

• You worked on a project as part of a team  

Day one of my internship was the monthly stock take, it consisted of the food and beverage manager and the head chef and myself. This is a very busy day the physical count itself of all stock from the bar, stores, kitchen fridges, and freezers are very time consuming and is made even more stressful with the added timescale. As a nationwide company all clubs are required to do a stock take and send the reports to head office every four weeks by 5 pm, therefore it is essential to work as an efficient team.

My previous employment has been in management roles, largely in the independent retail sector. My previous roles were very much solo based, as it was an independent retail store it was purely myself as the manager and the owner but not what you would class as a management team. The task of working as an interdependent team is a concept I found difficult to understand and almost alien to myself during my internship. Even in team-based work in education I always find myself in a solo leading role and delegate task out to the team.

The only way to have the task done in time was to split individually and come back as input the figures into systems, then the count will flag any shortages which are where the most time-consuming task takes place, the investigations. Firstly, the f & b manager took me to the Bar area to give me an example on how to record the count of stock, more importantly, the recording of measurements left in a spirit bottle. This was surprisingly more an educated guess rather than an exact science, which she then explained was allowed by head office as they provided an acceptable variance in stock levels per month for this. After being showing on a few bottles I was given a print out of all bar stock and left to my own as she took to the cellar to repeat the process there. Once I had completed the bar count, a longer process by myself a novice than I’m sure it usually takes, we all met back in the admin office with our individual figures to combine and place onto the system. The system in an in-house system used company-wide named symphony. This system record incoming invoices and sales through the tills, therefore when we input the count figures it will match them with last stock count plus deliveries received and subtract sales which should ideally produce a figure that matches our stock count. (within an acceptable margin anyway) Lucky, and according to the manager a rarity the count did not flag up any large shortages which made me feel a little bit of accomplishment for the team and myself.  

Knowing we were under a rough timescale for the day and the fact I was to learn as we went made me feel somewhat like a liability for the task. Fortunately, both my teammates for the day were well versed in delivering clear instructions on what to do. Still the fact I was left on my own to accomplish my individual part mate me concerned that when it was time to input the figures, my figures would throw the entire day off. Numeracy has always been a shortcoming of mine, right down to basic arithmetic. However, I would not let my own self-doubt get in the way of the team. The ease of communication, relaxed atmosphere and the feeling of shared need to complete the task was an almost perfect storm of teamwork, I did not feel like an inconvenience or hindrance once we got into the swing of it in fact I have been asked to assist in future stock counts and to cover the admin side of the manager’s job when she is on holidays, which is a real confidence boost in my abilities.  

Communication

1. Your verbal and/or non-verbal communication skills allowed you to make a meaningful difference to a situation

How did you approach this and what was the outcome?

Management in practice is largely creating a to-do list then spending most of your day putting out fires. (figuratively) This is what happened during my second day with the food and beverage manager, situations called her away for and a short period of time such as the count, which is the physical count of cash from previous day which as you can imagine is a very secure situation. This did not make me feel neglected as I was aware some situations may arise in which I could not be involved in.

Luckily, the casino has a strong team of managers and the senior operations manager offered me to accompany her on interviews for new members of staff for the cashier position. It would consist of her, myself and the potential employee. Usually this would be done by two managers, or the very least a manager and head of department for which the person is interviewing.

The manager gave me a set of company standard questions for the position and asked me to take notes of the answers and to feel free to ask any additional questions myself. This statement filled me with a little dread as at that exact moment my mind had gone blank, almost like all questions that could be considered relevant had disappeared from my mind which annoyed me slightly. The interview started pleasantly enough with ice breaker questions, almost a group discussion, I believe having myself there as an employee for the company offered a more relaxed situation and a different point of view. Fiona, the manager took the lead in the interview periodically involving myself to confirm various statements related to the company training programs and employee moral etc.

After the interview Fiona asked me to sit and discuss the interviews and asked my opinion on the interviewees, this made me feel more like a peer rather than an employee which was a strange but pleasant feeling. After much discussion, it was decided the lack of experience in cash handling, unfortunately, wouldn’t make the interviewee a successful applicant. However, during the interview, I noted the answers given were very much customer service based and he would be ideal in a position for club receptionist, which I had previously noted had a position to fill. Although this was not Fiona direct department she agreed and would pass on the C.V to the correct manager and suggest an additional interview be set up.