Master in Business Management

As a part of professional placement module in Master of Business Administration,
I worked with Bidfresh Limited on nine months contract as credit controller at
Fleetwood location. Bidfresh ltd is a supplier of fresh produce, meat, fish, and
dairy foods to chefs across the United Kingdom through its local business
specialist. The purpose of this placement was to gain practical knowledge and
work experience after completing one year of theoretical and class room
trainings. I have learnt many things during this placement from personal and
professional perspective. But there was one such happening that awakens my
reflection during my placement. This essay will be focusing on that experiences
with the help of Gibbs reflective model. Gibbs model helps individuals to learn
from experiences on regular basis, especially when things didn’t go as per
expectations (Husebo, 2015).
While applying for this role, I was very confident of achieving it as I had 3
years of accounts payable and payments experience. After successfully
completing my interview process in last week of March 2019, my joining date
was 4th April 2019. I was very excited to join the company and explore my job
role as I was always keen to experience western work culture. Secondly,
accounts receivables experience would be added to my work experience which
would be very beneficial.
I made couple of plans and reviewed some useful accounting information which
would be helpful in the job role. But after reaching the office and meeting with
the team, fear and negative thoughts started coming in my mind by seeing the
work pressure of existing employees. After which I backed myself and was
confident that I would excel if I keep calm and don’t overthink. Human resource
management is the process of managing people efficiently in order to achieve
organisational goals and gain market competitive advantage (Lengnick-Hall,
2011). Bidfresh being big company with many local supply chains across UK, I
expected my first day induction process to be very positive and energetic where
normally employee will be introduced to workplace, company’s background,
values & ethics etc. but induction process in the Bidfresh company was very
poor. This process is handled by the line managers at every location.
Additionally, they also take care of other activities like collection of employee’s
personal details and forwarding it to payroll department, setting up and planning
of work stations etc. the reason being, company doesn’t want to invest on
Human resource management which is major concern for company’s future.
The credit control department which I worked consists of nine employees
including the line manager. Initially I was not much interactive as I was more
focusing on getting used to work environment. The process was bit quicker than
expected due to beautiful team members who made efforts in making me feel
comfortable. After one two days in the company, I got to know that the company
was struggling with debt collection from customer as company brought changes
in its software and it was bit difficult for employees as proper training was not
given on new software. And due to several other backend issues, the customers
were receiving wrong invoice copies and payment were not being received on
time. The team were chasing customers for payments, but many queries were
coming in return regarding invoices, credit notes, invoice allocations etc.
Sideways, there was pressure on the team from headquarters to reduce the
numbers. We as a team always tried to make each other strong through
constant encouragement so that every team member feels positive during
tackling this pressure situation. Encouragement is the best gift which you can
give to an individual, most people don’t get required encouragement to make
development and reach their potential. If this was provided to every individual to

grow and display, the world would be wealthier beyond their wildest vision
(Madwed, 2007). Recently, after receiving November month end reports, our
team was awarded with excellence for making great progress in debt collection
for the company. There are many points which can be considered for our
achievement. And the most important aspect for our success as a team being
communication and leadership. Team helps leader in completion of tasks. The
composed team includes connected attributes, attitude and drive which leads to
success (Collins, 2013). The significant agenda in team management is listening,
communicating, leadership and obligation. These are considered as important in
team coordination and leadership (Corominas, 2006). During this situation, there
were many miss agreements between team members and line managers. But
this never had a major effect on the team work and team bonding. Everyone
does errors and no one is perfect. Similarly, there were some errors which had
major impact.
There are multiple things which I would be taking in to consideration in a
situation like this in future. Firstly, I would try to get rid of communication gap. I
would keep transparency between top level management and employees. So
that the team understands the expectation of the management and discussion
possibilities with the team in order to meet those expectations. Secondly, brining
in short term goals set up which act as steps and helps the team to achieve long
term goals.
There are several facts which I have learnt about myself. Firstly, I need to develop listening
skill. This is because, listening skill is one of the most effective elements that a person needs
to develop in order to maintain healthy professional relationship, within the team and also
among the employees of different ranks in an organization (Yu, Brown and Etherington
2013). As a novice, it was very essential for me to listen carefully to the professional
conversation of others. For example, if any issue related to credit control occurs, how the
experienced or veteran employees discuss about the issue and find out the way out. I realized
that if I listen to the professional conversation of my seniors carefully, I will be able to collect
valuable tips as well as tricks to perform well or handle any problem in a better way. Hence,
gaining work related knowledge will be possible, if I develop listening skills.
I know that, I was not much interactive. This is another reason why I realized that, the
second priority should be improving my communication skill. This is because, poor
communication skill may create misunderstanding among the team members. Again, poor
communication skill can also hamper the coordination among the members of a team. Again,
poor communication skill creates substantially negative impact on the people I deal with in
the professional level (St Clair-Thompson and Chivers 2019). This negative impact may in
turn creates misperception about myself to the influential people I will meet in the
professional level. This can cast upon severe negative impact on my career. On the contrary,
a good communication skill can accelerate understanding as well as cooperation among the
team members. the development of communication skill can facilitate in creating a positive
impact over the people I will meet in my professional career who can provide me significant
guidance to achieve success (Rennie et al. 2018).
Another thing I realized after Bidfresh Limited is that, I need to inculcate some managerial
skill, to stand out in the team of 9 people. The employee strength of the company is low. In
the company, take care of other activities like collection of employee’s personal details and
forwarding it to payroll department, setting up and planning of work stations etc. the reason