Improving Time & Problem-Solving Skills

This assignment focuses on the development of essential skills for professional advancement, particularly time management and problem-solving. The author identifies these skills as crucial for achieving long-term goals, such as becoming a manager at Harrods. Strategies for improvement include prioritization, feedback seeking, deadline setting, delegation, active listening, and root cause analysis. Additionally, the text emphasizes the value of initiative in enhancing skill development.

HARRODS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
ASSESSMENT TASK A.................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Presenting a personal skill audit..................................................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
a) Identifying some key interpersonal and transferable skills and techniques to enhance these
skills............................................................................................................................................2
b) Personal SWOT analysis........................................................................................................6
c) Describing individual appraisal..............................................................................................7
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................8
Preparing personal and professional development Plan .............................................................8
ASSESSMENT TASK B...............................................................................................................12
Reflection..................................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
In this competitive era, it is quite necessary for every business to have the efficient
workers who helps to accomplish the goals and defined objectives of a business. In context to
this the main aim of this report is to demonstrate the skills and knowledge within employability
skills & professional development. It is based upon the case study of Harrods of London which is
a British Institution and a well-known retail store who built a unique reputation at global level.
Currently the company needs an employee who can face the challenges that its reputation and
standards bring and that is why the quoted firm finds an employee with right mix of skills and
abilities who will become manager in future.
Thus, the report is divided into two parts such that in part A, report conduct a skill audit
ion the context of an employee's roles and responsibilities and also identify some key
interpersonal and transferable skills and further also analysing tools and techniques to enhance
these skills. Moreover, report conduct a SWOT analysis in order to identify the strength,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then it also carries out the individual appraisal with an
organization. The report will implement a professional development plan with proper aims and
objectives and areas for development. In part B, report will critically evaluate own learning ion
terms of enhancing the personal and professional skills.
ASSESSMENT TASK A
TASK 1
Presenting a personal skill audit
Skill audit is one of the essential process that helps in measuring and recording the
abilities of an individual. Its main purpose is to determine the skills as well as knowledge which
an organization requires (Anders, 2019). Further, through personal skill audit, a person can easily
determine their strengths and weaknesses that needs to be developed in the healthy atmosphere.
In order to conduct a skill audit, Brunel skill audit tool is used to determine the skills in which an
employee of Harrods is mastered and that still needs to work on. Therefore, it is as mention
below:
Key I really need to work on this I could still improve I am quite confident I can
do this
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Skills
Positive attitude
Oral Communication
Teamwork
Self management
Willingness to learn
Problem solving and decision making
Resilience
Time management
Written communication
Information literacy
Numeracy
Therefore, the above skill audit shows that being an employee of Harrods, I have strength
such that positive attitude, team work abilities, can easily manage self-work, resilience and have
willingness to learn. Further I still need to work on my communication skills i.e. oral and written,
I also lack problem solving skills and time management on which I have to work on. Further, I
could also improve my information literacy and numeracy skills (Lateef and Omotayo, 2019). As
a part of the operation team I really need to work on my communication skills in order to
coordinate with my colleagues and discuss ideas with my managers. Along with this I need to
improve my time management skills which are very helpful for me to perform better. It can be
achieved via prioritizing the task assigned to me in the operation department.
TASK 2
a) Identifying some key interpersonal and transferable skills and techniques to enhance these
skills
There are some key abilities and skills which needs to possess by an employee who
working in a company. Some of them are interpersonal and transferable skills that are mentioned
below:
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Interpersonal skills: This are the skills which a person use every day at the time of
communicate and interact with other people (Mencl, Wefald and van Ittersum, 2016). It has been
analyzed that people with strong interpersonal skills are quite more successful in their both lives
i.e. professionally and personally. Therefore, some of the interpersonal skills are as discussed: Communication: It is considered as one of the most important interpersonal skill for any
job, such that if a person have an effective communication skills that is non-verbal and
verbal, then they can easily able to convey the messages to others without any
disturbance (Anderson and et.al., 2016). Conflict Management: For an employee of Harrods, it is quite necessary to have skill
such as conflict management. This might also involve solving an issue between two staff
members and thus, there is needs to have conflict management skills. Empathy: It is another interpersonal skill in which a person show sympathy to others and
even Harrods is a retail store, then the chances of customer complaint is increases (Hebert
and Hauf, 2015). At that time, the employee should listen thoughtfully to person's
concern and also express the compassion for their issue as well. Empathy is quite an
important tool which help a person to get along with everyone at workplace (Muller,
2018).
 Teamwork: Collaboration and team work help to achieve the work at define time and
working in a team. it is also required to have some collaboration and team work abilities.
Teamwork mainly involves a number of skills such that group facilitating, team building
and collaboration etc.
Transferable Skills: Transferable skills are relevant and helpful at different areas of life
such that professionally, socially and personally. It has been analyzed that people generally think
about the transferable skills when they are applying for a job or some career change. Therefore,
some of the transferable skills are as mentioned below: Time management: it is one of the most important transferable skill that an employee or
a person must posses such that by making priority of work list will help a person to
manage their own time at work place as well as personally (Transferable skill, 2018).
Meeting with a deadline will help a person to manage the stress level and complete the
work on time and in this modern world, the people needs to be multi- tasker so that it
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helps to meet the aim and objectives. That is why it is consider one of the most important
skill. Leadership: It is one of the most important interpersonal skills which an employee must
posses. Leadership requires to be able to motivate and also encourages others so that the
team can easily achieve the success as well. Problem solving: It is another quite important skill that an employee should possess
because at workplace, there is a need to resolve the issue between an employer andof
retail store employee and management. Having a decision making and problem-solving
skills will help a person to be quite stable in the business only. Technical skills:It is one of the important skills for every job because having a strong
technical skill will help to enhance the stability and also help to leverage the professional
growth. It is also analyzed that staying in the current with an essential technical and
technology skills is the keystone of the professional stability as well as growth. Research and Analytical Skills: It is also necessary to have a skill such as research and
analytical which could be a variety of complex information and that helps Harrods to
make sense of the following information such as sales figure, new product and supplier
specification and financial information (Hausman and et.al., 2018). Even it also includes
the knowledge of Information technology that helps to keep the business emerge with
new techniques and development.
 Numeracy Skills: Having a statistically knowledge and good understanding of numeracy
will help a business to be successful and for Harrods, it will be good if the person has the
knowledge of Numeracy and IT.
Technique used to enhance interpersonal skills: There are many ways that helps to
raise the interpersonal skills, some of them are as mentioned below:
 Active listening: In order to enhance the communication skills, a person should listen to
everyone and try to understand as well. This further helps to foster a better working
relationship. Even a good communicator is always a good and thoughtful listener and to
improve the non- verbal communication, a person should make proper eye contact and
proper body language (DeVito, 2019).
 Appreciate by coworkers: It is also realized that when the coworkers appreciate, it feel
great and it is also necessary that other people should also know that they are doing good
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job. Further, when people know they are appreciated, they are also motivated to keep the
good work.
 Positive body language: It directly reflect the positive attitude as well as
communication. It is also evaluated that taking pride in an appearance is just the first step
and having a good body language will reflect the positive attitude of work. Even while in
retail store interacting with others, a smiling face will help to show the positive attitude
and positive body language (Olsen, Sverdrup and Kalleberg, 2019).
 Promote the positive work environment: Positive working environment means the
workers are happy and it also reduce the stress and promotes creativity, innovation and
assist to keep the employee productive. Therefore, it will help in the success of a
business.
Technique used to enhance Transferable skills: There are many ways that helps to
raise the Transferable skills, some of them are as mentioned below:
 Build confidence: having a good confident directly reflect the a person have a positive
attitude and a self-confident candidate also knows that they possess the desirable traits
and some skills which will work hard in order to get comfortable in conveying to the
potential employers. Thus, having good self- confident will help to communicate and
manage the time effectively (Wright, 2019).
 Motivation and enthusiasm: Inspiring other and motivate the people will also help to
enhance the leadership skills such that It has been analyzed that motivate other will
develop the leadership skills that further help to attain the aims and objectives of the
company.
 Planning: An effective planning will help to manage the task in well manner such that of
retail store start making priority list of every task and set every work in effective manner.
This will help to raise the transferable skills.
 Focused: Being focused towards a work and identify the skills gap that needs to be
improved, will help to determine the weaknesses. Further, there Is a need to lock on the
target area so that it will help to understand better the transferable skills that need to go
and which needs to be develop (Yang and Newman, 2019).
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b) Personal SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis is a strategic management tool that is used to examine the person's
situation by looking at strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Further the tool is also
helpful for the success and betterment. Even using SWOT analysis as a tool will also help to
measure the scope to reach a desired goals and also boost the career growth as well (Bull and
et.al., 2016). By conducting SWOT analysis, I can easily explore and enhances the soft as well as
hard skills, that of retail store helps to understand the personality traits. In the same way, as an
employee of Harrods, SWOT analysis is as mention below:
Strength Weaknesses
 I have the ability to handle a large
number of clients
 I am Multi- lingual
 I have High social competences
 I possess Teamwork abilities
 I have Willingness to learn many
things
 I have Resilience
 I can manage entire work
 I have good leadership qualities
 I am very Creative in nature
 I have good Financial skills
 I possess organizational and
management skills
 I also have the ability of decision
making power.
 I am lacking the skills of Numeracy
skills, IT
 There is a need to enhance my
problem-solving skills
 I am still lacking written
communication which is quite
necessary in Harrods.
 I am also lacking time management
skills such that I cannot perform all
the task in prescribe time.
Opportunities Bull, J. W. and et.al., 2016 Threats
 Having a good teamwork abilities will
help me to provide an opportunity to
enhance my career.
 Can shift towards another job as I
 Having a tough competition from
my peers who have the same
qualification.
 Having a threat of losing a job
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posses some leadership qualities and
multi- lingual.
because of lacking IT skills
c) Describing individual appraisal
As an employee of Harrods, the individual appraisal format is as mention below:
Employee Appraisal Form
Employee Name: John Smith
Job title: Employee
Name of the company: Harrods of London
Date: 10th Mary, 2019
Performance category Score Remarks
Ability at the position 5 As an employee, I am quite focused towards my
work and I can handle my responsibility in better
way.
Attendance 4 I cannot take unnecessary leaves that shows my
punctuality.
Leadership ability 5 I posses good leadership skills because as I am
working in a team and also encourage or motivate
other to achieve the work in defined deadline.
Ability to meet deadlines 2 I am lacking time management skills and as a
result, I am not able to meet the deadline.
5 I am having good management skills and can also
organized the work in better way that is why I
rating this 5 out of 5.
Quality of work 3 The quality of work is moderate such that being not
able to meet my deadline, my work quality got
affected.
Team work ability 5 As I am doing work in a team and have good
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collaboration, that shows my team work ability
Team player Ability 5 As a team player, I always support and encourage
my co-workers to perform the task and meet
deadline as well.
Evaluation
1. Communication Skills Rating: 2-3
2. Knowledge of Jobs Rating: 5
3. Problem solving skills Rating: 1-2
4. IT skills Rating: 2-3
5. Knowledge related to work Rating: 4-5
1 How long has you working in the department?
Ans. I am working from 3 years as an employee in the accounts department in Horrads.
2 Have you ever been commended or promoted in the past?
Ans. Yes, from last 2 years
3 Did you take any extra shift?
Ans. Yes, I take extra shifts whenever it is required.
4 Are you satisfied with the work position which you uphold?
Ans. Currently yes.
Any suggestion
The company should use advance technology into the working area and also start taking some
training and development session for each employee. This session will help to raise current skill
of every employees and directly affect the overall performance of a company. Apart from this,
the laws and regulation needs to be reviewed and make necessary amendments whenever it is
required. This will help to improve the performance of a business and raise its brand image as
well.
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TASK 3
Preparing personal and professional development Plan
Personal developmental plan is the tool that helps a person in career and personal
development such that its primary aim is to reach short and long term career goals as well as help
to improve the current job performance (Stewart, 2016). In the same way, being an employee of
Harrods of London, my personal development plan is as mentioned below:
Aim: To improve my communication skills and time management skills in order to
achieve short term goal for next 1 year.
Personal development plan
Skills need to be
improved
Activities for
improvement
Importance of developing
skills
Time frame
Time management
skill
As an employee,
it is important to
have the ability
of managing time
with tasks. For
improving and
developing this
skill, an
individual can
take help of tools
and activities
related to time
management.
There are some
tools including
Trello and
priority matrix
app. Trello's
In a personal and
professional life, time
management play a vital
role. It is important because
with this skill, a person can
deliver their services and
complete their tasks on time.
It can also help them in
improving positive image .
A person can easily balance
their personal and
professional life with time
management skill.
Within 30 days
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boards & cards
make an
employee able to
prioritise tasks in
a fun &
rewarding way.
Priority matrix is
an effective
software app
which can help in
focusing on
urgent and
important tasks.
With the help of
these tools as an
employee I can
develop this skill.
Communication
skill
There are various
activities which
can help an
individual to
improve
communication
skill such as
paraphrasing,
small script etc.
By repeating
sentences saying
by others in own
ways a person
can easily
Verbal and written
communication skills also
play a significant role in
personal as well as in
professional life. It can
makes a person able to
speak in front of a group of
people and share views and
informations in an effective
way. It also helps in solving
problems of interpersonal
conflicts which arises due to
misunderstanding and
Within 20 days.
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improve their
communication
skill.
ineffective communication.
Professional developmental plan is created in order to achieve the long term goals
which helps to improve knowledge and skills that further support both the organization's
objectives and the employee's needs as well as goals (Mazzotti and et.al., 2018). As an employee
of Harrods, my goals are long term and this is as mention below:
Aim: To improve my problem solving skills, Information Literacy and numeracy skills
in next 6 years for attaining long term goals i.e. to become a manager.
Professional Development plan
Skills need to be
improved
Activities for
improvement
Importance of developing
skills
Time frame
Problem solving
skill
There are various
tools and
activities by
which an
employee can
improve problem
solving skill
which is required
in a manager.
Drill down
process is an
effective tool
which breaks
complex
problems down
into smaller
It is important for a
manager to have the ability
of solving any type of
problem. It can reduce
conflicts which arises at
workplace and become the
reason of labour turnover
and stress.
Within 25 days.
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parts.
Information
literacy skill
For becoming a
manager it is
important to
develop this skill,
a person can
focus on research
and take help of
archival science
theory.
Information literacy is a
ability which is essential
for manager to recognise
and evaluate when the
important informations is
needed. It is important
because it increases and
promotes problem solving
approaches & critical
thinking skills.
Within 20 days
Numeracy skill A manager
should posses
numeracy skills
in order to solve
numeric
problems an
individual can
practice of
psychometric
numerical tests.
With this tests it
can assess their
ability.
Numeracy also play a vital
role as it increases the
logical thinking and
reasoning strategies of a
manager. It also helps a
manager in accessing and
communicating
mathematical informations
in managing mathematical
demands of various
situations (Yamashita and
et. al., 2018).
Within 30 days
CONCLUSION
By summing up above report it has been concluded that in this competitive world, it is
quite essential for a business that they hire those employees who have all the interpersonal and
transferable skills. These skills further help a business to be competitive and provide best and
effective products to their customers. As per the case study it is concluded that Harrods of
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London needs an employee who can n face the challenges that its reputation and standards bring
and even it also looking for rewarding a long term career with a responsibilities and prospect.
Thus, through this report it has been clearly concluded that what are the skills required by an
organization and what are the skills posses by an employee. Further, through the report it has
been also concluded that through Brunel personal skill audit, the requirement of the organization
in the context of an employee of Harrods and performance objective as well.
Moreover, report concluded some interpersonal skills such as communication, empathy,
positive attitude and teamwork, and transferable skills such as IT and numeracy skills, research
and analytic skills, problem solving and also concluded some methods to enhance these skills as
well. Further through SWOT analysis, report also concluded, employee's strength such as
financial skill, management and organizing skills, resilience, weaknesses such as
communication, time management and which can be improved by using personal and
professional plan as well. Lastly, it also reflect the plan and suggest the ways to improve the
skills for the future as well.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Anders, S. B., 2019. Audit Resources. The CPA Journal.89(2). pp.70-71.
Anderson, T. and et. al., 2016. A prospective study of therapist facilitative interpersonal skills as
a predictor of treatment outcome. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.84(1).
p.57.
Bull, J. W. and et. al., 2016. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT
analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem services. 17. pp.99-111.
DeVito, J. A., 2019. The interpersonal communication book. Instructor. 1. p.18.
García Peñalvo, F. J., 2015. Entrepreneurial and problem solving skills.
Hausman, K. and et. al., 2018. Learning an embedding space for transferable robot skills.
Hebert, A. and Hauf, P., 2015. Student learning through service learning: Effects on academic
development, civic responsibility, interpersonal skills and practical skills. Active Learning
in Higher Education.16(1). pp.37-49.
Hesse, F. and et. al., 2015. A framework for teachable collaborative problem solving skills.
In Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills (pp. 37-56). Springer, Dordrecht.
Lateef, A. and Omotayo, F. O., 2019. Information audit as an important tool in organizational
management: A review of literature. Business Information Review, p.0266382119831458.
Mazzotti, V. L. and et. al., 2018. Steps for implementing a state-level professional development
plan for secondary transition. Career Development and Transition for Exceptional
Individuals. 41(1). pp.56-62.
Mazzotti, V.L. and et. al., 2018. Steps for implementing a state-level professional development
plan for secondary transition. Career Development and Transition for Exceptional
Individuals. 41(1). pp.56-62.
Mencl, J., Wefald, A. J. and van Ittersum, K. W., 2016. Transformational leader attributes:
interpersonal skills, engagement, and well-being. Leadership & Organization
Development Journal.37(5). pp.635-657.
Muller, G., 2018. Human Side: interpersonal skills.
Olsen, K. M., Sverdrup, T. E. and Kalleberg, A. L., 2019. Turnover and transferable skills in a
professional service firm. Journal of Professions and Organization, 6(1), pp.2-16.
Stewart, J., 2016. Personal development plan. In Encyclopedia of Human Resource
Management. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Stewart, J., 2016. Personal development plan. In Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management.
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Wright, A., 2019. What Could I Be: Transferable Skills to Take on Any Job. TALL Q. 38. p.14.
Yamashita, T. and et. al., 2018. Literacy, numeracy, and health information seeking among
middle-aged and older adults in the United States. Journal of aging and health.
p.0898264318800918.
Yang, S. and Newman, R., 2019. A new rotational blended learning system for transferable
educational outcomes. IEEE Transactions on Education.
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ASSESSMENT TASK B
Reflection
By using SWOT analysis, I easily determine my strength and weaknesses in which I
realized that I have good financial accounting knowledge which is quite necessary because I am
working in accounts department therefore, it is necessary to have efficient knowledge regarding
this field. On the other side, I also lack some communication skills which is a short term goal and
through personal developmental plan I have enhanced this skill up to 90% and this is all because
of the resources which I used during my personal developmental plan. Moreover, being an
employee of Harrods, I also have organizing and management skills that helps to manage my
entire work in effective way.
Further, as I am lacking some time management skills and to improve this I started to
prioritize or manage the time in order to get the work balance and even also taking the feedback
from the tutors as well in order to set the target and also improve it. Through personal
developmental plan, I work to improve my time management skills but somehow it is not
improved as I required Even I also realized through SWOT analysis, that I am lacking some
problem solving skills which needs to improve because it helps me to attain my long term goals
and as I wanted to become a manager in my future. Therefore, it is essential to improve my
problem-solving skills through professional development plan. I evaluated that by using personal
and professional development plan, I somehow improve or raise my weaknesses up to some
extent but there is a need to improve at high level as well.
In addition to this, I also realized during my completion of development plan that I
completely improve my communication skills, information literacy and numeracy skills but I
still need to focus on time management and problem solving skills. Even by using professional
and personal development plan, my communication skills are affected and now I can discuss and
represent any topic within my team and gain confidence as well. This is the best part during my
development plan and even though, by attaining effective training session and thorough research
for an assignment via range of sources will help to improve the information literacy and even by
start attending training session also help me to enhance my knowledge and this will also help me
in my future as well (Hesse and et. al., 2015).
Apart from this, I also faces the problem when I am implementing the developmental
plan for time management skills because even by putting many efforts, I still did not improve
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this skill completely as this is all because I cannot manage the resources and meet deadline
properly. As a result, this leads to affect my plan and I cannot improve my time management
skills. On the other side, there is a need to work on my problem solving skills because I also
faces some problem when I am working in this. Such that in my workplace, I cannot contribute
effectively to the group work and as a result, this shows that I still work on this. Further, I
realized that even using the resources to improve the problem solving skills, I felt I cannot take
the decisions. Thus, it clearly shows that there is a need to improve or work on this skills as well.
As per the above discussion, it has been realized that even by implementing the personal
and professional plan, there are some skills which needs to be improved because this will help
me to achieve my long term goals and these skills are time management skills and problem
solving skills. As I want to become a manager in Harrods, therefore, these two skills are quite
necessary to be improved in my future career growth and that is why to improve the time
management skills,I start prioritize and manage the time and select the most important project at
top so that this should be first attain. After that I also start taking feedback from the tutors in
order to set the target and improve those. Apart from this, I also started attending training session
and even set up deadlines so that the work should be completed on time. If this technique is
applied in defined time then I somehow improve my time management skills. Moreover, I also
avoid being multi- tasking, because it affect the work performance and by minimizing
distraction, is another method which I can used while improving time management skills. In
addition to this, as an employee, or working in a team, I also delegate the responsibilities. I
realized that delegation is not a sign of weakness but it is a sign of intelligence. Therefore, I start
delegating the responsibilities in my team so that we will meet the deadline in proper way.
On the other side, I also lack some problem solving skills that also needs to be improved
because for my future career option, it is quite necessary that I can make decision and also solve
the issues between the workers and management. For this reason, I start working in a
methodological way such that I start listening to other and then start asking question so that I can
understand the problem and then provide proper suggestion. During the improvement plan I
realized that misconception and misunderstanding also affect the entire process of decision
making in wrong manner and for improving the problem solving skills, it is quite essential to
focus on the roots cause mainly not on the symptoms. Even it has been realized that by creating
an effective and innovative solution, the problem can be resolve easily and for attaining the long
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