Professional Identity and Practices

This report examines the concept of professional identity and practices, focusing on the example of Haggis Adventure, a tour and travel company. It analyzes the key benefits of ongoing professional development for different stakeholders, employer expectations of skills and competencies, and outlines a development plan to enhance chosen skills and competencies. The report also includes a simulated interview for a suitable service industry role and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the applied interview process.

Professional identity
and practices

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1. key benefits of on-going professional development for different stakeholders....................1
P2. professional employer expectations of skills and competencies...........................................2
TASK2.............................................................................................................................................4
P3. abilities, skills and competencies for a specific job role.......................................................4
P4. learning theories and approaches used for personal and professional development
processes......................................................................................................................................5
TASK3.............................................................................................................................................6
P5. development plan to enhance chosen skills and competencies.............................................6
TASK4.............................................................................................................................................7
P6. interview for a suitable service industry role........................................................................7
P7. strengths and weaknesses of an applied interview process...................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Professional practices means method of performing tasks for a particular profession. For
performing these practices one is require having a proper training and education. Haggis
adventure is taken as an example for understanding the concept of professional practices. It is a
tour & travel company of UK which is working all over the world. Company came into existence
in 1992 and providing all the tour services to their customers (Sweet and et. al., 2015).
Organisation is dealing in services like providing accommodation, foods & beverages, fun
activities, visits to markets & amusement parks. Further in this report
TASK 1
P1. key benefits of on-going professional development for different stakeholders
Professional development is a method to learn professional skill and to retain it like
academic degrees for professional work which include attending conferences and informal
learning opportunities. There are number of methods available related to professional
development, some of them are coaching, consultation, self-study, mentoring, supervision and
technical assistance (Brooks, 2016)
 Increase retention- This is one of the major benefits that Haggis adventure have if their
stakeholders professionally develop themselves. In today’s era, company’s cost is
increasing because of providing training to their staff, by providing professional
development to the employees; haggis can retain their employees from leaving the
company. This is so because staff will feel as important part of the company when
managers and leaders of the firm care about their career development or progression. This
also makes employees feel that organization is interested in keeping them. All these
efforts of the company reduce employee turnover which automatically decreases
company’s cost and increase its productivity.
 Build confidence & credibility- This is one of the good methods of building confidence
in the workers of Haggis adventure. Professional development and training provide more
confidence to worker and they perform their task effectively. It also provides motivation
to the staff to work for the organization and to achieve the goals of the company.
Professional development provides long term benefits to the organization because when
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an employee’s skills get developed, they can retain it for ever and always help company
to cope up with the difficult situations.
 Reenergize the staff- This is another benefit which haggis get if they acquire
professional development. This program act as the tool for the company which help them
in reenergizing their employees so that they can perform their best and help organization
to increase their productivity as well as profitability. This is because it is very important
for company to give motivation to their staff for day to day activities they perform.
Otherthan this it also help organization in finding out the innovative and creative skills of
their employees (Jackson, 2016).
 Career goals- Another benefit of the continuing professional development provide
benefit to the company’s employee because it helps them in developing their careers.
These knowledge and skills act as a tool for them to decide their goals in life and to
reduce their weaknesses. It is also an important technique to find out the person strength
and weakness so that they can work on it for improving them.
 Increases contribution- Another benefit of CPD to the employees, managers and leaders
of the firm is that they start contributing more in the Hggis adventure. This is because of
their internal development which is provided by the company, it makes them motivated
and help them to work more efficiently for the company (Novakovich, Miahand Shaw,
2017)
 Succession planning- Other benefits that continuing professional development providing
is it is acting as a tool which help the company in training the future leaders for the
company. This is because, instead of hiring from outside company can easily get the
person from their organization only. It reduces the hiring costs of the company and
increases their profitability.
P2. professional employer expectations of skills and competencies
 Positive attitude- Employer of the Haggis adventure is looking for the people with
positive attitude so that they can help the company in dealing with different nature of
people. Positive attitude is a very important competency which every worker of the
organization weather it is employer or employee must have in them. This is because it
creates a good environment for others to work and to tackle the clients with patience.
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Positive attitude also helps employees of Haggis to always stay confident about their
work.
 Communication- This is another skill or competency which employers want in their
staff, communication is very important factor in the tour and travel industry because it
helps them in influencing the customers to choose their company. Communication skills
are also important for the employers to have in them so that they can interact with their
subordinates without any difficulty. And can able to make them understand what
employer want to convey (Salifu and Agbenyega, 2016) Having good verbal skills help a
person to manage every situation.
 Teamwork- This is another skill which employers want from their employees to have.
Team work is one of the very important factorsfor Haggis as it helps the company in
achieving their goals. Unity in members is also useful for attracting customers and easily
performing the difficult tasks of the organization. It creates a very friendly environment
to work for the employees which motivate them to perform better and to achieve the
goals of the company.
 Willingness to learn- Employer of Haggis adventure want their employees to have this
skill in them. It is related to their adaptability to learn new thing and to work in a new
environment and place. It is a tour and travel company in which members has to learn
new things regularly so that they can handle the situations. Learning provide them
knowledge and some skills which help in performing better and achieving the goals of the
organization.
 Thinking skills- These skills are very much important in a person because while working
in a tour and travel company, employees face different situation which they have never
faced before. This skill helps them to handle it confidently. For example, if Haggis
adventure goes on a tour with 30 travelers and 5 company’s crew members. On their way,
because of some reason they stuck into the traffic jam for three hours and all the
passengers started panicking, at that time employees of Haggis use their thinking skills
and calmed the passengers. Thinking skills help the people to deal such a situation.
 Self- management- This is another skill which employers are searching in employees to
have. Self-management is related to managing self-activities, evaluating performance and
taking controlling measures (Pennington and Richards, 2016). This is important for the
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company because employees are required to understand their responsibilities by their own. It
reduces the burden form the head of employees and responsibility get delegated to the
employees also.
TASK2
P3. abilities, skills and competencies for a specific job role
Ability, skills and competency are major requirement from a person to perform any task.
These skills and abilities help the individual in performing effectively and achieving the goals of
the organization (Pihl-Thingvad, 2015) Managers are the important part of the company, some of
their skills abilities and competencies are-:
Competency of managers:
 Conflict resolution: This is one of the competencies which is required in the manager of
Haggis. Conflict resolution is must for managers to have in them because they always
face conflict related situations which they can not ignore. It is also important because it
only affect the performance of the company but it also affects the relation between
employers and customers.
 Emotional intelligence: This is another competency required in the manager of haggis.
This says that leaders should have control on their emotions and they must have aware
about their capacity. This is important because it help them to handle interpersonal
relationships easily.
 Supervising others: Manager is a very big posts and it consist many responsibilities.
Haggis so much relies on the managers decisions and directions. It is important for
manager to have supervising competency in them so that they can control the workers in
organization and make them work as desired.
Skills of managers:
 Critical thinking: This is one the skill which is important for the managers of Haggis
to have. It helps the company to deal with the difficult situations. Critical thinking is
also required when organization has to take big and important decisions, at this
situation critical thinking of the manager’s work well. it also plays a role of important
factor for the managers because it helps them to think about the futures in advance
and to plan about it.
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 Project management skills: It is important skill for the managers to have in them,
because it helps them to manage the large and big projects very easily. Project
management skills are also required to plan, organize and manage other resources for
particular project.
Abilities of managers:
 Delegation: This is the ability of managers working in the Haggis adventure, it
says that leaders are require to delegate responsibilities to their subordinates so
that work can be load or burden of work can be minimized. This is because it is
not possible for the manager alone to handle everything.
 Decision making: This is another ability which manager of Haggis have, decision
making is one of the important skills required in the leader working in any
company. This is because whole organization is dependent on the manager’s
decisions and directions.
P4. learning theories and approaches used for personal and professional development processes
There are different theories or approaches made for personal ad professional development
of the people (Wald, 2015). Some of the professional development approaches are-:
 Workshops: Haggis adventure continuously conduct workshops for their employees so
that they can provide some training to their staff which help developing them
professionally. These workshops are conducted on regular basis like weakly, monthly
or quarterly.
 Coaching: This is another method of providing professional development to the
workers of Haggis. It helps them to guide for their future also and to develop their
internal skills and abilities more strongly which make them very confident.
 Supervision: This is also an approach that organization take in use for professionally
developing their employees. Supervision is when the superior support employees to
learn something.
 Lesson study: This is another method of professional development which haggis use
for their employees. In this mode of CPD, lessons are provided to the staff which they
can read and can enhance their knowledge. Which in return help the organization to
achieve its desired goals and objectives.
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Personal development: Active listening- This is one of the modes of personal development of employees or
workers. It can be done through listening others and understanding from them. Active
listening help in adapting lot of information from the people who share their
experiences. Employees can learn so many new things from it which also very helpful
in increasing the knowledge. Awareness and presence- this is another method of personal development in which
individual has to keep their presence in the origination. Being aware is helpful because
it helpful for workers as they can learn new things from observing different scenarios. Leadership: With the help of the leaders, employees working in the company can also
develop their personal skills. It helps them in performing better as well achieving goals
of the organization. Personal development is related to the personal objectives of the
people. Leaders have power to guide their subordinates in such a manner that their
desired target can get achieved. Make own mission- This is another approach which employees need to follow for their
personal development are making own objectives or mission. So that they can perform
activities to achieve their goals.
TASK3
P5. development plan to enhance chosen skills and competencies
Development plans are the strategies made by the company to achieve the goals more
effectively and efficiently (Marañónand Pera, 2015). These are made so that organization can get
developed and able to perform better.
Haggis is a tour and travel company which is working in most of the countries and they have
good customer base. But for developing itself more, Haggis has to make a development plan
related to the expansion of their business. By expanding, organization can work in more
countries which is completely new to it. For doing this, they need to do a market research first
for determining the scope of their survival in the different markets. After deciding the country
and doing R&D, organization has to plan about their budget and resources which is the important
factors for running the business activities. Expansion plan is only successful if Haggis use
different promotional tools for advertising their existence in the market. Advertisement help
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them to reach to the new customers and they get to know about it.Other than this training and
development is one of the methods of for employees to develop personally as well as
professionally.
TASK4
P6. interview for a suitable service industry role
There is a job vacancy available in an organization of service industry which is hiring
marketing manager for their company. This interview is structured type interview in which
questions are already planned and written down to ask the candidates. For conducting the
interview, it is very important for the employees of the company to arrange a proper environment
of interview so that interviewer as well interviewee both feel comfortable
(Wald and et. Al., 2015). It is important for the manager of the company to organize it very well
so that it can be successful. Some of the question that are asked by the interviewer are-:
1. First questions that is asked from the candidates are their personal details like their name,
family, etc.
2. Next question asked from the candidate is about their education and qualification in detail
3. Some of the candidates already working somewhere asked about the candidate’s current
job and their job resistibility to know their experience and skills they have.
4. Other marketing related questions will be asked to the candidates to know their
knowledge related to the job and as demanded according to the job description.
5. Next is asked to the candidate about the reason for leaving the current job and opting for
this vacancy. This is asked to observe the person about their stability in one job.
P7. strengths and weaknesses of an applied interview process
Strength :Proper arrangement was dome for conducting the interview which act one of the major
strengths of the interview. This is because it helps the company to conduct it without facing any
hurdles or problems. Other than this, there are some other strength related to it are already
prepared list of questions which saves the time of the company as well as the interviewee
otherwise they both has to wait for interviewer to thing some questions. Both of these made the
interview process very easy for everyone to conduct it and to select a suitable candidate. This
also increased desire of applicants toward the company.
Weakness: Some of the weakness of the interview is that, company has not prepared well for the
interview. There were large number of people applied for the vacancy, it was not expected by the
company manager. Because of which they were not able to manage the interview properly.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that ongoing professional development of
stakeholders of organization is very important for better performance and to increase its
productivity. Other than this, some of the skills, abilities and competencies are mandatory for the
managers or leaders to have for increasing the efficiency in their performance. Apart from this
some of the theories or approaches have been learned for personal ad professional development
of an individual working in the company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Wald and et. Al., 2015. Professional identity formation in medical education for humanistic,
resilient physicians: pedagogic strategies for bridging theory to practice. Academic
Medicine. 90(6). pp.753-760.
Marañón, A.A. and Pera, M.P.I., 2015. Theory and practice in the construction of professional
identity in nursing students:Brooks, C., 2016. Teacher subject identity in professional
practice: Teaching with a professional compass. Routledge. A qualitative study. Nurse
Education Today. 35(7). pp.859-863.
Wald, H.S., 2015. Professional identity (trans) formation in medical education: reflection,
relationship, resilience. Academic Medicine. 90(6). pp.701-706.
Pihl-Thingvad, S., 2015. Professional ideals and daily practice in journalism. Journalism. 16(3).
pp.392-411.
Salifu, I. and Agbenyega, J.S., 2016. Teacher motivation and identity formation: Issues affecting
professional practice. MIER Journal of Educational Studies, Trends and Practices. 3(1).
Jackson, D., 2016. Re-conceptualising graduate employability: the importance of pre-
professional identity. Higher Education Research & Development. 35(5). pp.925-939.
Brooks, C., 2016. Teacher subject identity in professional practice: Teaching with a professional
compass. Routledge.
Sweet and et. al., 2015. The American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology, National
Academy of Neuropsychology, and Society for Clinical Neuropsychology (APA
Division 40) 2015 TCN professional practice and ‘salary survey’: Professional
practices, beliefs, and incomes of US neuropsychologists. The Clinical
Neuropsychologist. 29(8). pp.1069-1162.
Novakovich, J., Miah, S. and Shaw, S., 2017. Designing curriculum to shape professional social
media skills and identity in virtual communities of practice. Computers &
Education. 104. pp.65-90.
Pennington, M.C. and Richards, J.C., 2016. Teacher identity in language teaching: Integrating
personal, contextual, and professional factors. RELC journal. 47(1). pp.5-23.
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