Summer School 2014 - P1 completion task - final chance to nail this!

Hi year 10 soon to be year 11!

We are today starting the next unit so I hope that you are ready for your exam on the finance unit in three weeks time and have spent half term using the resources and identifying the gaps in your knowledge.

Start today by setting up a new folder in your student drive

Open a new document and add the headers and footers, name, course, Unit 4, Task P1, date, teacher etc

For the first task you need to:

Read the assignment brief all about setting up training manuals on 'rules to customer service'
P1 'Describe the different types of customer service provided by two selected businesses'

• Pick TWO different businesses of your choice
• Define what is meant by customer service
• Describe the different types of customer service provided by the two different businesses.  If you have chosen 'Edge Tyres' how do they differ from 'Quick Fit' and you will need to provide ACTUAL examples of how your chosen business provides customer service.

Remember customer service is one of the best ways a business can develop to compete.  The other way is price.  If you reduce price you are reducing profits but if you compete on outstanding customer service you can often hold the price at its current level and often increase it.  When was the last time you saw Apple discount any of their products.

Role play:

• Takeaway restaurant    
  
• Posh Nosh at the Old Bank Hotel

For M1 you need to compare how two selected business satisfy customers.

Once you have looked at the two businesses you need to compare how the two businesses satisfy their customers.  You can do this by identifying what they do well and what might be improved.

Deadline for P1 and M1 is Thursday 5th June 2014

Applying for a job - CV and letter of application or completing an application form!

Good Morning year 12

When applying for a job you will always need to request the:

JOB DESCRIPTION  This gives you the 

• details of the job role and 
• the day to day tasks of the job
• location of the job
• hours you need to work per day or per week 5/7 - full time or part time
• responsible for !
• responsible to !
• rate of pay and 
• other responsibilities

PERSON SPECIFICATION  This is a list of the essential and desirable:

• skills that you have
• qualifications that you have
• experience that you have

A template of a job description and personal specification can be found here

For those of you who have requested the above for a job role then that might be a place to start and think about to see what they look like.  Once you have read these you can then start to put the information that you wish to share about yourself so that you can get shortlisted for the interview.

OPTION 1
Some organisations like schools will want you to fill in an online or written application form. 

OPTION 2
Other jobs will expect you to send in a letter with a CV.  Today we will look at the application form and create a CV so that you have collated all the information about yourself to put on it.

This will be a very useful document for anyone looking to apply for a FULLTIME or PART TIME JOB in the future.

The following slide presentation maybe useful for refreshing your understanding about what goes into a CV and what a good or a bad one looks like! You can also download a blank template below if you are really stuck!

CV Writing                                                     CV Template

Unit 18 Managing an Event - Holiday Homework for Yr13 L3

Hi All

this will keep you busy and a head of the curve.  Over the holidays I want you to do some research into the following for the new unit.  When I say research I mean collect stuff that will skill you up in terms of the knowledge that you will require to present as evidence for the PASS task.  This does not mean write me an essay but collect all the resources that you can find that will support you when you do so that you can refer to all these goodies in your appendices.  Suggested ideas for the research would include:

• What are the skills and qualities of an event manager.  This link here might help?

• What is the job role and purpose of an events manager? Can I suggest you find some jobs currently being advertised and download the job description and person specification from the website that the job is being advertised in.  This will tell you the tasks and duties of the ideal candidate and the personal specification will give you the essential and desirable qualities, skills and qualifications required of a successful applicant.

• Event planning.  Whats involved and how do the most successful event planners plan their events.  Local examples would include Blenheim Palace who have put much effort into their calendar of events for the year and use this as a USP to pay £22 per day to visit promoting the buy one day and get the year for free !

• Think about an event that you would like to project manage in the Academy.  It has to be an event that will involve potentially the entire school community, friends and families and the wider community of OX4 

• Think about an Event Checklist for the event that you will plan, manage and execute before Christmas.  Local event management companies include the Mulberry Group and Chilli Sauce

I think that this should keep you up to speed and give you some time to fill with the preperation required to do well next year.  My minimum expectation for you all on this practical unit would be a DISTINCTION or 90 points but you will not get these unless you get involved at all stages of the unit.

Good luck and enjoy

Mr T

Mock Exam Revision Guide

Dear All

as promised here is a link to a power-point on all topics in unit 1

Read, remember and digest

Levels discussed in class can be found here

Enjoy

Mr T

P7 Demonstrate effective communication skills to meet customers needs when dealing with three different customers in customer service situations

Assignment five (to achieve P7, M4, D2)

Your work experience will have allowed you many opportunities to demonstrate effective communication skills to meet the needs of the many different customers that you served when you had to deal with their problems and complaints.  

In order to PASS P7 this assessment you need to:

1. Write a script that will allow you to create a short training video which can be uploaded to a company website for training purposes of new staff.  
2. Record the role play so that the clip should be no more than five minutes long and account for three different customer service situations that you can recall from your work experience.  To demonstrate effective communication will require good eye contact, smart dress, a need to speak clearly, being polite, friendly and smiley facial expressions and positive body language and an up meat and positive tone to the voice. An engaged and effective communicator is also a good and interested listener so that too needs to be considered in the role play if your customers are asking questions.   An example of what you need to create can be seen here  

To attempt M4 you will need to demonstrate effective communication skills when responding to customer problems and complaints in three customer service situations.  attempt three different types of evidence showing these skills that have been developed around three different customer service situations.  For those wishing to do this challenge this could be:

• a mock customer query call back 
• dealing with face to face complaints or 
• writing an apology letter to a customer about a complaint
• providing information about products
• promoting additional services of the company
• giving advice to customers before they purchase a product
• taking and relaying messages 

This video here is a great example of how to recover an angry customer and get them to back down. Richard Branson shares his top tips and advice here

To attempt D2 you need to evaluate the effectiveness of your own customer service skills justifying areas for improvement.  You will do this based on the activities that you have already done for P7 and M4.  This is a reflection of what you have done in this assignment and your work experience, what your strengths and weaknesses are as identified by you and your teacher and what you might do in order to improve in the future.  This task needs to be backed up with evidence and examples and can be written or a verbal evaluation recorded to camera.
This video here may allow you to compare yourself to the areas discussed in the video when evaluating your effectiveness in delivering your customer service skills

Theory required for P7 M4 D2

Developing customer service skills, including: 
● different situations, e.g. face-to-face, telephone, writing, email 
● ways of dealing with customer queries, including being polite, showing empathy 
with the customer, keeping customers informed, not disagreeing, using appropriate 
body language 
● ways of dealing with customer problems and complaints, e.g. by offering alternatives 
or exchanging products, escalating issues to management 
● customer types, e.g. difficult, abusive, people with disabilities, elderly, those needing 
technical information 
● different situations, e.g. providing information about products and/or services, 
promoting additional products and/or services, giving advice, taking and relaying 
messages 
● other customer service skills, e.g. keeping records, dealing with problems, handling 
complaints, remedial measures, emergency situations 
● complying with organisational/business policy, e.g. complaints procedure, 
disclaimers, service specification statements 


Assessment criteria

To achieve P7, learners should demonstrate effective communication skills to 
meet customer needs when dealing with three different customer types in different 
situations. 
Evidence will be through records of how these skills have been applied 
(through role play, part-time work or a work placement).

Centres must ensure that learners record a personal statement from evidence they have gathered to show how they demonstrated the skills (e.g. in a log or diary if they have demonstrated these 
skills during a work placement or part-time job). It is also essential to have a 
detailed written observation record of each learner’s performance, signed and dated 
by either the teacher or a work supervisor. 

Assignment five will need to be completed by Tuesday 22nd July 2014

Remember you have access to me and the school in BI3 Wednesday 23rd to Friday 25th so that the entire class can PASS this unit before September and know that half of this course is completed before you go into Year 11.  You will also have an opportunity to complete any MERIT and DISTINCTION tasks during this week also.

Good luck and enjoy

Mr T

Summer Intern Programme OBX - OE provided by SAID Business School

Dear Yr 12's

APPLY HERE!      1ST CHOICE 2nd CHOICE     AVAILABILITIES

But before you do anything read the blog page and attachments below

As I believe you already know Launchpad OBX-OE Summer Intern programme is returning this Summer. The deadline has been extended to 18^th July.

Any Oxfordshire student can apply (although its aimed primarily at pre-university students) through a web-site set up and managed by OE where students view a list of collaborating start-ups and identify their top 3 companies, once identified they will be matched and will meet here in Launchpad at Said Business School to arrange their internship for the Summer.

I hope you agree it’s a great opportunity to truly embed experiential entrepreneurial learning, to engage start-ups and students, to support possible job creation, to embed skills and to drive activity around entrepreneurship for Oxfordshire students throughout the Summer and beyond ..

I have included a brief summary below;

Summer Internship Programme

This is a brilliant opportunity for students to get an internship working with a start-up company or an entrepreneur. It can be difficult for a student to get hands on experience in a start-up so this is a perfect opportunity and is great to put on their CV. For the Entrepreneurs or Start-ups it gives them assistance and support that they otherwise might not have access too.

This programme is being run between Oxford Entrepreneurs and The Oxford Launch Pad (Said Business School). Entrepreneurs and students are expected to sign up for at least two weeks, and more often than not this is extended even longer. This programme is aimed at A-level/college students and above, below are some quotes which were taken from last year which was a huge success on both sides.

“ We were working with an enthusiastic, intelligent intern who is already giving us a fresh perspective on various aspects of the business” Alex Money, Founder at ACE Consensus Limited

“Taking part in the programme and working directly with entrepreneurs has been really exciting – it has given me a real insight into the challenges of a start up business” Ditya Herlambang, Intern  

This year we have an exciting host of start-up and entrepreneurs that can all be found on Oxford Entrepreneurs Fort. 

For any students of OSA wishing to take up this opportunity the application form can be accessed from the link here

The following documents and permissions will fast track your application once you have chosen a project that you think will suit your interests:

• Parental consent letter
• Risk assessment
• Power-point presentation

Good luck

Mr T

Assessing my skills and turning my weaknesses into strengths

Good morning year 12

Today we will look at the skills that you have developed to date.



Skills can be broken down into HARD SKILLS such as being able to READ or TYPE a letter
and you can count these and measure them accurately.  These are often minimum skills 
required to carry out a job role.



SOFT skills are more elusive and intangible.  These are the personality traits that are part of 
your character for example you might have a pleasant sounding voice to which people relate.  
Soft skills are usually qualities that are difficult to measure.



The skills audit below will allow you to assess all your soft and hard skills.  We can then focus 
on turning your weaknesses into strengths 'skills audit'



Once you have done this then you could consider putting a training plan together so 
that you can take action to develop your skills for future employment opportunities. 



Your 'training plan' could be created on this document.  It is a list of things you would like to do 

to turn your weaknesses in to strengths !  It is these skills that will relate to a potential job role 
and allow you to be successful when applying for it as you will often be asked to give evidnceof 
how you can demonstrate your skills!

Opportunities to develop your skills 

Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme

Young Enterprise Company programme

Methods of summarising your skills and experiences

CV's

Personal Statement

Good luck and enjoy.  See you next week.



Mr T

Year 7 Tutor First post for September 2014

Good Morning nearly Year 7

This website is one that we will be using in tutor time next term.

As it changes every day the challenges are new ones every day and it should be fab at developing your general knowledge.

Let me know what you think of it.

Have a great summer and I look forward to working with you in Sptember

Mr T

Understand what operational / business efficiency means and why it can make a business more competitive

Good afternoon year 9

1. The next challenge is to see what you know about business efficiency as a starting point.

1. Click on the link here and do the simple Efficiency Test.

There are many ways to consider cutting costs and we will look at many in more detail next year but here are the main concepts that you need to understand this year.  Click here to find out more. 

For those that like maths I have attached a graph here showing the relationship between efficiency (OUTPUT) and productivity (STAFF) You can test yourself again here once you have read the previous web link.

2. Improving efficiency. Lets see who is the quickest at summarising the notes on this page into their own words

3. Measuring efficiency - how can we do it? Click here Which option do you prefer and WHY?

4. Now lets play a game of connect 4 using what we have learned today.

Finally can we do the simple test that we started with to see how many can now get 10/10 click on the link here and redo the simple test

Enjoy

Mr T

P6 Describe using examples the limits of authority that would apply when delivering customer service

Dear year 11

P6  THEORY is all about 'Limits of authority'  What does this mean?

In any organisation you will have an organisational structure.  Investigate this.

Every organisation has different types of employees working at all levels.

• Directors - these generally set policies and look at a long term strategy (plan) for the business
• Managers - These are the employees that set and monitor the business objectives.  These objectives need to be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable and realistic in a given time frame.
• Supervisors - these employees communicate the messages to the staff and the problems to the managers.  They are key to a businesses success.
• Workers - they generally do the day to day tasks that the business is required to carry out and are generally the most important part of the business. Why is this? 

You then have to consider what is called a 'span of control'   

A business with a tall organisational structure will have a 'narrow span of control' and a large number of levels of hierarchy.

A business with a flat organisational structure will have a 'wide span of control' and few levels of hierarchy.

You then need to consider what authority means.  

Authority is the power to control others and what they can and cant so. A business with a tall organisational structure means that juniors have little independence or authority at work  Senior managers have the authority to control decisions that are made in the business and little freedom is given to junior employees on how to organise themselves or make decisions.

How does this impact on the customer service that the business provides? 

Delegation is all about passing down the authority to more junior employees. A flat structure means that managers and team leaders have to work with wide spans of control.  This mans that they will be in charge of a relatively large number of junior employees.  Because of this heavy workload the responsibility for managing people means that they have to give them more independence in their working lives.  This means that junior employees are able to take more decisions on their own.

Limits of authority when dealing with customer queries - STAFF

1. During the service delivery does the employee at the checkout have authority to discount faulty goods or refund transactions.
2. How does this take place at TK MAXX
3. Where do you go in Marks and Spencer to get a refund on items you are returning?
4. Can anyone in a restaurant AUTHORISE free food and drink or does this need to be authorised by someone else.

Limits of authority when dealing with customer queries - LINE MANAGERS / SUPERVISORS

1. Do supervisors have a greater authority to authorize refunds? How would this work in Tesco's at the till?
2. Can supervisors authorize free goods and staff discounts up to any level.
3. Why do businesses operate policies and procedures to put limits of authority on their staff.

Limits of authority when dealing with customer queries - MANAGERS

1. Can managers make greater discounts and authorize more free stock and higher levels of refunds at a branch level? Why?
2. Can managers authorize exceptional changes to procedures and policies at branch level ?

Why is ensuring that 'limits of authority' are correct and effective such a big part of customer service.

P6 Evidence requires you to create a power-point and show that you understand that different job roles will deal with a variety of queries within the business and that more complex queries will be dealt with by employees higher up the organisation

 

To complete P6 suggest four different scenarios where a customer has a complain about a product or service and for each complaint a different members of staff (minimum three staff, supervisor or manager) needs to deal with that complaint up to the limit of their authority.  

You make up the scenario i.e. the complaint and the handling of it based on your choice of business and choice of staff member

 

Unit 18 Managing a Business Event

Dear All

I would like to propose the following unit for next September.  Click here

As you will soon be aware this is a very practical unit and one in which some of you may actually go off and make a career from in the future so getting good at it now might be something that you can put on your CV.

It is also something that you can get your head around over the summer holidays and will fit nicely in the time frame that we have between September and Christmas term.  Its also a unit where I think we should be able to guarantee a distinction for the entire class but then that will  down to how much effort you all put in as individuals and as a team.

I was hoping that we could have started the next unit now but the year 12 study leave has cost us valuable time so using the holiday will be a good way to take the pressure off the short year 13 which for you will finish at the end of May 2015.  This therefore leaves Christmas to Easter to do the second unit and Easter to the end of May to do the final unit so we need to use the time wisely next year to maximise your overall results at L3 

Let me know your thoughts so that I can start creating resources

Mr T

Potential job roles...

Good morning Yr 12

Period 2 today we will look at potential jobs that you might like based on an online assessment of your likes and dislikes.

You will be asked approx 50 questions on practical things that you have to express an opinion on.

This software will then generate some possible job choices that you can consider and that you can have a look at.

If you answer another 55 questions that will slim down the choice of jobs but hopefully recommend jobs that you may be even more excited about.

Click here once you have read the above to set up your account.

The license code that we will be using today to open your account is ideanews52

For those thinking about a career that needs a degree from university these two websites may be of some help.  Prospects and Aim Higher You might also think about taking advantage of the in school ADVIZA career service on a Thursday!


Period 3 today we will start to put some logic to your career development plan.  This will start with you thinking about doing a SWOT analysis on yourself.  A SWOT analysis is all about:

Strengths - can you speak more than one language?
Weaknesses - do you still struggle to speak and write in English?
Opportunities - have you made great progress and are looking likely that a GCSE and A-level pathway is for you?
Threats - are you still struggling to pay the bills, and access learning at a higher level.

My Career Development Plan

It might be a good idea to have a career plan.  This is based on three little questions:

Where are you now?
Where do you want to be?
How will you get there?

This template will help you collate both the SWOT analysis and your career pathway. Download your copy and serve it to your user area

There are also a number of industry-specific websites which have useful career information if your chosen career pathway is not on this list I am sure that we will find the professional association that relates to it for example:

Association of Chartered Certified Accountants http://www.acca.co.uk/

The Chartered Institute of Marketing http://www.cim.co.uk/

Chartered Institute of Personal Development http://www.cipd.co.uk/

The Law Society of England and Wales http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/  

Quality Improvement Agency http://www.sflqi.org/
Institute of Hospitality http://www.instituteofhospitality.org/
Teacher Development Agency can be found here and the department for education website here
Financial services were regulated by the FSA but this has been dissolved following the banking crisis and now two further organisations have evolved.  The Financial Conduct Authority FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority run by the Bank of England click here

I hope that you have found these last two lessons useful and I look forward to working with you next week.

Enjoy

Mr T

After your first year of IT at OSA you will then be learning computer programming so lets see what you can do!

Good morning year six.

Today you will choose a program to work on based on something that you may or may not have done before!

• Scratch - Can be found by clicking on - Computer - Network Applications - Scratch You will then be able to write computing scripts using the block and key suggestions, create different costumes and add sound to your character and finish by developing the background.  Lets see who can create the best all round animation for a commendation.

• Alice -  Alice can be found by clicking the Start button - all programmes - Alice Alice has the advantage of allowing you to program in 3D and starts in tutorial mode.  So start with tutorial 1 which lasts 20 minutes before you move to tutorial two which takes approx 30 minutes and again the best animation will be demonstrated at the end of the lesson for house points and commendations!

• Pivot Animation  - This can be found by again clicking the Start button - all programmes - PIVOT  If you choose this software then by the end of the lesson I will be looking for volunteers to teach me as I have never used it before - House points and commendations available for the most competent teach the teacher!

But before we do nay of that I have a message for you from Mark Zuckerberg click here if you would like to re-watch it.

On behalf of the IT Business and Enterprise Faculty we would like to wish you a fun, hard working and exciting two days

Mr T