Business & Administration SNVQ Level 2...

Unit 201,
Carry out your responsibilities at work.
Unit summary and overview
This core unit has four sections.
Communicate Information
Plan and be accountable for your work
Improve your own performance
Behave in a way that supports effective working
Good communication skills are essential for all administrators, and that include you! This is because you will regularly be involved with receiving and passing on information to your colleagues at work, as well as to your external contacts such as customers or clients. You must also be able to read and understand written information you receive so that you can identify the key points to pass on to other people. In addition, you will be expected to contribute positively to discussions and provide written information that is accurate, clear and easy to read.
All administrators must be able to take responsibility for themselves and their own performance without being constantly monitored. This means producing high quality work to agreed deadlines. It also means taking correct actions if anything upsets these plans so that, wherever possible, remedial action can be taken in good time. This doesn’t mean turning a drama into a crisis, or keeping quiet in the hope that no one will ever notice things have gone wrong!
If you prove you can carry out the tasks you are given correctly and to the right standard and demonstrate that you are eager to learn more, you are likely to be given additional responsibilities. This is all part of a continual development process that starts when you learn to analyse your own performance, objectively consider the feedback you receive from other people and constantly review your own performances.
Wherever you work you will be expected to cooperate with your colleagues and employer and to behave professionally. This includes setting high standards for yourself and working productively and courteously with all your colleagues, no matter what your personal views are. Finally, it means responding positively if you are asked to change or accept a new challenge, even if this worries you at first. How to cope with this type of situation is one of the many skills you will learn in this unit, as you discover how to effectively carry out your own responsibilities at work.

Communicate Information
You communicate with other people every day – when you talk to the face-to-face, send a text, make a telephone call or even send them an email. You also receive communications from other people – by post, telephone, face-to-face and online. Until you start work for an employer, your communications are between your friends and family, and are always informal and usually friendly! There may be odd misunderstandings or minor difficulties but, by and large, the consequences or errors are unlikely to result in serious problems or financial loss. When you start work the situation changes. You are now involved in sending and receiving a wide range of business communications, such as:
Taking and writing messages for your supervisor or your other colleagues
Being given instruction on how to use equipment or what to say to a customer
Reading and replying to emails
Telling your supervisor or other colleagues about a situation
Contributing to a team discussion to help to solve a problem
Finding and summarising information your supervisor wants
Creating a variety of business documents – such as a fax message, letters to customers, reports etc.
At first, this can be a bit nerve-wrecking. As you will know, it is one thing to answer your mobile and quite another to make a business call to an important customer. Similarly, until now most of the written material you will have dealt with has probably been quite straightforward. Now some documents you handle will be more complex or contain term you do not understand. Even more crucial, the potential for misunderstandings and serious consequences is far greater. If you get