Unit 201 – Manage own performance in a business environment.
1. Understand how to plan work and be accountable to others
1.1 – Outline guidelines, procedures and codes of practice relevant to personal work
Guidelines, procedures and codes of practice that relate to your work are important as they give you vital information on how to perform your job properly and safely. Guidelines tend to be informal and they can be used for such things as answering the phone, using the fax machine or sending an email. Organisations provide guidelines to their staff to help them carry out tasks effectively and in the safest way. If guidelines are followed correctly, this will portray a good image of the business as customers will know what level of service to expect. Procedures are more formal than guidelines and could be used for things such as: fire drills, customer complaints and reporting accidents. Codes of practice are voluntary codes setting out the minimum standards which customers can expect from business for things such as customer service and privacy of personal data, as well as other things.
1.2 – Explain the purpose of planning work, and being accountable for others for own work
Planning your work is an important part of your job. If you do not plan your work properly, you will not succeed in making the best of your work and will not achieve the best results. There is a well-known saying relating to this: ‘Failure to plan is planning to fail’. Your job description sets out all of the things which you may be responsible or accountable for. For example, an administration assistant may be responsible for making sure the minutes of team meetings are taken accurately and distributed to the whole team afterwards. This means that they are accountable for these tasks.
1.3 – Explain the purpose and benefits of agreeing realistic targets for work

At work you continually receive tasks from others to do, this is why it is important to agree realistic targets. Agreeing realistic targets will:
- Ensure you do not become overloaded with work and cannot complete tasks.
- Allow you time to complete allocated work.
- Avoid you suffering anxiety due to overload of work.
- Prevent excessive workload.
- Make sure you meet deadlines.
Some benefits of agreeing realistic targets are:
- You will have enough time to complete your work.
- You will produce better work and work to a higher standard.
- You will have enough time to make amendments and consider improvements.
- You will prove that you are capable of working to a high standard.
- Demonstrate competence and accountability.

1.4 – Explain how to agree realistic targets
To be able to agree realistic targets you need to take into consideration meetings and any other times you cannot complete work and block out times for those. You need to compile a to-do list of tasks with deadlines for each one and prioritise your work. You should also allocate dates and times to complete your tasks. When planning out work you must include deadlines for completion and consider urgent tasks.
1.5 – Describe ways of planning work to meet agreed deadlines
Planning work is such a vital part of any work load to achieve the results you want, it will help save your time and enable you to work more effectively. When planning you will need to:
- Consider all aspects of the task
- Estimate the time needed to complete the task
- Prioritise the task according to importance or deadlines
- Identify any tasks you may not be able to complete by the set timescale and inform others promptly and explain why. You may be able to offer an alternative date and time for the tasks to be completed.
1.6 – Explain the purpose of keeping others informed about progress
It is important when you have been asked to complete a task to keep others informed about progress. This is because they will need to know if the task will be completed on time and if you need extra time to complete the task. They may need to