Day 4: How do these Characteristics affect FullEmploy?

Today's characteristics are Confidence and Decisiveness.

Confidence is description of the quality of communication, one that shows that you know what you're taking about. FullEmploy expects all staff to know how the whole business model works in general and how the specific parts of it they're working on in detail. This should be demonstrated to the people they're communicating with (see Day 3).

Confidence depends on how much you know about the subject matter. Hence staff must learn about the business they're dealing with before, during and after negotiations. FullEmploy has set aside time for this study and put under the discretion of the Ward Managers.

Staff must also inspire confidence in others and be perceptive to the confident outlook of other members of staff. If you're confident others become inspired by you.

Client Managers have to communicate confidently with the Employers and Candidates they're responsible for; the Training Providers and the Funding Agencies when reporting progress. The truth helps even when results are negative in which case the Client Managers and Ward Manager must get together to identify where the problems lies. If it lies within FullEmploy, they must assess it and formulate an action plan to deal with it and include that as part of the progress report. If the problem lies with the Training Provider, again the team must assess the circumstances and create a response that they would put to the Providers stating explicitly what's expected of them even as far as holding a joint meeting to resolve the problem.

Decisiveness. All members staff need to make decisions in almost everything they do. The business model determines what needs to be done already. However, there are times when the pre-determined activities don't achieve all what the customers want. Flexibility is required here but not at the expense of core values.

When an unplanned request for change is made, a decision to accept the change must NOT be made nor a discussion be entered into. The only decision to be made is to accept the REQUEST and explain the Change Management procedure and the Acceptance Criteria. Naturally, all members of staff will be working to a remit which gives them a certain amount of flexibility.

Customers will ask for bespoke work if possible which tend to be time-consuming and hence are expensive. These must be resisted and the customer sign-posted to the higher Manager for acceptance or otherwise. Staff must act decisively even at the risk of sounding inflexible. If the request is reasonable, the staff member can easily accommodate it but not if it takes them outside their remit.

Decisiveness is the opposite of Flexibility. Although you'll try to accommodate a customer's request, you cannot or rather must not compromise core values. You can make customers aware of FullEmploy's values and why you cannot compromise them. Remember FullEmploy is solving problems not just making money.