Each year I take time to review and reflect on the previous academic year. I think this is necessary as so often we are caught up in the daily activities of trying to manage our workloads, student demands and family commitments. After a very busy year I believe that is now is the time to refocus on my professional work /life balance and review my own personal professional development needs.
When working with my diverse range of students I am constantly reminded about the difficulties that many including myself in managing family, work commitments, daily live and then study demands on top of all our other responsibilities. Today was a day were I was reminded that organizational difficulties can occur with one individual and impact on many others.
The Danesfort organization had a minor crisis of personal scheduling for one person, which impacted on the rest of the team. As an organizational group we have previously flagged that we had to address the scheduling but due to the time constraints of the academic year and students needs we had being doing the work in an adhoc manner. J has been working on a new electronic data management system but but now the priority on it will need to increase. J has been working on a new database management system but has been distracted by other work commitments. During this summer I plan to develop our operational activities and make the new database is a priority one item. We cannot keep on as we are as trying to cover the load is causing stressors for the whole team.
The panic stations situation this morning in the office brought it really home how organisational problems could be avoided through the use of effective systems and as the MD I need to address the issue. The administrative problems if not checked could create issues for our students and the main reason why we are all in the support area is to provide quality teaching and support provision for out students.
Action plan for the future
- Raise the priority levels of the electronic scheduling system update
- Review the workloads of key staff members
- Look at improving stress management techniques for staff and students
