for educational purposes in SMAW NC II

1. Basic Competencies
in SMAW NC II

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PARTICIPATE IN WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION
Obtain and convey workplace information
Effective Communication
Communication is the process of exchanging information and ideas. There are many
means of communication. To be an effective and valuable member of your workplace
it is important that you become skilled in all of the different methods of communication
that are appropriate. This website looks at different types of communication and
associated technology, but before that it is important to understand the communication
process.
The Communication Process for communication to occur it must pass from a sender
to a receiver. This must occur irrespective of the form of communication. For
communication to be effective it must be understood by the receiver and be able to be
responded to. This means that total communication involves speaking, reading,
listening, and reasoning skills. As communications pass from the source to the
receiver there is plenty of opportunity for its original meaning to change or alter.

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Participate in workplace meetings and discussions
Every workplace will have staff meetings/team meetings, formal and
informal discussions.
When a business places a proper value on the time spent by people
preparing for and attending meetings, it is quickly seen that they are a
very expensive exercise.
Have you ever been to one of those meetings where no objectives
were met, no actions were agreed upon and generally it was a
complete waste of your time? Effective meeting
procedures are essential to ensure that the maximum output is
gained from a meeting.

4. Some basic expectations are:
A clearly defined purpose to your meeting – Ask questions such as;
Why are we meeting? What are we trying to achieve? Are we meeting
for meetings sake? However, consider that at times the purpose of
bringing people together for a meeting may be to achieve other
important interpersonal objectives like team building, brain storming or
group problem solving. Make sure that you clearly communicate the
meeting purpose well before hand, this gives attendees time to gather
ideas or research issues prior to attending the meeting.

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Advise people of the meeting in time for them to be able to attend – It
is amazing how often key people are left out of meetings or are not able to
attend simply due to a lack of planning and sufficient notice.
Set an agenda – An agenda aims to keep discussions on track and to
keep everyone focussed on the issues. The agenda should be distributed
to attendees before the meeting.
Start and finish on time – Make sure the meeting starts and finishes on
time so participants feel that their time is valued and that they can plan for
effective meeting participation to fit within their work load.
Manage the participants – It is important that every person feels their
attendance and contribution is valued. People must be given the
opportunity to express their opinion as well as recognising they must also
listen to others without interruption. Clear conflict management strategies
must be in place.

6. 6
Complete Relevant Work Related Documents
Types of Forms
In every workplace you will be required to complete forms. Each workplace
will have forms specific to their requirements. You must make sure that you
know which forms to fill in, when you need to use forms and where to find the
necessary forms.
When filling in a form:
• read the form carefully
• fill in all the required details
• only include necessary information
• write clearly and simply
• check that you have completed it properly
• send or give it to the appropriate person, or file in the appropriate place

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Work instructions are the most basic tool used in every business or organization to help
workers follow a sequence of steps. Inadequate work instructions are likely to result in a
variety of problems in the workplace that could range from:
• returned products
• loss of materials
• customer complaints
• liability issues
• poor work performance
Work instructions can have a major impact on the effectiveness and productivity of a
workplace. If instructions are difficult to follow, workers will make errors in implementing the
steps.
A good work instruction is a detailed sequence of steps that workers need to follow each
time they perform a task. The purpose of a work instruction is to organize steps in a logical
and systematic way so that workers can easily follow it independently.
This means a consistent format for your work instructions is important. Workers can read the
information faster and absorb it more quickly if it follows a consistent font and format. It also
makes the development of further work instructions far simpler as you have a template to
follow.

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Work in Team Environment
Describe team role and scope
Clarify Roles
Knowing everyone’s role and being familiar with the responsibility of those
roles create efficiency and flexibility. Ideas for clarifying roles on the team
include:
• Review team members’ roles frequently.
• Relate team member expectations to the team’s overall purpose.
• Clarify responsibilities when action planning.
• Learn what others do on the team.
• Figure out ways to help each other.

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Relationship and Responsibility
Being a mutually evolving process, a relationship requires team
members to be dependent on each other. Every individual should
develop a level of trust for each other in order to be reliable for
each other. Some of us just cannot find it easy to entrust a work
with another team member or cannot seem to trust what a member
can contribute.
Relationship with a Team
Typically, in a work setting, every working individual belongs to a
team where a group of members work together with similar
functions and work description, though not necessarily similar in
interests.

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Identify own role and responsibility within team
1. Role and Responsibilities of Team leader
A team leader is selected by the quality council, sponsor or the team itself.
1. Team leader ensures smooth and effective operations of the team.
2. He ensures that all members participate during the meetings and he
prevents members from dominating the proceedings unnecessarily.
3. He serves as a mediator between the team and the Quality Council.
4. He implements the changes recommended by the team.
5. He prepares the agenda of all meetings and ensure necessary resources
are available for the meeting.
6. Team leader ensures that team decisions are taken by consensus rather
than unilaterally.

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2. Role and Responsibilities of Facilitator
Facilitator is not a member of the team. Yet his role in the team is
indispensable.
1. Facilitator supports the leader for facilitating the team during initial
stages of the team.
2. He focuses on team process.
3. He acts as resource to the team
4. He provides feed back to the team concerning the effectiveness of the
team process.

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3. Role and Responsibilities of Team Recorder
1. Team recorder is selected by the team leader or by the team and
may be rotated on a periodic basis.
2. He documents the main ideas of the team’s discussion.
3. He presents the documents for the team to review during the
meeting and distribute them as ‘minutes of the meeting‘ afterwards.
4. He participates as a team member.
4. Role and Responsibilities of Time keeper
1. Time keeper is selected by the leader or by the team and may be
rotated on a periodic basis.
2. He monitors the time to maintain the schedule as per agenda.
3. He participates as a team member.

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5. Role and Responsibilities of Individual Member
1. Team member is selected by the leader, sponsor, or quality council
(or) is a member of a natural work team.
2. He should actively, participate in meetings and shares knowledge,
expertise, ideas and information.
3. He should respect others’ contribution.
4. He should listen carefully and ask questions.
5. He should be enthusiastic.
6. He should work for consensus on decisions.
7. He should be committed to team objectives.
8. He should carry out assignments between meetings such as
collecting data, observing processes, charting data and writing
reports.

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Teamwork in the workplace: 10 qualities of an
excellent team player
1. Show Genuine Commitment
Team players are genuinely committed to their cause. Good team players
might make sure they are in the office when needed, but great team players
will make “seat” time worth it and contribute as much as possible. They strive
for excellence.
2. Be flexible
Instead of sitting on the bench watching the rest of the crew perform, an
outstanding team player wants to see the magic happen through his or her
efforts as well. They are flexible to the situations thrown their way, and they
participate and tackle challenges without showing too many signs of stress or
pressure.

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3. Don’t stay in the shadows
It is not in your interest to just sit quietly and get your work done. It’s a
good thing to involved others, as long as you aren’t bothering people
with questions you should know the answer to. Great team players
come to their teammates having prepared their ideas clearly.
4. Be reliable and responsible
An excellent team player will be reliable and responsible. They
complete the tasks in order of priority, not necessarily in order that
they’re given. When you’re not sure of what should take priority, ask
your manager.

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5. Actively listen
You are only a team player if you respectfully consider the viewpoints and
ideas of other people as well. This is why diverse teams have the potential to
so effective, and it all depends on active listening. Active listening is harder
than you think. When you hear someone saying something you don’t initially
agree with, keep from interrupting and don’t let your mind prepare any counter
remarks. Just listen, and consider what they’re saying and more
importantly, why they believe that.
6. Keep your team informed
Share your opinion and ideas without trying to come up with a plan for taking
credit for it. Transparency is key on a team, so keep your team members
informed. Planning for your own success is important, but whether you get
promoted may have a lot to do with how you communicated with your team
members.

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7. Always be ready to help
Even if it is not in your job description, be generous with pointers or
tips to help your team members. For example, if a member of your
team is having trouble with a technology tool that is easy for you, offer
to sit down with him and show him what you know.
8. Support and respect others
It seems obvious that you wouldn’t want to shut someone from your
team out, or laugh at other people’s ideas, but we do these things in a
subtle way, without realizing it, all the time. It is important to become
more self-aware of how you treat others. Remember, you’ll receive
respect when you give it to others. An ideal team player knows how to
have fun, but he would never do it at someone else’s expense.

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9. Be a problem-solver
Your team leader may be working on solving problems, but
there is no reason why you can’t offer solutions yourself.
Your teammates will appreciate your skills, and this may
pays off later when your manager considers you for a
promotion!
10. Recognize when you are wrong
A good team player will back off an idea when it becomes
clear it’s not the right path. If you believe strongly that your
team is making a mistake, you can find a way to come back
to the issue when the time is right, but being a stubborn stick
in the mud is not a quality of a good team player.

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Practice career professionalism
Integrate personal objectives with organizational goals
Personality Development
Personal goals affect how an employee performs. While they can
serve as motivation to be more productive and more successful,
they can also cause conflicts between staff or between work and
home.
Businesses are most successful when employees’ personal
goals are aligned with corporate goals. This can be difficult to do
at times, but it is possible.

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Most of the time, personal goals should still be work-related, such as
achieving a sales volume, working a number of hours, organizing a
specific project, or improving a specific skills. Finding common
ground between these personal goals and your organizational
priorities can be hugely productive.
The easiest way to do this is to simply ask
employees what they think the team can do to help them reach their
personal goals. Make sure you follow up by clarifying how their own
goals are contributing to the overall team objective.

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One of the most effective ways we have to protect ourselves and
others from illness is good personal hygiene. This means washing
your hands, especially, but also your body. It means being careful
not to cough or sneeze on others, cleaning things that you touch if
you are unwell, putting items such as tissues (that may have
germs) into a bin, and using protection (like gloves or condoms)
when you might be at risk of catching an infection.
Personal hygiene, such as bathing, is very much dependent on the
culture in which you live. In some cultures, it is expected that you
will wash your body at least every day and use deodorants to stop
body smells. Other cultures have different expectations.

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Set and meet work priorities
In any responsible position in any company that you ever have, it is a
given that there will be more work to do than there are hours in the
day. You could kill yourself, trying to do everything that needs to be
done, and still not manage to complete it all. As an employee,
your most important task is to determine priorities, so that the
things that need to be worked on are those that receive your time and
attention and that of your department.

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Priorities have to be established based upon
what is best going to meet your company’s
needs. But, that’s not always easy to determine.
What often looks like the best possible solution
may not actually be so. Properly determining
priorities requires understanding the various
tasks that need to be done, how they relate to
your company’s goals and how they compare to
other tasks that also appear important.

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ABC Prioritizing
The most common form of prioritizing tasks is by a
simple ABC method. In this method, you make a list
of all the tasks that you have to complete, and assign
them a letter code:
A = High priority, very important to get this done
B = Medium priority, this should get done
C = Low priority, it would be nice if this could get
done

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It is assumed with this method that you know how important the
various tasks are in regard to your company’s and department’s
goals. Otherwise, the priorities you place on the individual tasks really
have no value.
The next step in the process is to add a due date for each of these
tasks. Most important tasks need to be completed by a particular
time. If they aren’t completed by that time, they move from just being
important to being important and urgent. Some items may not have a
due date, especially things that are priority C. However, a priority C
item, that never gets dealt with may become more important over
time. For this reason, some people put a start date on the items as
well. That way, even items that may be a Priority C will have some
visibility.

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Maintain professional growth and
development
In rapidly changing environments, both organizations and the
people who make up those organizations must engage in continual
growth, or risk becoming obsolete. All too often, professional
growth is a hit-or-miss process. Learning opportunities selected are
often those that meet immediate needs rather than future needs.
Professional development helps build and maintain morale of staff
members, and is thought to attract higher quality staff to an
organization. It is a process of improving and increasing
capabilities of staff through access to education and training
opportunities in the workplace, through outside organization, or
through watching others perform the job.

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A career, the pursuit of consecutive, progressive achievement
especially in public, professional, or business employment, is a
personal choice that entails commitment, perseverance, and a
plan. Professional growth in a career requires the continuous
acquisition of knowledge and skills through study, instruction,
investigation, and practice. It is an on-going process.
Career planning involves visualizing what you want to be
doing in the future within your profession. Career planning
enables professionals to set goals and define specific tasks that
must be accomplished in order to reach those goals. At the same
time, career planning considers options, and alternatives.
Flexibility is important as we cannot know the future.

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Practice occupational health and
safety procedures
Identify hazards and risks
What is a hazard?
The meaning of the word hazard can be confusing. Often dictionaries
do not give specific definitions or combine it with the term "risk". For
example, one dictionary defines hazard as "a danger or risk" which
helps explain why many people use the terms interchangeably.
There are many definitions for hazard but the most common definition
when talking about workplace health and safety is:

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A hazard is any source of potential damage, harm or adverse
health effects on something or someone.
Basically, a hazard is the potential for harm or an adverse effect (for
example, to people as health effects, to organizations as property or
equipment losses, or to the environment).
What is risk?
Risk is the chance or probability that a person will be harmed or
experience an adverse health effect if exposed to a hazard. It may
also apply to situations with property or equipment loss, or harmful
effects on the environment.

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Factors that influence the degree or likelihood of risk are:
• the nature of the exposure: how much a person is exposed to a
hazardous thing or condition (e.g., several times a day or once a
year),
• how the person is exposed (e.g., breathing in a vapour, skin
contact), and
• the severity of the effect. For example, one substance may cause
skin cancer, while another may cause skin irritation. Cancer is a
much more serious effect than irritation.

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What types of hazards are there?
A common way to classify hazards is by category:
• biological - bacteria, viruses, insects, plants, birds, animals, and
humans, etc.,
• chemical - depends on the physical, chemical and toxic properties
of the chemical,
• ergonomic - repetitive movements, improper set up of workstation,
etc.,
• physical - radiation, magnetic fields, pressure extremes (high
pressure or vacuum), noise, etc.,
• psychosocial - stress, violence, etc.,
• safety - slipping/tripping hazards, inappropriate machine guarding,
equipment malfunctions or breakdowns.

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Evaluate hazards and risks
What is a risk assessment?
Risk assessment is the process where you:
Identify hazards and risk factors that have the potential to cause harm
(hazard identification).
Analyze and evaluate the risk associated with that hazard (risk
analysis, and risk evaluation).
Determine appropriate ways to eliminate the hazard, or control the
risk when the hazard cannot be eliminated (risk control).
The OSH Answers document on Risk Assessment has details on how
to conduct an assessment and establish priorities.

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Are there other terms used to describe these processes?
It is common to see the process of identifying hazards and
assessing the corresponding risk to be described in various
ways, including “hazard assessment”, “hazard and risk
assessment”, “all hazards risk assessment”, etc.
Regardless of the terminology used, the critical steps are to
make sure the workplace has taken a systematic approach that
looks for any hazards (existing or potential), has take
appropriate steps to determine the level of risk of these
hazards, and then taken measures to control the risk or
eliminate the hazard.

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What is an adverse health effect?
A general definition of adverse health effect is "any change
in body function or the structures of cells that can lead to
disease or health problems".
Adverse health effects include:
• bodily injury,
• disease,
• change in the way the body functions, grows, or
develops,
• effects on a developing fetus (teratogenic effects,
fetotoxic effects),

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• effects on children, grandchildren, etc.
(inheritable genetic effects)
• decrease in life span,
• change in mental condition resulting from
stress, traumatic experiences, exposure to
solvents, and so on, and
• effects on the ability to accommodate
additional stress.

36. Thanks!
Any questions?
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