Establishing good working relationships with colleagues has many benefits, including making tasks easier to complete, increasing productivity, and getting ideas and feedback. It is important to understand one's own scope of work and responsibilities clearly to plan work better, build trust, and reduce conflicts. Organizations have policies and procedures to help with regulatory compliance, optimize performance, and reduce errors. Maintaining confidentiality of information is important for legal and business reasons, and organizations have policies for securely storing and disposing of confidential documents and data.

1. Module-8
Team Work and Communication

2. WORKING EFFECTIVELY
• Importance of establishing Good Working
Relationships
– The following are some benefits of developing
productive relationships with colleagues:
• Getting tasks done gets easier.
• Colleagues are more likely to go along with the changes that
you recommend.
• Instead of spending time and energy on negative
relationships, you can focus on opportunities.
• You can get ideas and feedback from others.
• You can take help in hours of need, if required.
• Your productivity increases.
• Your performance gets appraised better.
• You can learn from others and add to your existing skill-set.

3. WORKING EFFECTIVELY
• Some of the benefits of an environment of trust
and mutual respect are as follows:
– Getting tasks done gets easier.
– It encourages free flow of ideas.
– It saves time spent in gauging whether the other
person is speaking the truth, or is giving genuine
advice.
– Colleagues are more likely to go along with the
changes that you recommend.
– You can take help in hours of need, if required.
– Your productivity increases.
– Your performance gets appraised better.

4. Scope of Work
• Scope of work refers to the range of tasks and
activities to be performed or expected to be
performed by someone or within a project or
contract, as agreed.
• This is usually a result of division or defining
• and limiting of work and responsibilities.
• This usually is understood to be performed
within agreed timelines and rules or standards
of performance.

5. Scope of Work
• It is important to understand clearly one’s own
and others’ scope of work and responsibilities
clearly and commonly between co-workers for
the following reasons:
– Helps in planning and organizing work better
– Builds trust and reliability
– Reduces scope of conflict and confusion
– Helps optimize effort through reducing omissions
and overlaps
– Helps secure the right level of support from the
right people

6. Ways to clarify scope of work
• Job descriptions
• Seniors (Supervisors or managers)
• Job or duty assignment
sheet/document/roster
• Colleagues
• Policy and procedure documents

7. Organizations policies and procedures
• Why do companies have policies and
procedures?
– a. Ease of working and common understanding
– b. Regulatory and statutory compliance
– c. Optimizing performance and productivity
– d. Setting standards for performance and quality
– e. Reduction of errors, safety and security

8. Organizations policies and procedures
• Why is it important to follow policies and
procedures while working?
– a. To be safe, productive and maintain company
standards
– b. Reliability and trustworthiness
– c. To remain compliant with legal, regulatory and
statutory requirements

9. Seeking/Providing Clarity, Assistance
and Support
• The organization being divided into hierarchies,
departments, divisions and teams to use and
develop people’s expertise in accordance with
capability requirements of organizations.
• It is important to involve, seek assistance and
support from those who are designated in the
organizations as authorities for decision making
over their remit of work, where required.
• It is important that people respect other people’s
authority and expertise over their areas of work.

10. Seeking/Providing Clarity, Assistance
and Support
• There are various reasons why others need to
be involved:
– 1. To contribute their expertise
– 2. Complex work and interdependencies that
requires more people to complete tasks
– 3. Authority and remit of decision making
– 4. Stakeholders impacted by the actions
– 5. To generate more and diverse ideas

11. Seeking/Providing Clarity, Assistance
and Support
• When to keep others informed of progress
and problems?
– It is important in many contexts to inform others
of work related issues, problems and progress.
– Any work being assigned also comes with a set of
expectations of customers, co-workers,
supervisors or managers, other departments, etc.
– These expectations are around:
• volume of work,
• quality of work
• time within which the work needs to be completed.

12. Seeking Feedback and Approvals

13. Change and flexibility
• Flexibility to change is required to:
– incorporate new and improved methods of
working
– adjusting to environmental changes
– supporting others
– refining goals and objectives

14. Planning work and work environment

15. Planning work and work environment

16. Planning work and work environment

17. Planning work and work environment

18. Planning work and work environment
• Defining goals and sub-goals includes breaking
the overall objective into measureable and well
defined constituent results, that can help in
planning, implementation and tracking
achievement and progress.
• It is important that these are further evaluated in
terms of realistic and required time frames and
time available is allocated in such a manner that
these goals are achieved within optimal time
frames.

19. Planning work and work environment
• Sequencing activities right is also of great
importance in efficient and effective working.
• Factors that need to be considered while
sequencing activities include:
– o Dependencies on interim outputs
– o Availability of resources
– o Space design
– o Schedule of deliverables and urgencies
– o Work styles, interests and preferences
– o Capabilities

20. Planning work and work environment
• Resources required can be identified by analysing the
work, tasks and sub-tasks involved and the volume of
work required.
• Most organizations have standard procedures for
requisitioning for resources. For eg. the IT supplies
team may have IT equipment that the user department
may requisition through a formal request approved by
a designated level of authority (authorized person).
• Organizations also have procedures to request for
purchase of new resources and materials that may not
be available within the organization.
• This has to be routed as per procedure through the
authorized department and personnel and requires
necessary approvals.

21. Planning the Work environment
• A place for everything and everything in its
place’ is a principle used by many to organize
their environment.
• One can contribute effectively towards making
one’s work environment conducive for
efficient working.

22. Planning the Work environment
• Some of the key requirements for this are
– cleanliness and tidiness,
– organizing the space layout for efficient working,
– ergonomic design, optimal space for people and
the work to be carried out,
– right ambient conditions (lighting, ventilation,
etc.).

23. Maintaining Confidentiality
• Confidentiality: treatment of information that
an individual has disclosed in trust and with
the expectation that it will not be given away
to others.

24. Maintaining Confidentiality
Confidentiality is important for a host of
reasons:
- Sharing confidential information is often a
professional violation and a legal violation.
- Failure to properly secure and protect confidential
business information can lead to the loss of
business/clients.
- In the wrong hands, confidential information can be
misused to commit illegal activity,which can in turn
result in costly lawsuits for the employer.

25. Maintaining Confidentiality
- The disclosure of sensitive employee and
management information can lead to a loss of
employee trust, confidence and loyalty. This
will almost always result in a loss of
productivity.

26. What type of information must or should
be protected?
• Restricted Information or Data
- Example:
- Personal Identity Information (PII)
- Electronic protected health information (ePHI)
- Credit card data regulated by the Payment Card Industry
(PCI)
- Passwords providing access to restricted data or resources
- Information relating to an ongoing criminal investigation
- Court-ordered settlement agreements requiring non-
disclosure.
- Etc.

27. Non-Restricted, Confidential Information
• Home address or home telephone number
• Personal information protected by anti-discrimination and
information privacy laws
• Certain types of student records
• Exams, answer keys, and grade books
• Applicant information in a pending recruitment Information
subject to a non-disclosure agreement, including research
data, intellectual property (IP), patent information and other
proprietary data
• Academic evaluations and letters of recommendation
• Responses to a Request for Proposal (RFP) before a decision
has been reached.
• etc

28. Confidential workplace information
• Categories:
- employee information
- management information
- business information

29. Policies and procedures for
confidential information
• Procedures for protecting confidential
information:
- All confidential documents should be stored in locked file
cabinets or rooms accessible only to those who have a
business “need-to-know.”
- All electronic confidential information should be protected via
firewalls, encryption and passwords.
- Employees should clear their desks of any confidential
information before going home at the end of the day.
- Employees should refrain from leaving confidential
information visible on their computer monitors when they
leave their work stations.

30. Procedures for protecting
confidential information:
• All confidential information, whether contained on written
documents or electronically, should be marked as
“confidential.”
• All confidential information should be disposed of properly
• Employees should refrain from discussing confidential
information in public places.
• Employees should avoid using e-mail to transmit certain
sensitive or controversial information
• Etc.

31. Policies and procedures for
confidential information
• New and/or Current Employees Sign a “Non-
Disclosure” Agreement