Professional Competencies

How has involvement in the work place contributed to the development of your professional competencies? How will the development of these professional competencies be important to your remaining uni program and IT2?

My professional competencies have been consistently improving throughout my time at Janssen. Throughout my placement I have also been able to identify and categories compentencies for either being strong or weak. I have learnt that you want to always go into every task with the correct attitude. If you have an open mind, even if its just a simple task there is a chance that you might enjoy it compared to if you go into completing a certain task with the wrong attitude.

Communication skills are incredibly important, not just for completing tasks, but also for networking and forming those work relationships with others in the office. How you communicate, the tone you use, how you carry yourself can completely impact what you are saying and how you come across. It is from this that I have realised that I have good self-awareness and general communication skills but still need to improve on specific skills which will be helpful in the future, such as, negotiation. I have not yet had to use this but from observing others I know that it will become an important skill. I have always been a good listener, but my listening skills have improved over my time at Janssen. I think listening skills are as important as verbal communication. It is listening to others where you will be able to hear others ideas and views on tackling a task and if you listen to others they are going to be much more willing to help you when you ask/need help.

Effect conflict resolution is exceptionally essential for manager/employee in the work place to be good at. I have yet to use this competency so am unsure how much I would need to improve, but there is always room for improvement. Through observing situations at work, I have come to notice that if you want to tackle a task or manage a team effectively you will need to be able to deal with a range of different conflicts. This means that the manager needs to be able to analysis and perceive the problem at hand, they have to be able to negotiate and effectively communicate with others to resolve the conflict. Without these professional competencies it will be hard to effectively work and move up in a business.

Technical skills are always essential and always needing to be improved, as there are so many complex formulas and macros you can learn to help you complete your tasks in the workplace more effectively and efficiently. You also need to be able to manage your time effectively, which I have realised being at Janssen if you don’t then you will not be on top of you work and thus others in the workplace will be waiting for you. You need to be able to meet you deadlines for projects, whilst constantly being on top of any other work assignments or tasks that you need to complete. I also think it is important to set goals, so you know what you are aiming for, what you want to achieve. These goals can be set out in a way that you list the competencies that you might need and need to improve on to effectively complete a task. I think that goals help motivate you as a person with your work.

Throughout my placement, I have observed and used many professional competencies at Janssen. I think I can take the experience I have had at Janssen and the competencies I have learnt to interact with others in tutorials and group assignments. I know also am starting to learn and have a better idea of which competencies will help/be beneficial in different situations and which competencies I need to improve on. Since every business is different and unique, for my second ITE placement I know that I will learn many more skills but will be able to take all the ones I have mentioned above and more with me. For the rest of my life I will be developing these competencies, as there is always room for improvement. 

Information Technology

How is information technology an essential part of your work environment and work tasks? How has the use of information technology affected your IT placement?

Every part of Janssen, uses information technology for day to day tasks, projects and to communicate that link the different branches in the various locations all around the world. Every month at Janssen, we have a Town Hall Conference which we connect through WebEX as it is held overseas. There is also a monthly, conference which connects the different region offices around Australia. These allow us to participate and listen to different employees questions and opinions from around the world. Information technology is extremely important for a global company, as it allows us to be a global company and one of the largest in the world. It is not just used to do work tasks, but also for

Janssen at the moment is setting up a global software which will connect the offices throughout the whole world. At the moment different Region’s such as Asia-Pacific is using different software's to the States. This means as people transfer and move to other roles in different countries they have to learn a whole new set of skills and all about the different systems to be able to do their job, making it not as smooth as it could be if the regions were connected with the same software.

I usually have at least one excel document up on my computer, and use excel numerous of times throughout my day. I rapidly developed excel skills when I started at Janssen and now its second-nature to use a variety of formulas. I have even started to slow learn how to write and use macros. Learning these skills has made everything easier and many of my tasks a lot more efficient then they were when I first started. If I had to update the Claims Visibility Spread sheet manually it would not be a 5-10 minute job that I could do on short notice but a day job. It takes a while to first set up the formulas and formats that you want to use, but after setting them up the first time, every time you go to repeat the tasks it can be done quick and efficiently.

I use information technology daily to do the credit releases for the sales orders, I use SAP (one of our main softwares) to look at the outstanding claims, invoices and credit notes. It is part of most of my tasks, it allows me to look up the position of credit notes, claims and invoices to see if they have been matched up or if I need to chase them up. Information technology has made my IT placement much more efficient and has enhanced my learning phenomenally, all the skills that I have learnt I will be able to take away and improve on these skills not just on the rest of my placements but also when I enter the workforce.

ITE as a Procedural Activity

Discuss your industrial training placement as a procedural activity, i.e., the importance of policies, processes, procedures and checklists in your workplace.

Policies are extremely important at Janssen; they set out guidelines, which need to be followed by every employee. These policies make sure that all employees’ functions do not cause compliance problems, such as having access to too many accounts on our system. At Janssen you are not able to post journals, if you have access to taxation, release sales and to transfer money from accounts. If these policies are followed without any compliance issues it means that the company successfully pass both its internal and external audits. Which are extremely important in Janssen.

At Janssen, with every task that was completed by an intern before I started my internship there is a set procedure written out on how to accomplish the task. I have referred to these procedures a numerous of times to ensure that I am completing my tasks correctly. However, not all my tasks have been done before such as the Claim Visibility Project. Thus when I was working out how to go about completing this and compiling all the necessary information into various spreadsheets, I had to write out the steps I was taking to find the information. I had to do this, as when I leave someone else either another intern or the accounts receivable lady will have to take over the responsibility of the Claims and need to know what information I have used and how I have complied it all to get the correct results. I have also written a checklist to make sure that they and I cover all basis when monthly updating all the spreadsheet making visible all the outstanding claims. At Janssen for every task there is a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's) which need to be followed to ensure that tasks are completed correctly and by the right time. For example with Bank Clearing, if the procedures are not followed and the money is transferred into the incorrect or if the incorrect dates are imputed it causes many problems. These procedures are set out to ensure that these problems/incidents do not occur.

Every task I complete is a process, whether a small or larger process, there are always set steps that have to be followed. Everyday when I release the sales, you have to print out the sales that need to be release, however, as there are often problems with printing from SAP (the software where the sales are released from) and the printers the sheet has to be picked up before you release the sales. This is because you need a hard copy of all the released sales and if it does not print and you have already released the sales, it causes many complications (or so I have heard). Thus it is these small steps which make up the process in which the sales are released – however no matter how small the steps are they are all important to ensure it is done correctly.

Checklists are used extremely often. On my computer I have a checklist of all my day to day tasks, weekly and monthly tasks which I often check to make sure that I complete everything by their due dates. I also add projects any other tasks/projects to the checklist with their due date to ensure that I always stay on top of my work. The other intern and I also have a checklist with every reconciliation that is to be completed depending on whether its a month, quarter or year end. On this checklist it also has the person who is suppose to complete it and the manager/controller/director who is suppose to approve it. This allows us to make sure that the rec has been appropriately approved, because if a lower-level manager who does not have the authority approves it, the mistake will get found my the internal auditor when she does her audit of the Finance Team.