8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems

Unit Overview

8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that focuses on ensuring that the leaders within the organisation have an understanding of effective mechanisms that can be used within the organisation to effectively manage information. The current world is characterised by basic critical decisions and practices on evidence based practice. This is practice that is backed by both statistical information and theoretical models that back the practices and decisions that are made within the organisation. Statistical information is collected from different sources that include surveys of the market and most importantly past information that is stored within the organisation's record-keeping systems.

Leaders must be able to effectively manage such data to ensure that it contributes in building the required information when it comes to decision making in future.8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems is a unit that focuses on building this understanding among the leaders. The leaders are provided with both theory and practice that entails understand the record-keeping practices and their impact within the organisation as well as understand the legal frameworks that guide the process of keeping effective records within the organisation.

This unit aims at developing knowledge and understanding within the practicing or potential first line managers that they can use to achieve the desired goals in terms of managing workplace information systems. The unit is taught in 6 hours of guided learning and contributes 1 credit value towards the completion of the ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Stakeholders within the organisation must familiarise with the workplace information systems that have been established to record and manage information on different elements of the organisation. This systems ensure that the stakeholders are able to store records that become useful in future when it comes to making decisions on critical elements within the organisations.

8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems is therefore a highly suitable unit for different stakeholders a it builds knowledge and understanding on principles and procedures that can be put in place within different contexts to promote the mastery of procedures and policies related to workplace information system as well as providing the learners with supporting information that they can use in developing the desired analysis of the existing information within the records to support their decision making.

He unit is designed to meet the learning needs of first line managers, junior managers and team leaders within the organisation. This are individuals tasked with overseeing the activities of project teams such as marketing, sales, purchases or production teams within the organisation and therefore need to effective utilise workplace information systems to make suitable decisions in their areas of operation and ensure they maximise performance as compared to previous periods or projects.

The unit is, however, applicable for other stakeholders such as middle managers and top managers within the organisation as it helps them to derive information form different records and teams that they can use to make decisions for the organisations. Employees can also pursue the content learned within the unit to develop effective strategies to motivate the process of recording and keeping proper records within the organisation.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit the learner should be able to:

• Explain the purpose of record-keeping for the organisation

• Identify the important in information that need to be recorded to meet the organisational and level expectations and requirements

• Identify the appropriate systems that can be used within the organisation to store and restore information effectively

• Identify the need to effectively control access to data within the organisation to facilitate compliance to both legal and ethical principles

• Identify records included in the organisational information systems under relevant legislation such as the Data Protection Act of 1998

• Identify the application of databases within the organisation such as spreadsheets and other applications

• Explain the importance and value of electronic methods of communication and information management within the organisation

• Describe methods used to manage information within the workplace that are backed up by the organisational requirements and policies

Key Learning Areas

8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems focuses on improving the understanding of the different workplace information systems that are applicable in different contexts. There are key areas of learning that aim at covering this required areas of learning. Some of the main learning areas within the unit that provide this information and coverage include:

Significance of Information Systems

This area of learning helps the learners to appreciate the role that information systems plays within the organisation. This involves understating he need for maintaining information systems within the organisation and facilitating effective development of policies and structures of collecting and storing data within the systems that meets the organisational standards and legal requirements.

The learner is also guided to understand the significance of setting up effective policies that control the access of data to manage the confidentiality, privacy and integrity of the data stores hence ensuring that it is legally used and is valid when retrieved for usage. The area also discusses the Data Protection Act of 1998 which guides the management and handling of data within the workplace. Lastly, learners are guided to understand the storage indexing and information retrieval techniques.

Application of IT in Workplace Information Systems

This area of learning focuses on adequately understanding the principles of utilising technological tools to collect, analyses and retrieve information, it discusses the use of spreadsheets and databases to manage information as well as electronic mechanisms that can be sued to share and access information such as e-mails, internet and intranet.

The area of learning helps the learner to identify the most effective situation to use each method hence building ability ad capacity to apply the learned principles in practice. The area also helps to understand the principles of creating IT backups within an organisation as well as security and confidentiality techniques within the application of IT in information systems management.

Wrap Up

8600-329 Understanding Workplace Information Systems focuses on improving capabilities and understanding of principles within the organisation. As such, the learners should acquire the theory and practice associated with the concepts. The mastery of this information is evaluated using a written assessment that the learner is required to fill upon completion of the unit.