Definition of Work Plan

A company or a business is created with the purpose of generating wealth and for this it is necessary to plan various issues, such as sales forecasting, establishment of objectives or the elaboration of some accounting forecasts. These aspects are relevant but do not constitute a work plan.

We understand by a work plan the set of actions that are going to be carried out in a business or a department in order to achieve objectives, for example the objectives established in a budget. In this sense, a work plan is not made with numbers but with actions and tasks that are carried out by specific workers.

The work plan as a strategy that guides an activity

The concept of a work plan is applicable to a company, but also to a student, to a soccer team and, ultimately, to any draft personal or collective. A plan is a guide for action and every guide must answer three fundamental questions: where are we, where do we want to go and how are we going to get there.

Guidelines for making an effective plan

The work plans are intended to achieve certain goals. Although each plan has to be adapted to the type of business or activity, it is possible to speak of general guidelines and some of them are the following:

- Specify the purpose of each work plan, since some plans must be oriented towards personal work, while others refer to the teamwork. In this sense, in the purpose of a plan it is necessary to specify what is to be achieved and, above all, how it is to be achieved.

- When developing a plan, the goals to be achieved must be realistic, measurable and consistent. At the same time, a whole series of indicators precise and objective (indicators can be related to efficiency, quality of a service or the economic issue).

- A work plan should incorporate three types of means: human, material and financial.

- In any work plan it is necessary to introduce systems of evaluation that allow assessing the execution of the program and reinforcing its proper management.

- A work plan should not be understood as a list of activities that must be carried out in a systematic way.

- In any work plan, activities with objectives are established, but it is very important that both issues are accompanied by a schedule, that is, a graphic in which it is established when an activity will take place.

- In short, a work plan is the concrete answer to a series of questions: what needs to be done, who is going to do it, in what way and when.

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