Introduction

Different size organizations have Staff Supervision procedures, whether or not those procedures are formalized or robust.

There are many layers to Staff Supervision, but we are going to focus on just three of them that significantly impact who comes into your organization and how well they are oriented into the mission and values of your organization. The three layers include Interviewing, Onboarding, and general Coaching (AKA supervision meetings).

It is important that all organizations evaluate or assess these procedures, using the evaluation results to drive annual executive level decision-making on the health of internal operations and staff climate. The living-out of your organization’s mission can be propelled or derailed depending on the effectiveness of the Staff Supervision procedures.

Tip 2: Explore three layers of Staff Supervisions procedures including interviewing, onboarding, and staff coaching because these layers are interdependent and impact one another in terms of effective professionals entering your organization and maintaining a healthy staff climate.

Recommendations

Assessing Each Layer of Your Staff Supervision Structure

Interview Procedures

• Administer an anonymous survey for all interviewees, not just those candidates who are hired.
• Design the survey to capture the steps involved in interviewing with your org as well as how clearly the individuals understand your org’s mission, values, and priorities for the position that they interviewed for.
• Store the survey results and analyze them annually, providing some degree of anonymity by not reviewing the survey responses until there are a few of them submitted within a 12-month period.
• Make decisions based on the results including ways to simplify interview steps as well as how your org ensures alignment between the mission and values of the org and the mission and values of the individuals who are wanting to enter your org.

Onboarding Procedures

• Administer a survey for all new employees to take place six to 10 weeks after they start with your org.
• Design the survey to capture the steps involved in onboarding with your org as well as how well the onboarding has served them in their early weeks engaging their new role with your org.
• Store the survey results and analyze them annually, providing some degree of anonymity by not reviewing the survey responses until there are a few of them submitted within a 12-month period.
• Make decisions based on the results including ways to further enrich onboarding activities and how your org ensures alignment between the onboarding activities and how staff are expected to deliver in their roles.

Coaching

Typically referred to and overly simplified as “supervisory meetings,” Coaching should include regular coaching meetings to review workload and job activities; annual or semi-annual performance appraisals; an annual staff climate survey; and, exit surveys. Let’s focus here on just one of these items: regular coaching meetings.

• Use your org database to track the frequency and focus of regular coaching meetings for each staff member, collecting data points on date; duration; location; mode such as by phone or in person; and, basic topics of the session.
• Store the data results and analyze them annually.
• Make decisions based on the results including ways to ensure that staff members receive regular and quality coaching sessions with their unit leaders such as every four to six weeks for a half-hour (depending on the services central to the org).
• Also administer an anonymous survey for all employees to complete annually where the staff can offer feedback on those regular coaching meetings such as the practical benefits to the sessions; degree of trust for unit leader; and, recommendations for increasing the purposefulness of the coaching sessions.
• Store the survey results and analyze them annually.
• Overall, from both data sources (coaching meeting data tracking and survey results), make decisions including ways to further enrich staff coaching in your org; relationships among staff and their unit leaders; and, the degree of support that staff experience from such practices like coaching.

Why did we develop “2 Tips” videos?

The Anchoring Success team trusts the talent and sophistication of professionals in Human Services and Education organizations. We know that many professionals and organizational leaders do not have the funds to partner with specialists (like us) and/or the time to strategize on what might seem like extra projects.

Therefore, we launched these “2 Tips” videos to support you with making tweaks, adjustments, and refinements in programs and operations — doable for busy professionals in these organizations!