At our last Division meeting, we announced that the Division of Student Affairs is piloting collaborative performance planning for the Institute as well as our initial plans to provide professional development and training for all departments and staff members starting this spring.

Although collaborative performance planning isn’t new to all of the Division’s departments, we are striving to provide Division-wide training and resources to help each and every department improve two-way dialogue between employees and supervisors, develop meaningful and achievable goals, and conduct more productive evaluations to help employees, and ultimately the departments, reach those goals.

The following is courtesy of Sara Warner, marketing director at Campus Recreation. Sara and other Campus Recreation employees have been practicing Collaborative Performance Planning for some time. According to Mike Edwards, director of Campus Recreation, “"The tools provided by HR are helpful in engaging our team members in meaningful and productive conversation regarding expectations and performance. Our managers in the CRC felt that this year’s performance discussions with employees were the most productive conversations they have ever experienced.  We fully expect that these discussions and performance planning will produce a better product for the students, faculty and staff that come in to the CRC."

In a perfect world, the performance management and evaluation process should be an overall positive experience during one’s employment.  This process should also motivate employees through their good work to contribute towards the organizational goals.  However, we don’t live in a perfect world and sometimes it is all too easy to become frustrated with the process for a myriad of reasons, but namely due to a lack of effective communication. As we submit our self-evaluations for last year and begin to formulate our goals for the upcoming year, it is an ideal time to adopt the practice of collaborative performance planning to help facilitate effective, timely communication between supervisors and employees.

The results? Employees and their supervisors will be better prepared to develop the performance plan, implement corrective measures if necessary in a timely manner, and successfully attain their goals.

This new style of collaborative performance planning follows the Georgia Tech Performance Management Cycle, which consists of four phases:

1. Plan,
2. Manage,
3. Review, and
4. Reward. 

The collaborative performance planning process exists at each phase to foster better communication and understanding among all management levels. The program is designed to position all staff to succeed!

Recently, Division staff participated in a workshop lead by LaTrese Ferguson, Workplace Learning and Development Manager for OHR on “Giving and Receiving Feedback.” The workshop is designed to build competency around feedback – a key ingredient to effective communication. It explores the framework and practice of giving and receiving feedback to and from peers, colleagues, and supervisors. The tools learned during this workshop will be utilized throughout the collaborative performance planning process.

The next step in the process for the Division is the planning phase. This is the phase where employees write their S.M.A.R.T. goals which will become the foundation for the collaborative performance planning process. Latrese will again work with the Division by meeting with each department individually during their staff meetings through mid-June.  At this meeting she will go over writing S.M.A.R.T. goals and answer specific questions about this important phase of the planning process. All 2013-2014 S.M.A.R.T. goals must be submitted to the VPSA by July 1, 2013.

Moving forward, supervisors and their staff are to schedule quarterly reviews beginning in September. The objective is to discuss staff progress towards their goals and to agree upon what successful achievement looks like, celebrate milestones, and also address obstacles that may impede employee success along the way. Overall, collaborative performance planning is an important practice for the Division to adopt; it helps to create productive working relationships, built on trust, which have been found to be the key drivers of desired employee performance. Collaborative performance planning also recognizes (on the part of the supervisor) the necessity of a partnership with their employees and the need for highly effective communication. This is a key ingredient to building trust and achieving the established goals.