Supervisors and employees will strengthen collaboration and communication around workload, responsibilities, and expectations.
Staff feedback has indicated challenges with unclear expectations around responding to emails and phone calls during their “off” hours, experiencing vague job responsibilities, and too many conflicting prioritizes.
The following strategies focus on ways to enhance this aspect of our culture within the division.
- Supervisors
- Establish clear boundaries with staff regarding communication (e.g. email, Microsoft Teams, phone) during off work hours that are appropriate with the employee’s position. Use this resource to help guide your conversations.
- Communicate clear expectations around job responsibilities, office protocols and expectations, with employees at least annually. Use this resource to help guide your conversations.
- Work with your individual employees and team as a whole to prioritize job responsibilities to create a more sustainable workload to reduce high, demanding workloads on staff to create more efficiencies in our work. Are there opportunities for efficiency? Are the opportunities to do things differently? Are there opportunities to stop doing things that are not effective or not mission critical? Use this resource to help guide your conversations.
- For staff who routinely serve students into the evenings and weekends (outside of their typical work hours) make sure to flex their schedule to they can serve students well and manage off hours.
- All Employees – Have a discussion with your team about how you define boundaries with students and develop tools to implement when supporting students to aid in their success after they leave Iowa State.