A strong team with the right blend of talents, skills and experience should never be taken for granted, and a good manager will have to work hard to maintain loyalty and commitment by fostering individual staff aspirations.
While being clear in how you set out the expectations you have of your staff through your polices and systems of communication and performance reviews, it is also vital that you make clear what staff can expect from you as an employer. Approaches to this will vary but all managers aim to provide consistent and high-quality provision and offer the best incentives to fuel staff retention and progression. However, there are often barriers to achieving this. Some issues I have encountered include:
- Lack of clarity around financial and other incentives offered to encourage and maintain dedication and commitment
- Frequently postponed staff meetings due to time constraints
- Lack of involvement in the setting's SEF and Development Plan
- Irregular staff appraisals that don't allow for a detailed exploration of individual strengths, ideas and areas for development
- Poor delegation from the manager that doesn't allow for the development of staff skills or sharing of expertise.
When it comes to establishing what staff can expect from you as an employer, the setting's SEF is a useful tool which can provide the basis for a detailed development plan. This plan can highlight any areas of the setting in need of improvement and provide an excellent platform to help identify individual skills, expertise and aspirations among your staff.
The plan can then be used as a useful tool to help redefine job specifications and expectations that are more in alignment with your overall aim for the setting. Staff meetings and performance reviews can be tailored to allow more opportunity to assess the current role and contribution of existing staff and highlight areas where changes need to be made.
Part of the SEF process is also to review your own leadership and management skills. Areas for your development may include how you manage your time to ensure that regular staff meetings and appraisals take place, how well you delegate and how well you receive and give feedback with your staff.
Lack of consistency and clarity is very damaging to staff morale and can quickly de-motivate even the most committed and enthusiastic staff members. The SEF is an ideal tool to reflect on this and to then create a detailed development action plan to move the setting forward. This is also your opportunity to assess your current training access and opportunities and how well you are currently utilising the skills and talent within the setting.
You can then look for opportunities to develop them that will be mutually beneficial. For example, staff members who are experienced and confident could be used as mentors or given specific areas of responsibility. Staff who are less experienced or confident can be moved to work with stronger team members or given specific tasks to build their confidence and expertise.
Effective delegation requires you to be very clear as to why you are delegating and what the mutual benefit of delegating the task will be. Once this is established, it is important to clearly define the task; what you expect, how much ownership you are maintaining and what responsibility and ownership you are handing over. You then need to establish a realistic time frame for completion, the required resources, how the task will impact on others and how you will review the success of delegation.
Rebecca Miller is the author of Clearly Outstanding, published by Bookshaker, and director of Oscar Resource Coaching
TOP TIPS
- Use the SEF to highlight both the positives and the areas for development within your setting
- Create a detailed development action plan and involve all staff in writing it
- Complete a staff skills audit to determine knowledge and skills base
- Review your performance review and appraisal formats to ensure they happen regularly and provide as much detailed information as possible
- Delegate effectively to develop staff and share good practice
- Maintain clarity and consistency through sharing all plans and external information and training opportunities available
- Continually reflect upon your own practice as well as that of the staff through a system of positive feedback.
CASE STUDY: NOAH'S HARWICH CONNEXIONS NURSERY, HARWICH
As a consultant with Sure Start, I had the opportunity to work with Noah's Nursery in Harwich, a voluntary setting working under the umbrella of Harwich Connexions Community Trust. My role was to support the manager, Carol Beeson, to establish consistency in highquality management and practice.
While Carol had a very clear vision for the environment and practice she wanted to provide, she wished to have support in establishing clearer lines of communication and effective ways to develop the skills and potential of her staff in order to achieve the outstanding practice she aimed to provide.
We began by defining the setting's needs and aspirations through completing its SEF. The subsequent development plan, which all staff were involved in, then focused on making any necessary changes to policies and systems that would better support staff and setting aspirations.
Ms Beeson says, 'My first priority was to redefine our existing job descriptions and the ideal skills, knowledge and expertise for the roles we required to move the nursery forward. From this I could then more easily assess the skills of individual staff and identify the best ways to develop them.'
The next step was to review the format and regularity of performance reviews. To assist in assessing individual staff skills and interests the following questions were included in the appraisal format:
- What do you consider your personal achievements to be and how would you like to build on that?
- What support would you need?
- What new skills, talents or knowledge have you developed and in what ways have you shared them?
- What strengths can you see in the setting or in the individuals you work with?
- What areas can you see for improvement and the options for doing that?
'The outcome was to not only identify key skills and expertise but also gain a better understanding of individual staff's personal aspirations,' says Ms Beeson. 'While it was made clear that further financial reward would be unfeasible, more effort could be made to access specific training and ways for staff to share their expertise. I also learnt a great deal from staff feedback about my own management and delegation skills.'
As a result, Ms Beeson put a new CPD plan in place with a clear focus on accessing the relevant external training required for individual progression and to raise the nursery standards as a whole.
