Client Story: York College of Pennsylvania

Since opening its doors in 1787, York College of Pennsylvania has maintained a sterling reputation as a “center of affordable academic excellence.”

But in 2010, after more than two centuries of distinction, the College decided that one thing needed to change: its performance review process.
 

Its legacy process—labor-intensive and spreadsheet-driven—was no longer keeping pace with the needs of its busy staff and employees. The paperwork alone was causing delays and frustration for everyone involved, said Vicki Stewart, the College’s Director of Human Resources. The time for change had come.

Click here to download our most recent case study and learn more about the benefits York College of Pennsylvania has
experienced with Reviewsnap.

Higher Education: Get Faculty Engaged in Performance Reviews

Engaging college and university faculty in the performance review process is a unique challenge. But that doesn’t mean you have to fail at it. A few best practices targeted at academia can solve the problem and engage college faculty in the performance review process.

First, it’s important to understand why higher education faculty members are less likely than campus staff employees to see the value of performance reviews.

·       Faculty may have a professional bias against performance reviews, feeling that the entire concept of job assessments and performance reviews has no place in the world of academia.

·       Faculty may believe that end-of-term satisfaction surveys answered by students are a sufficient gauge of their performance.

·       Attitudes and beliefs about tenure — and rules that apply to tenured faculty — may prejudice faculty against performance assessments.

·       Faculty may believe they are actually over-scrutinized, and unfairly at best, thanks to myriad student media and rating websites (e.g., ratemyprofessors.com, rateyourprof.com, and myedu.com).

·       Finally, faculty — not unlike many staff employees — may feel the review process is too much of an interruption to their school year and occurs at no good time.

As Jeffrey L. Buller writes in his book Best Practices in Faculty Evaluation, “It’s not at all uncommon for faculty members to ask, ‘Why do we have to do assessments? We already assess our students in class every time we determine their grades.’ Or, ‘Why do we have to do program review? We already do assessment.’”

Applying a handful of best practices can go a long way toward getting faculty to appreciate the value of a robust and productive performance review process.

Be specific with your language. “Needs improvement” may be clearly understood by an administrative staffer who has very specific, concrete job requirements. But that assessment is likely to be far too vague to a faculty member who works in the more subjective, less well-defined world of the lecture hall.

Customize goals and competencies. Make performance expectations for faculty members align with the roles they perform as educators. Off-the-shelf goals and competencies are unlikely to create engagement and, at worst, will cause faculty to believe university leadership simply doesn’t understand them.

Get faculty feedback before finalizing goals and competencies. Don’t assume that the competencies and goals you’ve developed for faculty are as specific and appropriately customized as necessary. Asking faculty for feedback during the development process can improve assessments and heighten faculty engagement.

You can learn about these best practices in more detail in our brief “Customizing Performance Reviews for Higher Education.”

Upgrade Higher Ed Performance Management by Answering These Three Questions

HR managers in higher education institutions need to find an easy way to streamline the performance management process. But they have the same question we’ve heard from many businesses:

How do we manage performance across a varied workforce when we have practically no budget?

The easiest response might be to just put a paper process in place. Everyone uses Microsoft Word, so it should be pretty easy to get these reviews done. But then managing data collection, confirming reviews have taken place, or even checking that the right forms got to the right people can create administrative chaos.

Who has time for that?

No one, but it’s a very real scenario that these organizations deal with every time there’s a review cycle. When HR managers in higher education institutions and universities finally throw their hands up, it’s time to find another way to get quality performance management, even on a tight budget.

Here are three questions to ask when you’re ready for a better way to manage your performance: 

1.     Can we utilize technology? Today, almost everyone is connected to a computer 40 hours a week. If that’s the case, an online or cloud solution might be exactly what you need. Make it easy for faculty and staff to log in and complete a form online instead of using paper handouts. Things don’t get lost in the shuffle, and you can then track completions. 

2.     Can we transition quickly? It’s not too difficult to imagine that universities are filled with processes that have been in place for years … and no one will change them, even if they’re flawed. Since new programs could cause upset, making sure the transition can happen quickly and cleanly will be important. That means getting all the stakeholders on board, finding a technology with easy implementation processes and having a rollout plan. 

3.     Can we make some room in the budget? Sometimes just looking at the loss of productivity can be enough to secure some spend. Not all technology solutions will use up every dollar in your HR budget. Especially when you need to secure spend approvals beforehand, making the case for the savings (even if there is a cost) will help you get some budget freed up for the solution purchase.

Streamlining your performance management can be easy, but getting your institution or university ready for the change will go a long way toward program success. Answer these questions and get ready to upgrade your own performance management approach.