Best Practices
Below can be found some general tips on four components of supervising students.
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Motivate
Your ability to motivate employees is one of the key competencies that predicts your effectiveness as a supervisor. It's widely accepted that engaged employees feel more motivated to go the extra mile.
Here are some tips on how to motivate yours:
- Provide opportunities for learning new skills
- Set and track attainable goals or targets
- Allow for student input and decision-making
- Build trust and respect
- Honour your commitments
- Model desired behaviours and work ethic
- Communicate openly and honestly (verbal and non-verbal)
- Provide performance feedback
Recognize
Employee recognition is the acknowledgement of a job well done. But, why is recognition so important?
Well, recognition:
- Increases self-esteem and job satisfaction
- Leads to increased productivity
- Fewer employees quit
It's all connected: Appreciated employees tend to be engaged employees. By providing opportunities to grow, you signal that the good work a student employee is doing does not go unnoticed.
Examples of how you can recognize your student employees include:
- Interesting and new tasks
- Involvement with special projects
- "Promotion" to new duties (e.g. assisting in training new co-workers)
- A simple thank you note: "Great work on project X!"
Manage Expectations
Here are some key themes to focus on when you are managing the expectations of your new hire:
- Desired Results - Identify what is to be done and when
- Communication - Acknowledge success
- Guidelines - Explain the relevant policies and practices
- Resources - Identify the support available to help accomplish the results (e.g., staff, budget, technical tools, etc.)
- Accountability - Set up performance standards (e.g., if someone is continuously late, explain why this is a problem)
- Consequences - Specify what will happen as a result of non-performance (e.g., may not be able to assign more interesting projects)
NOTE: If the employee belongs to a union, consequences must be according to the terms laid out in their collective agreement.
Provide Feedback
Supervisors who use a coaching approach view feedback as a development opportunity and regularly seize opportunities to help their employees improve. Providing feedback is essential because it helps employees answer two concerns:
- How do you expect me to contribute?
- How am I doing?
Tip: It is especially important to provide feedback early on, when the employee is within their probationary period, so they can course correct, as necessary.
Effective Feedback
Good feedback needs 4 core components:
- Timely (e.g. acknowledge success immediately)
- Specific (e.g. coach them on improvements by giving them attainable goals/tools to get there)
- Actionable
- Supportive
Feedback Ratio
When it comes to feedback, experts say that in general, you need to give 5 pieces of positive feedback for each 1 piece of negative feedback.
Delivering Feedback
When delivering feedback, it's a best practice to ask your employees about feedback style preferences:
- How often would they like to get feedback on progress, issues, concerns, success?
- How would they like to collect this feedback?
- Do they have any learning goals? Identify relevant learning opportunities.
- Ask for feedback on your feedback and ask if:
- You are giving enough?
- Is the feedback clear? Are you giving enough details?
Feedback DO's
- Make time for regularly scheduled check-ins (e.g. bi-weekly, or as needed)
- Focus on specific behaviours
- Describe rather than judge
- Observations rather than inferences
- If improvement is needed, agree on a plan
Underperforming Employees
Click here to find our guide on talking to an employee who is under performing