SEAHO Report - Summer 2012 - (Page 25)

SEAHO FEATURE helpful to them in their next job. Think of it this way; Hire the person that is trainable, but train the hirable so they are promotable. My supervisor always says, “When you leave the RA Program, I won’t be surprised by your many accolades or how marketable you are, because we trained you and you will achieve.” allowing the staff member to grow. For example, if someone was a day late on paperwork for the first time, what do you do? Think about what can hurt the staff member versus what can develop them. My supervisor does various things. One thing to consider is doing a sad bag. The sad bag is very similar to the glad bag, however it has things that an RA might not always look forward to. The sad bag is two-fold. It builds community and holds the RA accountable while still developing them in their job. The sad bag has things such as taking a staff member’s duty, taking down old flyers in complex, or even going door to door to ask every single resident how their living experience is going. This will motivate the staff member not to be late or forget to do something. 7. Know what motivates your RA staff. It’s healthy to praise and acknowledge when a staff member has done something good. Implementing small incentive programs will help with motivating them. For example, on my staff we have a “Fav Five” board that allows us to acknowledge another staff member who has done something good in that week. After the week is up whoever has the most fav five gets to pull a “glad bag.” The glad bag is full of stripes of paper that have various prizes written on them, such as a 5 minute late pass, lunch or dinner with your RD, RD covers your rounds, etc. All these are things that could motivate your staff. 10. Understand that the RAs are like every other employee and at the end of the day they want to be able to do their jobs while having FUN!! Having fun with the job is important for your staff. This promotes community building with the staff. One thing you can do to promote community and team building is once a month have a staff outing. This can be anything the staff comes up with such as Bowling Night, Movie Night, Putt Putt night, Capture the Flag where rookies verse returners or girls verse boys, Game Night, or Potlucks. I hope that these 10 tips will help all supervisors build better teams and closer relationships with RA staff members. 8. Treat each person on your staff equally and with respect. Just because they are student employees doesn’t mean they should be treated like a child. Student Employees = Adult Employees in training 9. Hold staff members accountable when they don’t do something that’s required of them or that they volunteered for. Because this job is a student development job, you don’t want to go to the extreme of not SEAHO Report Summer 2012 25

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SEAHO Report - Summer 2012