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Presented by Kate Smith-Miles, Head of the School of Mathematical Sciences
Strengthening Academic Performance:
Research
Creating a performance culture
• To avoid tick-a-box mentality, staff need to feel that their performance development supervisor can affect change
– Can help manage their workloads– Can help resolve issues– Will recognise and reward their achievements– Will hold them accountable for their performance
– Otherwise we are just going through the motions and wasting everyone’s time
Performance Management is my main job
• Most everything else follows• The conversation is useful
– Clear communication of expectations
– Honest assessment of performance
– Frank discussion about issues
– Clear Plans and strategies to try
– “How can we support you to achieve your goals?”
– Monitoring of strategies and repeat …
Performance Management conversationsAchieving Not Achieving
Late Career Support for empire building; legacy; succession plans
Admin/leadership roles; mentoring; early retirement?
Mid Career Promotion plans; Future research leader development; Independence from mentor; transition to mentoring
Early Career Getting full benefit from ECR label; managing GCHE and probation requirements; recruiting PhD students; Retention!
DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS
RecruitmentProcess?
Difficult Conversations
• How can they best contribute?– What are the strengths of the staff member?– What are their passions?– Does the workload model reflect these?– The well-balanced academic, who excels at
teaching, research, supervision, and admin, is rare
– Work to individuals’ strengths – What if they have none? …
• Objective and honest assessment of research quality
– Why are journal papers rejected?
– What are ARC assessors really saying?
– Are you choosing world class examiners for HDR theses, or mates?
• Are you listening? How do you react?– “it’s a lottery …”
– “they didn’t understand it …”
– “the student is weak …”
• You can’t strengthen if you don’t acknowledge weakness …
BUT ONLY AT THE TOP END
BUT DID YOU EXPLAIN IT WELL?
CAN YOU ATTRACT BETTER STUDENTS?
Is your research agenda significant enough?
• Good “Dinner party” conversation or “who-cares” factor?
• Do you care about it? Why are you researching it?
• What impact will it have, and for whom?• Can it be slightly modified to better align
to priority areas?(university=ARC=CSIRO, etc.)
What kind of change is needed?
• New topic?– Requires ramp-up time, expectations need to reflect
this, and security assured• New determination/motivation
– E.g. Actually revise paper according to reviewer comments to get A* journal paper, instead of submitting same paper to lesser journal
• Workload adjustment• Strategies to improve efficiency • Have a plan and see it through
Is it possible to performance manage an under-achiever?- John* had no publications for 2006-2008, but has 4 accepted in
2009 (needed to have a teaching-free semester to clear backlog of rejected papers and do extra work to submit high quality revised paper)
- Sally* received an ARC grant after listening to advice to add a very strong APD
- Dennis* has realised that his ARC grant was fine, but not fundable, and is now ramping up on a sustainability-related application of the methodology
- Scott* had no HDR load, but now has 3 new PhD students who were inspired by him when he was given an opportunity to teach an honours unit
- Peter* needed a break from his research (lost passion) and attended some industry meetings that lead to industry funding
* Names changed