Are you involved with planning and implementing an all-staff event at your library? We heard it from the experts at PLA: a successful staff day is hard work, but it can facilitate learning and bring recognition to all in your organization. Pat Carterette hosted the panel of staff development veterans including Mary Ross, Stacy Schrank, and Nancy Schutz. These folks have planned and implemented numerous all-staff events in public libraries of all sizes and they shared their tips, tricks and strategies for a successful day.

I encourage you to review the session slides and handout now available on the PLA site, but here are some of the gems I jotted down. The presenters touched on all these aspects of a successful staff day:

Planning Process

1. Be clear with management about your intentions and about their buy-in for the event. Use your evaluations from previous staff day as ROI. Emphasize the importance of staff day as a way to build productivity and staff morale in the work place. This is an investment in your employees. For example, 72% of the library’s budget is spent on staff, so shouldn’t you be investing in the retention and development of this resource?
2. Location, location, location: make sure your venue has room for breakout sessions, catering is in place, you can hang things on the wall, there’s adequate parking, and lots of women’s restrooms. Don’t assume anything.
3. Provide clear guidelines for staff: will student staff attend, is it required, how will the day be recorded on timesheets…work with your HR department early on to have these guidelines in place. It’s not possible to “over communicate” the plans with staff. You can avoid the “I never heard about that” sentiment. Put yourself in the shoes of a new staff member, avoid jargon, and even if you try to go “paperless” be sure to have a print version of the program available the day of. Be sure to communicate about the menu and the room temperature eg. bring a sweater.
4. Picking the day: what about book drops, deliveries, will closure impact pubic service?
5. To your staff, don’t refer to staff day as a “training day“…it’s really “staff development”. But your patrons might feel better if your “closed” signs refer to “training” or “staff education day”.

Theme/Branding/Communication

1. Set the theme to align with the current goals of your organization, or in conjunction with a library milestone.
2. Use the theme in everything! The branding, the communication, the awards, the session titles, the menu, the decorations, the t-shirts, name tags…

Program Ideas and Resources

1. Get staff involved early on to help plan program and develop presentations, especially if they’re staff day “resisters”.
2. Put the “staff” in staff day. Tap staff expertise for peer presented sessions.
3. Consider a panel of “emerging leaders”. SPL hosted a panel of former “student assistants” who have now become assistant managers in the organization.
4. One of my favorites was the “So you want to get your MLIS?” session.
5. Bring other community members in to present. Consider a panel of community partners. How about folks from other local workforce development agencies to share how they’re supporting patrons? What a great opportunity to build local understanding and collaboration.

“Day of” Considerations

1. Plan for all contingencies.
2. From catering to ill presenters, there’s plenty that can go wrong and you need to be sure you’re not the only person who can fix it!
3. Delegate anything that can be delegated.

Leaving a Legacy

1. Make sure the resources shared are available to staff afterwards.
2. Evaluate the day and make changes next time based on the feedback.
3. Share pictures!
4. If you gave out T-shirts, encourage staff to wear them on “casual day”…retain the team spirit!

Staff Development Day Survey: Emerging Leader Project

The presentation and handouts reference an exciting project being taken on by a group of Learning RT- sponsored Emerging Leaders. The group is in the process of creating a staff development day handbook. If you are involved at any level with planning staff development day events and have recommendations or materials that others may find helpful or if you have attended a staff development day and have insights, they would like your help! You can find the survey here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/StaffDaySuccess (All respondents will have a chance to win a $25 gift card from Amazon!)

Epilogue

At the beginning of the presentation the audience was asked a few questions about the size of their staff and the budget available for a staff day. I was struck by the large number of folks who come from smaller or medium-sized libraries who have little or no budget to plan their staff days. In these tough times, I think we need to include a number of contingency plans or cost efficient ways to build organizational morale and learning. I’d love to hear from libraries who insert learning and staff development into every day or from those who are using presentation archives or online meetings to bring staff together. There are examples popping up all over the place! I’ll mention the WebJunction Online Conferencing group here as a place to explore innovative approaches to online “staff days”. And for ideas on integrating learning into “every day”, be sure to check out the presentation and handouts from another PLA session, Power Up Your Learning Organization.