Performance Development for Academic staff

A new performance development process is being introduced over the next three months across the academic community at Monash. The process will apply to all continuing and fixed term academic staff.

An extensive review on the relevance and effectiveness of the current Academic Performance Management Scheme was undertaken in 2007 by a project team chaired by Professor Edwina Cornish, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research). The outcome from this review was that the current scheme was not meeting the goals of the key stakeholders and providing key links to both the short and long term strategic directions of the University. A new performance management scheme was required that would better support the University to achieve its goals, embed the scheme within its culture and encourage quality performance.

The Human Resources Division through the Organisational Development and Policy Branch was requested to facilitate the introduction of this new performance development process for academic staff incorporating the principles of growth, feedback and accountability.

The purpose and scope of the new Performance Development Process: Academic Staff was outlined in a global email from Professor Adam Shoemaker and Professor Edwina Cornish on 10th June 2008.

A key criterion of the new process was to move away from the traditional appraisal/rating model to a more conversational feedback focused dialogue between the supervisor and the academic staff member concerned.

Currently consultation is taking place between the Project Team (within Organisation  Development and Policy) and the various faculties, campuses, centres and institutes on how best to communicate, educate and inform academic staff on the new process and the expected benefits both to the academic staff member and the University as a whole from adopting this new process.

We expect the “roll out” of the new process to occur during the months of September, October and November 2008 – during this period plans are being developed with key stakeholders to hold information sessions within the various faculties, campuses, centres and institutes as well as tailored training/education workshops for academic staff members with responsibility for managing or supervising academic staff.

In addition, Dr Christopher Lee, a human resources practitioner, lecturer, researcher, and author will be delivering a series of Master Classes for performance supervisors in the first week of September 2008. Dr Lee will be presenting information on why the traditional appraisal method is not very effective. Chris’ research is based on encouraging meaningful structured feedback and supervisory systems that use continuous dialogue and adjustments to manage work efforts, outcomes and behaviours. This partnership founded on feedback and continuous dialogue is the cornerstone of the new Performance Development Process: Academic Staff.

An online performance development system will be developed during the latter part of this year to complement the planned “face to face” performance development approach. The benefits of the online system are that it will support staff to complete the performance development process in a timely, streamlined and efficient way.

The current General Staff Performance Management scheme will be reviewed in 2009.

Regular updates will be posted on this HR News site.