Our latest Cross-Staff design session was held last Friday, and two teams (the Communication, Collaboration and Climate (CCC) group and the Onboarding and Organizational Growth (O and OG) group) shared what they’ve discovered over the past few weeks.
CCC is looking into enhancing community and collaboration across MLFTC and spent the last few weeks researching current ASU policies, communication styles, MLFTC’s organizational climate, and the current best practices of the college. After looking both internally in their units and across MLFTC, they concluded that the biggest barrier in the way of building community in our college is the geographic difference. It’s hard to get everyone together when our offices are so spread out across three campuses (and online!). Additionally, it can be challenging to acquire funds for community-building events, and money must come from individual units.
The O&OG group started with exploring how they might foster organizational growth and development, but altered their challenge to address onboarding at the unit level after seeing how few resources there are related to college onboarding. New employees, or even employees transferred from a different unit or college, have little in the way of a consistent introduction to the Teachers College and how things are done. One member of this team pointed out that in the first few weeks of an employee working at our college, they have a huge amount of information thrown at them, but when it comes time to actually needing that information later, it is not easily accessible.
The design groups are now moving on to the next phase of their projects—crafting “How might we…?” questions in pursuit of creating a better workplace. As always, stay tuned for further updates. Our next Cross-Staff Design session will be held on January 25.