Working from Key HR Performance Management Data:
What is the Strategic Work of HR?
Purpose / This challenge scenario is a brief narrative story about how a chief of HR struggles in a situation relating to his HR partner, retention issues, and performance management. An HR Team can read and discuss this scenario to identify shared problems and solutions.Intended User(s) / Principal Supervisors; HR Team Leads; HR Partners
The Characters:
Dr. Leon Hernandez, Chief of HR
Ms. Anita Smith, Principal, Jackson Elementary School
Ms. Elaine Johnson, HR Partner for Jackson Elementary School
Dr. Leon Hernandez was busy finishing the last touches on the evaluation summaries for the members of his HR Partner team, and he was so pleased to be completing this task a week before the deadline. He wished everyone at the district office was as efficient as he was, and he was proud to say that more principals than ever were completing their evaluation write-ups on time. It was a goal of all of the principal managers to get them done in time, and there was a healthy competition to meet the deadline. Leon glanced out the window and contemplated how much better his second year had gone than his first. Year 1 was filled with “fire drills” and trying to figure out his key work. Year 2 had been an adventurous school year, but he was proud of the progress his HR team had made in changing their structure to align their work more directly with the Principal Managers. Northfield City Schools was really making progress and thinking strategically about ways to support principals more effectively with performance management.
Leon glanced out the window at the stunning tulips in front of the district office, and he could see Jackson Elementary School right across the street. This was one school that was close to his heart. When Leon took over his job last year, his first hire was for the principal of Jackson Elementary School. Leon and the Principal Manager had selected Anita Smith to turn around this high-need, low-performing school, and Leon was sure that Anita would turn out to be a super star. The Principal Manager could see the improvements Anita had made to curriculum and infrastructure, and early on Anita made a few key hires to the school, including snagging one of the district’s esteemed and high performing teachers to serve as a teacher leader in the school. In one year alone, the state grade for Jackson Elementary School had gone from an F to a D.
As Leon glanced at the evaluation summaries on his desk, his thoughts wandered to the structure he had developed this year. At the start of this school year, Leon launched the role of HR Partner to support principals in their planning. His team of six HR Partners was service-oriented, creative, strategic problem solving, not to mention HR-data savvy. After working with an advisory group of principals, the team developed an HR Dashboard that they hoped would inform their planning conversations with their principals about performance management. After much discussion with the IT Team and the creation of a few new data reports, several trends became immediately clear. High-need schools had higher average teacher transfer rates of 30%, compared to the district average of 15%. And most of the teachers transferring out of high-need schools were transferring to lower-need schools. High-need schools also had less experienced teachers. These were trends that Leon was perplexed by and wondered how to address.
The HR Partners were ready to unveil the dashboards for each of their schools to Leon that afternoon. Leon was anxious to see the results of the team’s hard work. Before his first cup of coffee had cooled, HR Partner Elaine Johnson came into Leon’s office out of breath and holding a piece of paper in her hand. Elaine said, “Leon, I need your advice about what I am learning from our first set of data reports. Anita Smith is working really hard to look at the performance management of her entire staff. We just crunched the data for Jackson Elementary School, and I need your best thinking about how I can support Anita. In our most recent planning meeting, Anita mentioned that her two top teachers are Johnson Bradley and her teacher leader Gina Austen. I just learned from the recruitment team that both are applying to transfer to lower-need schools. In addition, it appears that Jackson Elementary is about to have high turnover, which Anita may not be expecting. Similar to other high-need schools, Jackson has a high percentage of teachers requesting transfers. Unfortunately, another 19% of her teachers are also eligible to retire. I know her school is really challenging and she is working to move everyone forward. What can I do to be of service?”
Leon looked at the data that the HR team had put together about Jackson Elementary School and then he glanced at the completed performance evaluations for his team. All of a sudden, he wondered how he could support his HR team member to better support the performance management at Jackson Elementary School and every school in the district.
Questions:
1. What advice would you provide to Leon as he works with Elaine?
2. What are the best practices Leon’s team could institute next year to help inform and support Anita’s work in the performance management of her school?
3. What advice would you give to the HR team about the data they are collecting?
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Challenge Scenario – Performance Management
Appendix A: Jackson Elementary – HR Dashboard
Jackson Elementary Executive Summary
· 26 current teachers, including 1 teacher leader
· 2 teacher vacancies
· 6 novice teachers – 23.1%
· 7 submitted transfer requests – 26.9%
· 5 retirement eligible – 19.2%
· 3 Highly Effective – 11.5%
· 10 Effective – 38.5%
· 8 Limited Effectiveness – 30.8%
· 5 Least Effective – 19.2%