Julie Bartkus

There are many reasons to proactively find out staff and parents' concerns.

You will: create a more dynamic, positive and productive environment for working and learning, motivate and retain staff, receive positive word of mouth advertising for your center, spend less money on advertising, prevent false accusations, identify behaviors that need to be changed, and reduce stress, frustration and anxiety. The obstacle to finding out concerns is people are not sure how to communicate their concerns to each other -- and when I survey organizations most individuals will state they hate confrontations. So most of the time concerns are communicated destructively through indirect communication or gossip. Then you may hear a comment, concern or complaint second hand and wonder why the person with the issue did not come directly to you. In the long run this creates more stress, frustration and anxiety.

The main ingredient to finding out staff and parents' concerns is to create an atmosphere of direct and open communication. How can we open up lines of communication?

Listening is the first step. Try to understand what the other person is saying. Then restate what you heard to make sure you fully understand.

Instead of getting defensive when receiving feedback ask one simple question and truly understand the response. Ask the person giving you the feedback: "What specifically would you like to have happen that's not currently happening?" Or " What specifically would you like me to do that I'm not currently doing?"

Let's look at four great tools that will help you find out staff and parents' concerns. They are suggestion boxes, surveys, open forums and one-one meetings/phone calls/emails.

It's very important that I state that the one success strategy that is applicable to all four of the tools is questions and how we ask them. You will gain new and valuable insight when you formulate and ask open-ended questions.

Our first tool is a suggestion box. Here are a few ideas to make effective use out of suggestion boxes:

Set a day and time out of the week where you'll read through suggestions. Have a bulletin board where you post the suggestion and write a response to it.

Get a stamp that says "read by Karen." Every time you read a suggestion stamp it and post it.

At a staff meeting read through the suggestions and decide what action needs or can be taken.

Distribute cards with preprinted open-ended questions on them. Have a separate box for staff and for parents -- you may need to find out different things from them.

Our next tool is surveys. Surveys can also be used to trouble shoot problems. Create questions such as:

On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your job satisfaction?

What would increase your level of satisfaction? (Provide examples: workshops, a new responsibility, etc.) Get them thinking outside of salary. They took a position with your organization knowing what the pay rate is. Most went into this profession knowing what the pay scale is. So we need to move beyond that aspect.

Our third tool is an open forum. Invite parents and teachers to come to monthly or quarterly forums where you'll address their concerns and basically dispose of fears and build strong bonds. Use this time to communicate issues that might concern them.

Our final tool is one-one meetings/phone calls, emails. Invest three minutes per week to touch base with each of your staff and parents (and again I'm only talking about a few minutes of quality time -- but you'll be amazed how much impact a few minutes of undisturbed one on one time will have). Remember formulating and asking open-ended questions through which ever tool you utilize will provide you with invaluable information -- information that will help you find out staff and parents' concerns and take action to prevent their concerns from becoming huge problems.