Presented by Kate Smith-Miles, Head of the School of Mathematical Sciences

Strengthening Academic Performance:

Research

Creating a performance culture

• To avoid tick-a-box mentality, staff need to feel that their performance development supervisor can affect change

– Can help manage their workloads– Can help resolve issues– Will recognise and reward their achievements– Will hold them accountable for their performance

– Otherwise we are just going through the motions and wasting everyone’s time

Performance Management is my main job

• Most everything else follows• The conversation is useful

– Clear communication of expectations

– Honest assessment of performance

– Frank discussion about issues

– Clear Plans and strategies to try

– “How can we support you to achieve your goals?”

– Monitoring of strategies and repeat …

Performance Management conversationsAchieving Not Achieving

Late Career Support for empire building; legacy; succession plans

Admin/leadership roles; mentoring; early retirement?

Mid Career Promotion plans; Future research leader development; Independence from mentor; transition to mentoring

Early Career Getting full benefit from ECR label; managing GCHE and probation requirements; recruiting PhD students; Retention!

DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

RecruitmentProcess?

Difficult Conversations

• How can they best contribute?– What are the strengths of the staff member?– What are their passions?– Does the workload model reflect these?– The well-balanced academic, who excels at

teaching, research, supervision, and admin, is rare

– Work to individuals’ strengths – What if they have none? …

• Objective and honest assessment of research quality

– Why are journal papers rejected?

– What are ARC assessors really saying?

– Are you choosing world class examiners for HDR theses, or mates?

• Are you listening? How do you react?– “it’s a lottery …”

– “they didn’t understand it …”

– “the student is weak …”

• You can’t strengthen if you don’t acknowledge weakness …

BUT ONLY AT THE TOP END

BUT DID YOU EXPLAIN IT WELL?

CAN YOU ATTRACT BETTER STUDENTS?

Give help interpreting assessor comments, and

realistically assessing chances

Is your research agenda significant enough?

• Good “Dinner party” conversation or “who-cares” factor?

• Do you care about it? Why are you researching it?

• What impact will it have, and for whom?• Can it be slightly modified to better align

to priority areas?(university=ARC=CSIRO, etc.)

What kind of change is needed?

• New topic?– Requires ramp-up time, expectations need to reflect

this, and security assured• New determination/motivation

– E.g. Actually revise paper according to reviewer comments to get A* journal paper, instead of submitting same paper to lesser journal

• Workload adjustment• Strategies to improve efficiency • Have a plan and see it through

Is it possible to performance manage an under-achiever?- John* had no publications for 2006-2008, but has 4 accepted in

2009 (needed to have a teaching-free semester to clear backlog of rejected papers and do extra work to submit high quality revised paper)

- Sally* received an ARC grant after listening to advice to add a very strong APD

- Dennis* has realised that his ARC grant was fine, but not fundable, and is now ramping up on a sustainability-related application of the methodology

- Scott* had no HDR load, but now has 3 new PhD students who were inspired by him when he was given an opportunity to teach an honours unit

- Peter* needed a break from his research (lost passion) and attended some industry meetings that lead to industry funding

* Names changed