This may be a hot take but I’ve always loved staff meetings, both from the perspective as a student staff member and as a Hall Director. It’s a great way to bring the entire team together during the week, checking in on how everyone is doing while getting some bigger picture updates for the community. But, as a Hall Director, there were some complicated aspects to staff meetings that made it a difficult process. Rather than relying solely on Hall Directors making these meetings happen and providing substance to make it a meeting that shouldn’t have been an email, I’m advocating for ResLife departments to move away from Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Staff Meetings.
This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “What is one practice ResLife departments need to let go of?”
Before we get too far into this, I want to make it clear that the position of the Hall Director should not lose their autonomy to bring their own leadership and personality to the meeting, nor am I suggesting that Hall Directors should not be responsible for providing some of the content. Every Hall Director should be able to lead their staff meeting how they best feel is appropriate and they need to be able to implement their own ideas to make it a worthwhile use of their team’s time. What I am suggesting is that ResLife should provide more oversight and guidance to make these meetings a success. Here are some ways to make this a reality:
Standardized date and starting time for staff meetings. At the first institution I served as a Hall Director, I had to find a date and time that fit all of my RA’s schedules, including both classes and outside activities. At times, this was a pretty significant undertaking. One HD on my team said that 8:00am on Friday was the only time that worked for everyone on their team, so they ended up having a meeting over breakfast in the dining center.
Another HD said that their staff was busy until 12:00am on Tuesday, so they would end up having their meeting at that time; they fondly referred to their team as the “Midnight Society.” In the words of the legendary Randy Jackson, “That’s a no from me, dawg.”
At another institution I worked at, they had designated Wednesday’s at 8:00pm as the standard time and date for staff meetings. Student staff would see this when they applied for the RA position and this information was also shared with them on their acceptance letters. This was after the final classes of the day would end and students would not be able to be involved with any activities or events that would happen during this time unless they received special permission. There were only a few issues but, for the most part, this was a successful way to ensure everyone was able to attend staff meeting and the clear communication of when meetings would take place was appreciated by students.
Departments should provide content to discuss during staff meetings. At some institutions, there is an expectation that Hall Directors create and hold their own weekly meetings independently. This leads to a very disorganized experience from the student staff perspective: one Hall Director could be completely on top of their meetings and use the full two hours while another consistently uses a weekly meeting for a Mariokart tournament. I’m not advocating for the department to create a standardized staff meeting for everyone. What I have observed to be most effective is for the department to share relevant updates and some talking points to discuss during meetings and that the Hall Director has the discretion to lead the meeting as they choose. Hall Directors are not barred from adding in their own talking points or activities but there are at least some substantial updates that make the meeting useful. This responsibility should be shouldered somewhat equally by the department and by the Hall Director. When there is not a lot of content, cancelling to provide time back to staff or using the meeting for bonding or team building activities is reasonable.
Two suggestions on how the department can assist with content beyond talking points is by identifying suitable team building activities and by arranging campus partners to serve as guest speakers at meetings. Especially on weeks where updates are few, these are great ways to utilize the time in a meaningful way. I’ve always found that identifying outstanding team builders can be challenging, so having a departmental resource to turn to would be extremely helpful. This could be a great committee project, gathering a few Hall Directors to create a resource for future teams to utilize. Likewise, coordinating guest speakers for all teams to receive the same information is a great use of time, especially if they have time-based updates to share with your community’s staff.
Host monthly all-campus ResLife meetings. This was an effective opportunity to share information about larger processes to all RAs at once, ensuring that everyone was receiving consistent information at the same time. Some of the bigger topics were related to break duty scheduling, recontracting for the next academic year, RA selection processes and volunteer sign-ups, and other topics of this nature. Typically it was led by one of the mid-level leaders within the department, helping student staff grow familiar with other supervisors within the department. This was also a unique opportunity for campus partners to share information at once, if they had a smaller team and were not able to divide and conquer individual staff meetings across campus.
This was also very important to the RAs as they had requested getting more time to interact and collaborate with one another outside of training periods. Fall and Winter Training times were devoted to collaboration across communities but, outside of that, RAs were not expected to work together and would go months without communicating. By having a monthly all-campus meeting which typically had a team building activity involved, it provided RAs a chance to reconnect with their friends and meet new people outside of the hall they worked in.
The way that ResLife approaches staff meetings needs to be revised as we continue to grow and look critically at departmental operations. While expecting Hall Directors to be completely autonomous in the past may have worked, there are much easier ways to revise the process so that all Hall Directors and department leadership can be pulling in the same direction to use this time effectively.
