HR asked me to do something that doesn't seem right.

[zuma]

Let me fix that for you

Have you received adequate training for the CNC machine from the following?:

John Smith □ Strongly Agree □ Agree □ Don't Agree □ Strongly Disagree □ N/A □ Carrots
Derp Jones □ Strongly Agree □ Agree □ Don't Agree □ Strongly Disagree □ N/A □ Carrots

Good one!

Me: "Yeah, sorry all...for some reason the database inserts Carrots at the end of every N/A field. Not much I can do about it."

Them:

 

[zuma]

Yes, but occasionally staff do "teach" things.

Definitely but let's keep things in perspective. The teaching in this case would be the shop staff teaching the students on how to properly use the equipment - procedures, safety rules, etc. In the CNC area it's about preparing your file in the correct manner, loading your bits correctly, etc.

Let's look at it another way. Let's say they conduct a survey in my department. "How helpful has the I.T. department been in reaching your goals?" followed by all of our names. How does that help our me or our network admin who don't necessarily interact with students? As a matter of fact, my boss INSTRUCTS me to pass the buck and let the frontline guys handle students. It's my job to do so unless I am the only one present. See where this is going? And no, our administrators wouldn't look at the big picture. Now they just have a reason to deny your merit raise in their pocket.

 

[zuma]

They aren't instructors. These are the guys who do all the other functions in the department.

snip...
The kicker? It works in every other lab in the building and even my home computer. I thought it was an issue with my account (that guy was helpful) and then he said it was the guy who ran the lab. I've been hounding him down for two weeks. He doesn't respond to emails, is hardly ever in his office, and when I manage to track him down he's leaving to do something else and says he'll be right back. As you can imagine my account still does not work. This man should not work there.

As someone who works in I.T. I believe you need to contact this person's supervisor whoever that may be. Keep going up til you get results. E-mail, call, whatever it takes. Lack of follow up and poor communication are extreme no-nos when it comes to these issues and your educational experience. You have every right to complain. If this guy doesn't realize that you (the students) are paying his bills then he needs a reminder.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

It seems like you have a situation where any kind of computer instruction is taught by the CNC staff. Is it possible they're using these surveys to perhaps hire a computer teacher?

 

[zuma]

I am not aware of any employment laws that would they would be violating by asking you to do this.

My 2 cent as middle class HR shlub.

Thank You. I needed to hear that. I accept that I must do my job even if I don't agree with this thing. I have made my supervisor aware of how I feel and he is super cool. To know that I am not breaking any laws is a tiny bit comforting.

I also have faith that our students are way smarter than the administration thinks. I don't exactly see them throwing anyone under the bus. What I am worried about is that they don't really ever read instructions properly and will just blast through it with how busy they are. Ideally, they'll just ignore it.

 

[Funky Ghost]

We use something similar here at my work. The workers directly under their supervisor are given a survey about them which in turn is used to train them and plays a part in their annual review for a raise. The supervisors name is known obviously, but the workers are given anonymity. It makes for a good employee/management relationship.

 

[zuma]

It seems like you have a situation where any kind of computer instruction is taught by the CNC staff. Is it possible they're using these surveys to perhaps hire a computer teacher?

My sample question was poorly chosen. The questions have more to do with safety instruction and "how to use the bandsaw," etc. By the time students get to the shop they are "supposed" to have their materials, 3d files, etc. ready. Inevitably the shop instructs them way more then they should have to but trust me, this is more about firing than hiring.

 

[zuma]

We use something similar here at my work. The workers directly under their supervisor are given a survey about them which in turn is used to train them and plays a part in their annual review for a raise. The supervisors name is known obviously, but the workers are given anonymity. It makes for a good employee/management relationship.

I hear you Funky but the difference is that the people you are talking about are very familiar with each others job duties. Students often do not have a clue what your job duty actually is and here they are being asked to rate you.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

My sample question was poorly chosen. The questions have more to do with safety instruction and "how to use the bandsaw," etc. By the time students get to the shop they are "supposed" to have their materials, 3d files, etc. ready. Inevitably the shop instructs them way more then they should have to but trust me, this is more about firing than hiring.

Well, like I said earlier, when you eliminate the ability to critically analyze two aspects of a child's educational accountability, you get situations like this. They will never scrutinize their source of revenue (parents and by proxy the student themselves) even if we know that a big part of a student's failure comes from the household, so you create a situation where even though the problems are obvious, you can only address them from a limited approach. The only thing the school has control over is the management of its faculty and staff. So you get a lot of creative ways to for that one approach (surveys, team teaching, staff training, discipline reports, observations, merit pay, matching specialties with curriculum, hiring, firing, demotion, etc) but the other aspects of accountability will never be addressed. Additionally, since you've set yourself up as a service to the customer, if a customer (especially if it's a very influential customer) complains about staff members as a deflection for a child's inadequacies, more often than not the organization will respond to these complaints with things like you're witnessing. It's a very ineffective approach. It's like driving a car with obvious engine problems, and the response is to change the tires and give it a nice wash, perhaps a paint job. I wrote a big part of my masters thesis on school formats (partially because I'm looking to create my own) and this was a big part of the reason why I shied away from the 'private' model.

 

[aborgman]

Definitely but let's keep things in perspective. The teaching in this case would be the shop staff teaching the students on how to properly use the equipment - procedures, safety rules, etc. In the CNC area it's about preparing your file in the correct manner, loading your bits correctly, etc.

Right - and having the students evaluate the folks that taught those things (on those particular tasks) seems logical.

Having them rate the entirety of the staff, not so much.

 

[PSPookie]

The real problem lies with the chowderhead that designed the survey.

 

[zuma]

Maki, you are a wise man.

Chowderhead!!! I have to start saying that from now on!!! Problem is, the Chowderhead is either the COO or the HR Director. Scary.

 

[PSPookie]

Maki, you are a wise man.

Chowderhead!!! I have to start saying that from now on!!! Problem is, the Chowderhead is either the COO or the HR Director. Scary.

Unfortunately, most executive positions do not have the no-chowderehad requirement

It seems to me like there's nothing inherently wrong with the info they want to gather but the way they want to go about it doesn't seem well-thought-out. Have you tried explaining to them that the way you ask a question may affect the answer(s) you get?

 

[L-A]

I would formulate it something like this:

"This is a bit complicated (technologically, if this is relevant to your role in it), because obviously we have to make sure students rate faculty they have actually interacted with, otherwise we're spoiling the efficiency of this survey".

Tiny "issue" as an intro, the big thing that's actually to change, then a compliment

 

[Funky Ghost]

In the military we called 'em Dak's

Dumb
Ass
Kids

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Hate to say it, but unless your private school is subsidized by a religious organization, your school is about profit. Your revenue is dependent upon customer satisfaction much like a lot of other service businesses. There is a reason why you encounter a lot of ethical issues when you mix a profit driven entity with education. In my opinion, a child's education is a shared responsibility, and essentially the accountability piece is shared equally by the child, the parents, and the teacher (with the school and it's staff by proxy). When you try to put a child's education into an organization designed to profit you're instantly faced with a lot of detrimental compromises. One of them is the accountability piece. Since your revenue stream is dependent upon parents paying their tuition, you're accountability becomes unbalanced. It wouldn't be wise to scrutinize a revenue stream when trying to increase profit, so that removes any fault from the customers. So the scrutiny turns toward the accountability of the school and its staff. The sad truth is that you have a staff that is replaceable. Even more so in this economic environment. In order to placate your customers the easiest thing a school can do is shuffle the cards and replace the staff. It creates the illusion of change. Sorry that you have to participate in this, but you have no representation. If you want to keep your job, do as your told and tow the party line.

+1

...and

So create the poll form, send it to HR and tell them to put it out under their banner.

+1

It's asinine that an IT person is being asked to adminster an evaluation metric. As others have said, this just smacks of passing the buck. HR needs to grow some testicular fortitude and do its job.

Also a +1 to the poster who basically said the evaulation survey was as worthless as used toilet paper. The fact that people are being evaulated on factors that fall outside of thier job duties has basically just sunk any validity may have had. Those types of surveys are created by clueless managers who like to pretend they're I/O psychologists - HR should be ashamed for creating such an evaluation. Maybe someone in HR needs to be fired for failing to implement simple HR concepts that any 5-time PHR exam failure would know about...like what a job description is.

 

[zuma]

10-4 on that! At this point the HR person is looking in to doing this with Survey Monkey. I told her I cannot guarantee anonymity in our system. It's not built to do that. ID#s are everywhere. Students ALWAYS ask if the survey is anonymous and I will not in good faith say this one is.

 

[GeneralElectric]

As someone who works in I.T. I believe you need to contact this person's supervisor whoever that may be. Keep going up til you get results. E-mail, call, whatever it takes. Lack of follow up and poor communication are extreme no-nos when it comes to these issues and your educational experience. You have every right to complain. If this guy doesn't realize that you (the students) are paying his bills then he needs a reminder.

I don't even know who his supervisor is. From what I know he runs all the labs in the media building and is the head "IT" guy. The only people who I can think are ahead of him are the department heads. I've gone to them too. They said to talk to him and that he's technically, and I quote, "not under our jurisdiction."

 

[zuma]

Sounds like they don't want to deal with him either! Be persistent! Sorry you have to deal with that crap when you are PAYING for the service. That would fly for about a day where I work. It sounds like you've been suffering for a while with this.

 

[Gopherbassist]

As someone that never had problems in school with other kids but had lots of adults that worked at schools try to make my life hell, I can say wholeheartedly that I would have loved to take a survey to make known which people were jerks that had either no interest in or no ability to further my education.