Approaching officer induction... and more random thoughts from us

How can we approach full-time officer induction?

With the dust now settling on elections, SU/SA staff are now casting their eyes to the summer and the induction of their new cohort of student leaders. I thought I'd share the approach I used to take when planning officer induction.

I look at the induction as trying to onboard officers in three key areas:

1. An induction to the organisation
2. An induction to their role
3. An induction to each other and connecting as a team

An induction to the organisation

Here we are looking at the full time officers as new staff members and onboarding them in the organisation's culture, team, rules, processes and procedures. You may want to consider:

• HR induction: employment contract, covering policies and procedures such as leave, expenses, time off in lieu, etc.
• Meeting the SU team: depending on the size of your team you may want to consider how you can connect the officer team with the staff members in the SU. Particularly thinking about those staff members that may not work or see much of the officers day-to-day. You may want to arrange some team lunches, team mate speed dating, or some facilitated ice breakers. The learning outcomes here would be to make sure that the officers grasp what the roles of the different teams and how they contribute to the overall strategy of the organisation.
• Strategic introduction: here it's important to up skill officers on the importance of the strategy of the organisation and how that may relate to team or personal objectives. Bringing in an external facilitator for this may be a good idea, given the amount of information overload the sabbs will be experiencing vs the importance of the strategy.
• Introduction to the culture: this will probably happen naturally, but it's important to know some of the more informal rules and etiquette around the organisation. How does the staff room work? Do you have special measures for Fridays? Like, playing music in the office, etc. How does making a cuppa work? Is there a communal kitty? These immeasurable details can be just as important as the other items mentioned above.

Introduction to their role

As it says on the tin. This part is all about making sure that the new sabbs are introduced to the specifics of their role. This can involve:

• Ensuring they connect with key members of SU staff. Building those relationships from the very start. The officers need to know who in the team is going to help them achieve their goals and who they have to work with. An Education Officer should connect with the student voice team or academic representation staff as soon as possible, for example.
• Making sure that they meet key external stakeholders early on, within the University, the wider community and start to build their network in HE.
• Campaigning and representation: it's important for officers to learn early that raising awareness is not campaigning and that they have quality development as activists.
• Very often you can find that outgoing officers want to spend a lot of time with their incoming successors, to "introduce them to the role". What is funny is that every year, in my experience, new officers in the main do not necessarily find this time to be useful - a lot of the time it's information overload and the handover hasn't been designed with the incoming representative's learning style in mind, it's sitting at a desk and going through emails or a handover document. To be honest, in my experience it can be more of a way of providing outgoing officers with a sense of control and closure as they come to the end of their term. You will also want to consider if there are any changes that you want to bring in, either informally or formally, to the way that officers work and whether spending so much time with the outgoing team is useful for that.

Getting to know each other and team building

There's nothing like a sabbatical officer team that work together closely as one team, although as I hear it's more and more rare these days. So, it's important to start as you mean to go on. Here, you'll want to consider:

• Classic team building: personality and psychometric tests, the difference between a team and a group, Tuckman, group think, etc.
• Soft skills and new leadership: here you would look at incorporating emotional intelligence, practicing empathy, vulnerability and servant leadership.
• Boundaries and self-care: being a sabb is no walk in the park, it's important to introduce the team to boundaries and self-care early on. Normalising and role modelling taking leave and having a decent work/life balance will be key to a healthy and successful year.
• Off reservation: there is definite merit to taking the sabbs away from the office and taking them away for a residential. This can give the sabbs physical space and time to be inspired and motivated together.

Summary

Officer induction is a crucial time, but it's not the only time to develop sabbatical officers. It is advisable to look at the whole sabbatical journey as a developmental time with a growth mindset. It's also important to try to assess the learning styles of the new officers early on so you can incorporate this into your content and delivery. There are also lots of external facilitators that you can bring in to deliver sessions and give your officers the start they deserve, shop around - there's lots to choose from. If you're interested in Alkhemy's officer induction offer, please take a look.

Is the clock ticking for sabbatical officer roles as we know them?

When I launched Alkhemy I wanted to respectfully disrupt the status quo, particularly in the student movement. This is a link to an article that I published a couple of weeks ago, lots of interesting feedback.

This article is a small part of achieving a little disruption and is questioning the relevance of the sabbatical officer structure in a modern organisation looking to represent students.

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This looks at:?

• Sabbatical officer wellbeing
• SU organisational culture?
• Concepts of democracy?
• Legal implications?
• Letting go of tradition

What do they even do all day?

For Sabbatical Officers we know that two days are never the same, but really what should officers be doing on a day to day basis? This article explores what the day-to-day duties should be for full time officers as political representatives.