Using the ‘good day and bad day’ tool to keep performance on track
Staff feeling valued and supported is essential to any person-centred organisation. Knowing what’s important to your staff and how best to support them will help you understand what motivates them to contribute their best.
One-page profiles provide a framework to capture information on how to support each staff member. However, like any other dynamic document, the profile must be kept up to date.
Tool
The ‘good day and bad day’ tool is a person-centred approach involving finding out what makes a good day and a bad day for each staff member. Supporting a staff member to record this information acts as a starting point for conversations during supervision, and will elicit information that:
- will support the person to consider the question ‘What would it take to have more good days and fewer bad days at work?’
- can be added to their one-page profile. This information tells you what is important to the person at work and how they would like to be supported in their role.
This information will give you a good sense of what is happening for the staff member at work, the things they enjoy about their working day and some of the frustrations they are experiencing.
From here, you can both look at any action that could be taken to address some of the ‘bad day’ elements and use them to create opportunities for more of what the staff member would like to see in their day-to-day work.
For example:
Rosa and her manager are exploring what makes a good day and bad day for her.
Rosa has a bad day when she gets behind in her reporting, documentation and administration because other tasks and issues get in the way.
As they talk through the situation in more detail, her manager identifies that perhaps part of the issue was when other staff ring her or come into her office to ask questions related to issues they should already know.
Together they talk through some options and ideas. Rosa decides that she needs to block out some time each week where she isn’t interrupted and can focus on her administration tasks.
They set some actions from this conversation:
- Rosa to block the time out in her calendar each week and let everyone know she won’t be available.
- Identify how to upskill the other staff members so that they can carry out their job roles without requiring Rosa’s continuous assistance.
Not every element of a ‘bad day’ can be addressed through action. Often, how others react or respond to certain situations can make a difference to the person’s day and how they feel about work. The following questions can assist when considering points raised during supervision discussions:
- What does the information tell you about what is important to the staff person at work?
- How do they want colleagues, or you as their manager, to work with and support them?
For example:
Rosa’s manager had a further conversation with her in supervision and along with the actions they agreed, this generated more detail for her one-page profile.
They learned it was important to Rosa to feel on top of her work and always on time with her reports. This reinforced other information in her one-page profile on the importance of her feeling a sense of achievement at the end of each week.
It also identified that she would like her work colleagues to support her by checking whether she had time blocked out in her calendar before ringing or knocking on her door to ask if she was free and before jumping into questions.
Template:
Download the 'Good day and bad day' template using the button above.
Additional resources:
- The Workforce Capability Framework
- The disability career planner and capability framework implementation guide
- Tips – keeping performance on track
- Tips and technique – a person-centred approach to supervision
- Tips – using ‘what’s working/not working’ in performance planning, support and supervision
- Tool and template – using the ‘stress and support’ tool in supervision
- Tips – building on a one-page profile through performance, planning support and supervision
- Tips, technique and template – using one-page profiles in recruitment (for employees).
Definitions:
The term individual(s) refers to an individual with a disability and their family and/or circle of support.
The terms staff/employee(s) refer to paid or unpaid members of the workforce regardless of their employment relationship with their employer i.e. permanent, casual, full-time, volunteer, etc.
Intellectual property rights are jointly owned by National Disability Services Ltd, PeopleAdvantage Pty Ltd and Helen Sanderson Associates respectively. Concepts and intellectual property used with permission from The Learning Community for Person Centred Practices. ©This publication is copyright. All rights reserved.
