Supervisory Development Content Library

Onboarding is the process of transforming a new employee into a fully functioning member of your team. When done effectively, it is a powerful employee engagement strategy that helps cultivate long term relationships, promote and understanding of organizational culture and foster a sense of belonging.

Students are a core part of our mission at the University of Minnesota. For many students, the University is their first employer. Supervising undergraduate students requires balancing the need to support and develop them while ensuring that essential tasks are completed. Creating and implementing an onboarding plan will help sustain student enthusiasm and engagement, while also ensuring they can start contributing to the team’s work faster.

A template to create a tailored onboarding plan that encompasses all of the key elements.

Template to help structure your ongoing check-in discussions.

Check-ins are regular discussions that happen throughout the year to:

• Check in on progress toward goals,
• Stay aligned on current projects,
• Discuss what is going well and what could be better, and
• Agree on next steps.

Ongoing check-ins promote progress toward goals by providing opportunities for feedback and support.

Even the most detailed and thought-out onboarding plans can fail during the implementation stage if not enough attention and effort is put into connecting the new employee to the organizational culture.

Groundbreaking discoveries and research, educated students, successful alumni, quality clinical care, better community - these are the results of fulfilling the University’s mission of research, teaching and outreach. The steps described in this guide will allow you approach the work you supervise in a way that most meaningfully contributes to the University’s mission.

This worksheet will help you clarify and understand the purpose and most impactful work of the team you supervise. Fill out this worksheet in order to orient to results. After completing steps 1-4 you will be ready to plan for results.

Performance evaluation includes measuring effectiveness in meeting expectations for achieving results as well as how those results are achieved (i.e., behaviors).

One of the thorniest challenges for any manager is dealing with conflicts in the workplace. When a member of your team or department is involved in a disagreement at work, your role as a supervisor is to provide feedback and coaching to help them develop and use effective conflict management skills. In many cases, you may not be directly involved, but it's important to provide support to help your staff manage the situation effectively.