SEAHO Report - Summer 2019 - 18

SEAHO Feature Articles
we were suddenly short nearly forty staff members and opening at a huge deficit. At a critical time, when students
were returning to campus for early move-ins and orientations, some communities were impacted to the point that a
serious conversation about closing our front desks temporarily took place. Instead, we scrambled, got creative, and
embarked on a long six-week span of supervisors covering gaps, our Community Assistants taking on extra hours,
and even members of our leadership team agreeing to take shifts while we filled our teams back to capacity. We
pulled together and worked.
We finally stabilized by the beginning of March and took a hard look at our program; internally, some things needed
to change about how we were hiring student staff, scheduling their hours, and classifying their work. We began
reaching out to some of our fellow Mississippi institutions and to others in the SEC that had desk programs and
similar student makeups. The same issue was plaguing some of our colleagues across the region as well, and that
many programs were trying to course-correct to stop the loss of student staff. That led us to question just what
caused so many to leave all at once with seemingly no warning, and a focus for the remainder of the semester to
gather that information as we continue to make changes to our operation. We started simply with sending out our
Exit Survey something we had in the wings but used sparingly for that handful of students who graduated and
typically didn't tell us too much that we already didn't know. It is roughly twenty questions, and takes participants
between three-to-six minutes to complete, and has both forced-choice and text-based questions that span the facets
of the position from a big-picture standpoint. While we used Microsoft Forms for this project, as I'm a personal
fan of the back-end charts it creates, we also have access to Qualtrics and both platforms are excellent for our
purposes. Some of the questions included whether or not students believed their position was important, whether
they understood expectations and were trained enough for the role, whether they felt supported by their supervisor/
community, to detail the hours they worked and whether they felt they had enough hours, and to choose from a list
of options why they may have left the position. A final section for open-ended overall responses was also provided.
The survey was sent out to the forty that left with
a personal email from me to ask for feedback and
we got close to twenty responses. The info both
surprised us and reinforced what we already knew.
We've continued to use it all semester as staff
have moved on this year and have close to fifty
respondents now. Here's what we've learned:
1. Student staff were NOT leaving due to
dissatisfaction. With three questions related to
their supervisor, community, and relationships
both with fellow Desk Assistants and
Community Assistants, 100% of respondents
felt they were supported by their community
and that their teammates and supervisor
experiences were positive.
2. Student staff were dissatisfied with the number of hours they received. 75% of our respondents reported not
getting enough hours, while conversely reporting that the majority of their hours were overnight.
3. There is no single reason why staff members left. Citing everything from graduation to health concerns, pay
issues to department structure, our students selected all of the nearly ten choices we had available as to why, and
a text follow up questions reinforced it further.
SEAHO Report Summer 2019

SEAHO Report - Summer 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SEAHO Report - Summer 2019