Successful Staff Days

Staff Day 

Note to self: we can present this program next time.  This program is about planning and implementing a successful staff day program.  They are giving ideas for the types of staff days that you can do - from a large-scale conference style days to a lunch training.  It sounds like most of panelists have smaller scale programs that are either a one-off training or a half day at the most. It doesn't appear that the staff days they are doing are as robust as the one we did.

The speaker from the Skokie Public Library (125 FTE, 180 total employees, $11 million budget) talked about the budget for their staff day.  When he said they spent $7800, everyone gasped at how much that was.  I think we are doing well if we spend more on ours (but it's money we bring in through grants).

Sounds like several of these libraries make awards and recognition a part of their staff day.  I think most of these libraries don't do a staff day and a celebrating our successes but roll it into one.

Food - paying for food seems to be a hot topic!  One woman is talking about how they can't afford food so they do a potluck. Another one mentioned asking their book vendors to donate lunch.  Yikes!  The staff time they spend on this must be crazy.

Overall, I don't feel like they presented anything revolutionary.  Perhaps we should invite them to ours.  There were a few good ideas that were good like, creating a video of the day to memorialize the event, have some fun activities like building tallest structure out of spaghetti and marshmallows, or creating a promotional video to market the staff day to everyone.