Staff Meeting Notes July 7, 2017

Stimley Blue Ridge Meeting Agenda July 7, 2017

      Managers Meeting Updates

a.       New Changes to the Stats forms

                                i.      Effective immediately we will no longer need to mark down stats for Holds in or out (yay!)

                                ii.      We will have a new stat marked as Welcome Center every time a customer asks about Citizenship, English Courses, or other language learning courses.

                               iii.      Does anyone have any questions about stats? Reference versus directional? How to count SRP, movie, games, and other programs?

b.       Fiscal Year 2018 Goals

                                 i.      ASZ, we will continue to add weekly STEM and craft kits to bring value to our ASZ as well as begin with homework help, passive crafts, or reading before games or other activities.

                                 ii.      International Services, we want to host a living room in Fall and we will visit with Helen by the end of the month to begin those discussions.

                                 iii.      Linking to us, as our customers become more comfortable speaking and sharing with us I would like to send in more than one video a year. Especially Open Job Lab success stories, or through our fall Parenting courses.

1.       Djuina suggested making a file folder for these forms which I think is a great idea.

                                  iv.      Outreach recent partnerships include ABC Dental YMCA and Star of Bethel as well as the Barbershops in our area. We will strive to include more in 2018.

                                  v.      Programming focus is already strong on the 2018 focuses and if we can handle the preparation time we will also include ESL and or Citizenship courses as well.

                                  vi.      Very Ready Reading is going strong and will continue to be a focus.

c.       HPL Volunteer Program Request Form

                                   i.      The form can be found on the youth blog and is used for people that want to hold programs that we would ultimately consider HPL programs. For example the proposed Star of Bethel back to school event

d.       Staff Printing Budget

                                    i.      The staff printing budget now falls under digital strategies. Discussions are still early, but be prepared to have less budget for making our own fliers and having to go through print shop months in advance. We will update you as we get more information.

e.       Potential New Reservation System

                                     i.      This is still in early stages but if it goes through all of HPL will be on a new system by the end of the fiscal year, if not they will all be on our system by the end of the year.

      Branch Business

a.       Congratulations

                                      i.      Congratulations to the team for a wonderful start to Summer Reading. The whole system is recognizing what we are doing here and it is great to see the passion and spirit in this branch.

                                      ii.      Congrats to Jaqueline and Kayren for a great beginning to the Barber outreach as well as their teamwork in creating maps for our interns and volunteers to shelve by.

                                      iii.      Congrats to Freda for initiative on adding board games to our snack time as well as making our Black Women Authors display.

                                      iv.      Congrats to Catia for adding new programming within her first month arriving here

b.       Communication

                                       i.      I would like to see a return to the roaming schedule being followed as an active roamer.

                                       ii.      I am aware we all have a lot of tasks to complete, and we have had only about one week fully staffed and even then, it is tight every single day.

                                       iii.      We need to continue working together to communicate what tasks we need to complete, how much time we need to complete them, and to include me in these decision-making processes. In some cases, I might have to ask you to put something on the back burner so that we can focus on immediate customer concerns or a different deadline. I appreciate the drive and initiative and I do not want to stifle it, but I also want to see us working together on the 2018 goals and I need to know what we are working on to make that happen.

c.       Shelving

                                         i.      We are still seeing challenges with the volunteers putting things back in the wrong area, especially in graphic novels and paperbacks. Can we help them as we get our full staff by the end of July?

                                          ii.      Does anyone have any alternate shelving ideas to share?

1.       There was a lot of great input on shelving ideas including sharing the shelving standards with everyone so they know where everything goes and they can show new employees, interns, and volunteers how to shelve.

2.       We decided not to rearrange any areas but Drew will make a cheat sheet for how to shelve each area and quick ways to know where an item is shelved just by looking at it.

3.       Open Discussion

a.       The difficulty of taking lunches on time was brought up, especially when assigned Summer Food or another intensive program before or after a lunch. Staff agreed that this is not always avoidable because the sheer volume of programs, but that it would not be penalized and that we can communicate to our coworkers that we will be late to our next shift.

b.       We discussed when the best time to take breaks were. It was suggested that breaks be taken when you are assigned duties in the back, but Drew wanted to make it clear that as long as staff gets someone to cover their floor duties and we have enough people, that you can take a break at any time.

c.       We discussed the best way to handle food orders so there would not be wasted food. We decided that Friday we should order 50 meals to have enough for Monday and Tuesday but that from Tuesday on we should order 24 lunches and see how many we need for the next day.

d.       Catia thanked everyone for helping answer so many questions as she gets used to Blue Ridge and Ambrea for doing such a great job of shelving.

e.       Freda thanked Jacqueline for her fantastic job in creating the July calendar

f.        Jacqueline thanked Freda and Kayren for all the help they provided in working with her on various projects.

g.       Kayren thanked everyone for helping smoothly resolve the incident with the public lewdness ban and Drew for being willing to move tables after events.

h.       Ambrea thanked everyone for all the on the job coaching. 

Thanks for the lively, positive meeting!