From time to time I go to lunch with our HR Consultant, Michael Brisciana, just to catch up with what’s new on the Association tour, in the consulting world of ISM, and in life. Nothing fancy. Just your basic colleague lunch that is always a welcome break from my typical eat-at-the-desk routine. The last time we ventured into the square together, Michael mentioned Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model. At the time, I couldn’t recall ever hearing anything about it, but after he handed me a printed article later that day, I started to remember the long lectures and opinionated conversations from my required college psychology courses years ago. A few days later, Michael e-mailed me an article by Chip Conley that took Maslow’s theory and applied it to the business world. For about a month now, I have played around with different ideas on how to relay this information to you—our ISM’s e-Letter readers. Well, after several rough drafts that ended up in my recycle bin in tightly balled wads of paper, I think I’ve finally found a way to translate the information—I’m just going to write what I personally have taken away from this. This is certainly not going to be hard-hitting journalism or profound ISM theory, but if I can get this approved by the powers higher than me, I think you’re in for an interesting read.

We’ve received several questions recently concerning maternity leave policies. On the one hand, some have questioned whether such policies violate anti-discrimination laws. On the other hand, other schools have wondered how to coordinate paid maternity leave with their existing short-term disability (STD) insurance policies. We’ll try to address both issues here.

“Keep in mind 33,000 of our fellow Americans are dead this year from suicide. Very few of them were bullied,” said Thomas Joiner, a clinical psychologist and Florida State University suicide researcher. As part of the Admission Office, your duties may also involve communicating with parents. What could a parent care about more than the safety of their child? With a few recent suicide stories circulating in the news, chances are at least one parent has voiced their concerns about your school’s bullying policies, and many have thought about it. But, besides including your school’s policy in the next parent newsletter, what more can you share with them? Well, read on.

Q: We’ve required all employees to “sign in” and “sign out” of the building at different points over the years, but never consistently. What are the pro’s and con’s of doing so? And does this have anything to do with what hours we pay non-exempt employees for?

You might not be thinking about conducting exit surveys this early in the school year, or about losing students to other campuses in the area. The school year has just started after all, and why would parents make a change now? Fair enough. But, have you ever considered asking your parents how satisfied they are with your school and their child’s development? Surveying parents now about your school’s unique features is one of the most proactive steps you can take. Why? Simply stated, because you can never have too much data! Before we begin, let us first confirm ISM’s theory on parent surveys. ISM believes that surveys should always be conducted by a third party to ensure you get the highest response rate possible because the respondents’ anonymity is protected. (We have several survey resource options you can select from.) However, we understand some schools like to handle surveying themselves. Although we warn against it, the following article has been written to help you understand some of key elements in creating effective surveys.

There’s a lot of scheduling theory! So let’s pick just one area of it and see what it says about our schedules, and whether we are providing optimal learning environments for our students. Chronobiology is an integral part of thinking about time. Go to Chronobiology International to see some of the applications that are being made using this research!

Last month, we wrote about the importance of establishing “characteristics of excellence” as the foundation of your faculty hiring process. While we realize that contract season isn’t for several more months, the question of contracts has spurred a lot of discussion on the listserv recently. Therefore, we thought that we’d “jump ahead” to the end of the hiring process and focus on contract-related issues that all schools need to consider.

ISM believes that schools need to view “Risk Management” (RM) as a separate (and then eventually integrated) process. An important part of this RM discussion revolves around the transference of risk as a control mechanism. You, for your school, can decide to retain risk if it is a fiscally sound decision or, if the chance of “it” happening is low and even if it does, you can afford to pay for it. Alternately, should the risk be far too costly for the school to retain, then passing (or transferring) the risk to someone else is the way to go.Perhaps the most obvious “risk transference,” and one we’re all familiar with, is that of purchasing insurance.

Schools nationwide, are starting to question the way they hire and evaluate faculty. Seniority is becoming less important, which could be terrible news for teachers that use their tenure as leverage and not their teaching skills. Today, more and more schools are not necessarily looking for the teacher with the most experience, but the teacher that can prove their commitment to the students, the mission of the school, and their positive contributions to the overall faculty culture.

Managing stress isn’t as simple as learning to take breaths or scheduling enough time to sit down with the family for dinner. Managing stress is a complicated self-examination process that, like all disciplines, takes time to master. Yet, it’s one of the most important skills you can teach yourself—not just for your health, but also for the health of your staff’s morale and student’s healthy habits. That’s why we’re going to run a two-part series on stress management. In this first article, we outline how you can identify stress in your life. Next month (once you’ve had some time to log a few entries into your journal), we will going to share with you some healthy tips on managing it.