Student Employee Conduct Guide
On-campus employment is another form of education for students. For some students, this may be their first work experience. For other students, campus employment may not seem like a "real" job. As employers, it is our role to help student employees understand that whatever they are hired to do, their job IS real, that they play an important role in our day-to-day operations, and that they can benefit from learning about our work environments.
Occasionally you may need to provide guidance to a student employee. Part of the educational experience is providing constructive feedback when a student's job performance does not meet your expectations.
It's easier to address problems if you set clear expectations at the beginning of employment. Hours, dress, telephone manner, office decorum, breaks, absences, workload and assignments should be reviewed when a student is first trained. Possible issues to discuss include:
- Personal use of office resources (can they check their e-mail, use the computers to type papers, etc?)
- Homework (Is it OK to work on it under some circumstances?)
- What should they do if they aren't able to work a shift?
- How to interact with customers
- Guidelines for personal use of the telephone/cell phone
- Departmental dress code
- Policy for food at work
- How to answer the phone
- Emergency procedures
- Taking rest and lunch breaks
- Confidentiality of office information
- Sleeping on the job
- Hanging out in the office when not working
- Visitors in the office without approval
- Playing games on their computer during scheduled work time
Use the Student Employee Orientation Checklist (yellow sheet in the back of your supervisor information folder) to make sure students know where you stand on these issues.
Student Employee Evaluations
Even though evaluations for student employees are not required by KSU Human Resources, periodic evaluations (both formal and informal) create an excellent avenue to provide feedback to student employees. If you establish a regular habit of giving frequent and positive feedback, you will have created a basis for communicating when you need to talk to the student about a problem. Evaluation is required when the student is terminated or dismissed.
Evaluations do not need to be elaborate. One method is to sandwich a reference to a problem between two compliments.
- Do provide positive feedback!
- Do ask students for feedback on how they evaluate their own performance.
- Do provide students the written results of the evaluation. Documentation is needed if the problem behavior continues.