Overview
The next level down from priorities is the level of objectives. In order to tackle your establishment priorities, one or more objectives will be assigned to staff members to achieve by the end date of the associated priority.
Instructions
Practical Task:
- Open the left-hand contents menu and select Improvement Plan
The screen that appears should resemble this one:
Notice:
By default all the objectives which have a due date within the displayed date range are listed on the screen
The familiar filtering text boxes are displayed at the top of the screen
If you click in the Filter text area you will see you can filter by priority, staff member or staff department
A graph towards the right of the screen at the top gives percentages for the various activity statuses
The colours in the graph correspond to the coloured squares further down to indicate the numbers of activities with the various activity statuses
The two left-hand side icons - the print icon and the disk icon - allow you to print or export to a Word document the objective information
The Department column will either display Whole School (or establishment equivalent) or a department name
The coloured squares show the number of activities with the activity status indicated by the colour for each objective
The exclamation mark icon column indicates the number of overdue activities
Further to the right is an Actual Cost column then the usual pencil and bin icons for editing or remove the objective
To see how the information in an objective is structured, you shall add a new objective.
Practical Task:
- From the Improvement Plan page select Add
The Add/Edit Objective popup screen has seven tabs with the Details tab selected as in the screenshot below:
Practical Task:
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Before entering data on the Details tab go to the Priorities tab and tick one of the priorities for your objective to be associated with
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Return to the Details tab and type in the objective description with something to implement the priority you just ticked
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Leave the default lead as yourself and leave the default start and end dates
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Enter some realistic text in the Success Criteria/Targets text box
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Select a Department from the dropdown list
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Select the Staff tab and add some ticks for staff you manage who you wish to be involved with this objective. (The staff with padlocks and full sets of ticks have the user right to access and update all Improvement Plan objectives and activities.)
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Add some realistic text on the Evaluation tab
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From the header select Save to add your objective
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Check it is in the full list of objectives
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Check it is in the filtered list when the Department is selected in the filter
If you click on the objective description a new screen displays listing the activities associated with the objective. In the next section we shall look at activities and add one to this objective.
Before moving to activities we shall see how to link performance management objectives to improvement plan objectives.
Practical Task:
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From the Improvement Plan page select the pencil icon next to the objective that you have just added
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Notice you now have two extra tabs compared to when you were adding the objective - the Evidence tab and the SPM Objectives tab
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Notice there is currently no data on these two tabs
We shall now go back to the Performance Management module to add a performance management objective linking it to your newly added improvement plan objective.
Practical Task:
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From the left-hand contents menu select My Staff
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Select the staff member you ticked against the objective you added a few minutes ago
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Ensure you are on the work area page of the current open review for the staff member
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Select the Objectives tab
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From the header select Add Objective
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Select SDP Objective as the Type
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Select your new objective from the dropdown list in the Option text box
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Notice the text from the DP objective now displays in the Objective and Performance Criteria text areas
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Add an action and then enter passwords on the Staff Agreement tab 10. Select Add
Notice:
The new objective appears in the list of objectives for this staff member
The action will be visible when you press the plus icon
The icon with vertical lines like a bar chart shows the objective is an SDP objective and if you hover over it the objective description is shown
Next Steps
