Savanah is supervisor for work study employees for the student services office at the College of Science. At the start of the academic year, Savanah holds a mandatory new student employee orientation that focuses on her office’s commitments to exemplary student service. Savanah’s orientation includes explicit instructions on how to communicate verbally and non-verbally with student patrons. Savanah’s directives include being high-energy and she insists that her students be smiling and talkative with a “perky” disposition. Savanah asserts that her staff should demonstrate interest and curiosity in the students who visit their office and engage in enthusiastic conversation.
At the end of the fall term, several grievances come to the College of Science human resources department from student employees who were documented in their performance evaluations as not meeting essential expectations of their roles. Each grievance highlights customer service expectations. The student justifications for their grievances assert that the critique they received in their performance reviews is culturally grounded and that multiple alternatives for providing quality and polite customer service were not articulated in their fall orientation or honored in their evaluation.
The Human Resources team initiates a mediation between Savanah and her staff. As a result of their mediation, and Savanah’s subsequent reflection and professional development, she increases her awareness to the particular cultural values which undergird her notion of good service. She also recognizes that while some of her students’ dispositions may be different from the norms she was raised with, the diversity of approaches brought by her team ultimately improves the quality of service her office provides.
Savanah revises her subsequent trainings to be less authoritative, and instead engages new employees in a conversation about how they communicate respect and provide quality service. Together, Savanah and her staff co-develop the criteria that will be used to evaluate their performance at the end of the term.
- The Issue: Savanah’s new employee curriculum imposes a particular paradigm of customer service that aligns with her own upbringing and values. As a result, student employees with different cultural orientations to customer service receive critical feedback in their formal employee evaluation.
- The Deliberation: Human resources mediates a conversation between Savanah and her staff. Savanah subsequently engages in additional inquiry and reflection.
- The Growth: Savanah recognizes the particular cultural orientation to her guidance on customer service and amends her training to be less instructional and more dialogic so the team can shape their customer service standards together.