Resource Highlight: Onboarding and Success Planning
By Heather Blanton and Madeline Gonser
Welcome to the Rural Realities Blog! This blog will be highlighting the new resources, Developing an Effective Onboarding Process: Promising Practices for Onboarding New Sexual Assault Response Team Members and Succession Planning: Promising Practices for Sexual Assault Response Team Coordinators. These resources were developed under our National SART Project.
As new teams form and as established teams experience potential turnover, it’s important to have a strong and organized process in place for onboarding new team members. In addition, it can be really helpful to develop a succession plan for team members who may be transitioning off of the team. Succession planning is the process of developing a strategy or plan for when people leave their positions so that the next person to come into that role will have all the information necessary to pick up where that individual left off. Onboarding and succession planning are both components to a healthy sustainability and strategic plan for your sexual assault response team. Strategic planning is a process for determining and aligning your SARTs mission and vision with its goals and objectives.
The resource, Developing an Effective Onboarding Process: Promising Practices for Onboarding New Sexual Assault Response Team Members is a valuable tool designed to help ensure that new team members have all the information necessary to be an effective part of the team. This tool is designed to spark creativity. It can also be helpful to ask yourself “Are we creating a welcoming, informative, environment for new team members? What would have been helpful for you to have known when you came onto your SART?”
The resource, Succession Planning: Promising Practices for Sexual Assault Response Team Coordinators focuses on succession planning. Succession planning is the process of developing a strategy or plan for when people leave their positions so that the next person to come into that role will have all the information necessary to pick up where that individual left off. In the case of a SART team, having an established succession process can help avoid uncertainty and encourage the team to keep forward momentum with minimal interruptions as team members transition in. This resource is designed to guide teams through transitions. Succession planning documents are living documents and meant to be updated and modified. We suggest teams revisit succession plan documents annually to ensure they remain relevant to the team’s structure and goals.
If you have any questions about the resources shared in this blog, please reach out to us at svji@mncasa.org.
This project was supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-22-GK-04024-RURA awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.