more strategies for boosting report completion

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Other Ways to Improve Reports Completion Rates
• Using the Phone
• Other Important, Ongoing Activities

Other Ways to Improve Reports Completion Rates

Report completers tend to appreciate reports more when they feel like conversations rather than one-way data streams from them to you.

Modify your reports regularly.

We've found time and time again that people complete reports more often when the report questions are modified regularly.

Even making a change to one question makes a difference. Don’t know what to ask? Read on. 

Add one new question each period based on a recently-completed report, or customize the text of your strategy sharing question to read something like, “Last week, a number of our people reported challenges around ___ issue.  Have you had a success in this area?  Please share it so that we can better support others in our program.”

Include questions asking your people how they’re doing.

Use the reports to check in on the well-being of your people.  Our evaluation data show that people really value report questions that focus on how they’re doing, not just on their performance.  So ask questions like:

• How are you feeling about your experience in our program this school year?
• What do you need from program staff to best support you?
• How would you improve our program?
• How are you?
  

Using the Phone

Call individuals who have not completed reports regularly and ask them to share the specific reasons they have not done so.
 

Learn who you need to call by using your Completion Info Viewer.

Call the people who do complete reports regularly to thank them and to also learn the reasons they do complete reports.  

You may find that distinct differences exist between the people who do complete reports and those that do not by having this type of open conversation.

Learn who you need to call by using your Completion Info Viewer.

Other Important, Ongoing Activities

Note the most recent report completion rate and always set a goal for a higher response.

    Take advantage of the Program News box on your America Learns Impact Suite home page.  

Here are some of the things you can do with it:

• Post data trends or anomalies from recent report data.
• Thank specific people for always completing reports.
• List the report completion rates of the top completers over a given time period (e.g., month, semester, season).

Share some of the above data in any newsletters that go out to your people

Incorporate report data into training and ongoing support workshops.

For example, you can use some of the goals and challenges people have described in their reports as prompts for role playing activities.  

Another example: If 80% of your people are logging behavior challenges regularly, it’s a good idea to focus a support workshop on the specific issues being reported to communicate that you are reading and using the data.

Celebrate contributions that your people make to your program via the Impact Suite at a variety of in-person or web-based events. 

Celebrate a person of the week/month/quarter at meetings or events.  You can also highlight individuals in your Program News box (just be conscious to update the box often as outdated news communicates you are not using the Impact Suite).  

One program we serve gives each tutor a binder at the beginning of the year for that program's “strategies of the month.”  During monthly meetings, staff members pass out copies of the strategies of the month for the binders.  That same program also awards a trophy to the individual who submitted the top strategy of each month.  We’re not encouraging you to go out and buy trophies, but the process of showing that you value the time and effort people are putting into sharing their experiences and success via the Impact Suite is something you may want to think about if you are not already doing it.

Purchasing Awards

One tutoring program used to award its tutors with 100% completion rates each quarter with a $50 gift certificate to purchase tutoring supplies.