This paper outlines a performance management model for the Program Coordinator of Partners for a Healthy Baby, a not-for-profit program supporting pregnant and parenting teenagers. It examines the personality traits and professional competencies required for the role, strategies for rigorous candidate recruitment and interviewing, and best practices for ongoing performance evaluation — including 360-degree appraisal methods. The paper also addresses performance management considerations specific to public-sector organizations, emphasizing stakeholder accountability, strategic planning, and continuous monitoring. Drawing on program data and established HR frameworks, it argues that finding the right coordinator is essential to sustaining and expanding the program's documented success.
The Program Coordinator of Partners for a Healthy Baby faces the challenge of implementing a program designed to facilitate positive health, growth, and educational development of teens and their babies. The position requires a strong background in social work, adolescent development, and health-related fields. The Program Coordinator will act as both an educator and a facilitator in conjunction with the performance expectations of this role.
The Coordinator will work with the Program Chief to oversee administration-related issues and financing, and also with members of the community — such as healthcare organizations — to ensure that Partners for a Healthy Baby is meeting its desired goals.
For example, one component of the program involves driving girls to doctor's appointments so they do not feel forced to choose between attending school and receiving prenatal care. This requires recruiting volunteer drivers as well as working with physicians to schedule appointments at times convenient to the girls' school schedules. The ability to solicit volunteers, collaborate with healthcare professionals, and structure a program that meets the needs of these young women requires all of the personal skills and character traits outlined in this paper to be manifest in the Program Coordinator.
The character traits required for the Program Coordinator include strong interpersonal skills, the ability to multitask, and the capacity to evaluate evidence-based research in order to provide adequate scrutiny of existing information on teenage pregnancy — ensuring the program makes optimal use of all available data.
On a fundamental level, the leadership requirements for this role are both personality-based and knowledge-based. The ability to be extroverted and to work well with the community is essential, but there is also a need for technical knowledge, such as prioritizing specific types of care and meeting the developmental needs of the teens and children involved in the program.
Personality assessments may be used to screen candidates, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which rates candidates on dimensions such as extroversion vs. introversion, feeling vs. thinking, sensing vs. intuition, and judging vs. perceiving. Such tests can be highly subjective, however, and should serve as only one component of the recruiting process. Knowledge, educational background, and past experience must all be considered alongside personality assessments.
"Interview rigor, evaluation standards, and orientation expectations"
Because interviewing is itself a subjective process, using multiple interviewers and conducting multiple rounds of interviews is often useful in developing a full portrait of each candidate's strengths and weaknesses. Asking substantive questions about likely on-the-job challenges — such as managing program budget cuts or addressing opposition from school and parent groups who view the program as overly tolerant of teen pregnancy — is also advisable. The interview process must be rigorous because the position itself is a demanding one.
The standards of evaluation should also be clearly communicated at the Program Coordinator's orientation, so there is no ambiguity about duties. These standards will include providing services for the at-risk population, minimizing dropout rates, recruiting and retaining both volunteers and salaried staff, and receiving evaluations from the Program Chief as well as input from other key administrative figures — including representatives from the high schools from which girls are recruited into the program.
In the past, performance evaluations at many organizations were carried out on an annual basis and were relatively perfunctory. This often caused frustration on both sides: supervisors had minimal input over the course of the year, resulting in little meaningful change in performance, while supervisees were only told their performance was lacking after it was too late to make substantive improvements. Feedback should ideally be given in an ongoing and engaged manner, with open dialogue between manager and subordinate. For the Program Coordinator, this means working closely with the Program Chief, and it also underlines the need for the Coordinator to design an effective performance evaluation mechanism for all program staff. Mentorship of new employees can be a particularly valuable approach for providing input in a less judgmental framework, ensuring that performance reviews do not contain unpleasant surprises.
Behavioral checklists — evaluating a candidate based solely on meeting a laundry list of objectives — have fallen out of favor as a method of performance evaluation (Elan, 2014). While data-driven metrics regarding program success must remain a component of evaluation, they should not be the sole determinant of success, given the extent to which external factors beyond the Coordinator's control can affect year-to-year outcomes.
A more useful appraisal method for higher-level positions is the 360-degree appraisal, which involves feedback from the full team of people involved in the employee's work. Feedback may come from "the manager, supervisor, team members and any direct reports. In this method of appraisal, [an] employee['s] complete profile has to be collected and assessed. In addition to evaluating the employee['s] work performance and technical skill set, an appraiser collects an in-depth feedback of the employee" from both lower-level and higher-level staff members (Elan, 2014). In a not-for-profit public service organization where volunteers are critical to program operations, their input regarding the Coordinator's ability to work effectively with them is especially valuable.
The 360-degree method is also useful because it more readily allows the review process to identify both success factors and areas for improvement. Partners for a Healthy Baby has been meeting its stated goals and objectives, but there is always room for growth. Since 2008, more than 133 teens have benefited from the program, and 55 of its members have successfully graduated from high school ("DSS Success in Schools Receives Award," 2012).
"Stakeholder accountability and strategic monitoring in public programs"
Consistent monitoring of both individual performance and overall organizational progress through a variety of benchmark indicators is the fairest and most effective approach to ensuring that the needs of program recipients are served ("Performance Management in the Public Sector," 2014).
Partners for a Healthy Baby is a successful small program with the potential to be leveraged to greater advantage for teens in the immediate area. Finding the right person to fulfill the duties of Program Coordinator is a critical first step toward creating effective performance monitoring — determining what the program is doing well and setting new benchmarks for achievement in the future.
Department of Social Services of Wilson, NC. (2015). Retrieved from
DSS Success in Schools receives award. (2012). Wilson County. Press Release. Retrieved from
Elan. (2014). What are the different types of performance appraisal systems? HR Zone. Retrieved from http://www.hrzone.com/community-voice/blogs/elan/what-are-the-different-types-of-performance-appraisal-system
MBTI Basics. (2015). Myers-Briggs Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/
Performance management in the public sector. (2014). Accenture. Retrieved from Accenture.com
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