Intern Management Roles and Responsibilities
During the internship with Vote Smart it is essential that all people involved in the supervision of our interns (Operations Coordinator, Intern Supervisors, and Directors) should have clear roles that they need to understand in order to have a successful internship for not only the interns but staff as well. There are roles for general internship supervision and for completed evaluations.
Internship Roles and Responsibilities
The following section will split the roles of each party involve in internship supervision for the Operations Coordinator, Intern Supervisors, and Research Directors.
Operations Coordinator
The following are the roles for the Operations Coordinator in Intern Supervision:- To receive and maintain schedules that work best for the interns to avoid consistent changing schedules.
- Create and distribute information for on-boarding such as: email and accounts (i.e. Slack and VPN) activation and offer of internships.
- To maintain and distribute the sign in and sign out Google form that interns are responsible for filling out every time they work.
- To maintain the hours tracking document of interns schedules and completed hours which will be shared with all intern supervisors and department directors.
- To count and record all of the interns hours and put it into the tracking document, any issues with hours I will use the following steps to correct issues with hours:
- According to the policy and procedures they sign is when they do not sign in and sign out to not count hours for that day. The Strike Policy will still be maintained to prevent instant not counting of hours.
- Just a reminder that the Strike Policy is when an intern fails to sign in, sign out, or both they will receive a strike for each occurrence. After three strikes any instances after that are missing they are subject to miss those hours.
- If they have discrepancies with this and their hours, they can talk to the Operations Coordinator to explain the procedure.
- To maintain and implement a three strike policy to serve as an additional accountability step with hours monitoring and tracking.
- To maintain and implement community building opportunities such as workshops, Coffee Breaks, anything really that would be seen as an asset to an overall good internship experience at Vote Smart.
- Coffee Breaks in the future will look like having opportunities for interns to reach out to each other (more during summer semesters for that as they will be mainly remote opportunities) and then assigning one supervisor for multiple groups over the course of the semester instead of consistently changing the connection over the course of the semester.
- If the intern is unable to work (emergency or any other reason) the intern is to contact the Operations Coordinator and their direct supervisor with a Time Off Request and how they plan on making up the hours. If they continue to have consistent absences, disciplinary action should be considered.
Intern Supervisors
The following are the roles for the Intern Supervisors in Intern Supervision:- Provide program training and program tasks to their interns.
- Provide categories and tags training to interns who cannot attend large-group training sessions and any refresher training along the interns journey.
- Communicate with their interns during their assigned shifts and communicate with the Operations Coordinator if the intern isn’t communicating back.
- Communicate changes in interns’ schedules (hours for the week or otherwise) to and notify about sickness or vacation to Operations Coordinator.
- Notifying the operations coordinator and your research department director on any interns that are not complying with the policies and procedures set in place for interns. (If you ever want a copy of P&P let me know!)
- Participation in communication events and otherwise (i.e Coffee Breaks, Workshops, etc) to help establish connections and community for the interns assigned to you.
Research Directors
The following are the roles for the Research Directors in Intern Supervision:- Make intern program requests to the national director prior to semester recruitment.
- Make intern assignments to intern supervisors.
- Create intern admin accounts and assist in troubleshooting all IT problems before bringing issues to IT.
- Write intern welcome letters with all login information.
- Provide categories and tags training to interns who can meet during assigned large-group training sessions.
- Provide reminders to intern supervisors to complete evaluations, coffee breaks, etc.
- Provide support and guidance to intern supervisors and operations coordinator in conversations surrounding intern discipline should it arise.
Evaluations Roles and Responsibilities
The following section will split the roles and responsibilities of the Operations Coordinator, Intern Supervisors and Research Directors involved in the evaluation process in the internship program.Operations Coordinator
The following are the roles and responsibilities for the Operations Coordinator in the Evaluation process for interns:- Create and maintain response forms to beginning, midterm, and final evaluations for interns and staff.
- Once evaluations are completed, sending the responses to relevant organizations and individuals (i.e. independent studies).
- Archiving them at the end of each semester.
Intern Supervisors
The following are the roles and responsibilities for the Intern Supervisors in the Evaluation process for interns:- Prepare, conduct, and submit three evaluations for their interns throughout the semester. Beginning Evaluation to be completed after the interns first two weeks, Mid Term Evaluation to be completed according to the midway point for assigned interns hours to be completed (as seen on the Hours Tracking Document) and Final Evaluations to be completed prior to the interns last day.
- Provide feedback on the content of evaluations to Operations Coordinator.
Research Directors
The following are the roles and responsibilities for the Research Directors in the Evaluation process for interns:- Review evaluations and provide feedback to supervisors regarding the quality and helpfulness of said evaluations.
- Be on the “lookout” for potential problems in an internship and check in with supervisors to see if more serious conversations are warranted, and if needed communicating with the Operations Coordinator.
