Staff support is critically important for your success. Effective staff can enhance your work while difficult and underproductive staff can diminish it. Prevention of problems is of course the best approach. You should strive to ensure that your staff have the resources that they need to do their work and that they feel valued for their contributions. If issues do arise, early recognition and resolution is key. Some signs of problems include unexplained absences, tardiness, missing project deadlines, error-filled work products, and personality changes. Recognizing the problems and identifying their causes (e.g., skill gaps, mental health issues, physical impairment) is important in their resolution. If problems persist, it may be helpful to develop a formal performance improvement plan. As a faculty member, staff may report directly to you or may be supervised by other faculty or administrators. In the latter case, you should work with the supervisor of the employee with whom you are having difficulty. Working around the supervisor of the staff member usually results in conflicting approaches and confusion on the part of the staff member, making the situation worse. It is important that you are familiar with institutional staff policies, including agreements for any unionized employees. Human resources/relations (HR) and labor relations (LR) are offices that can assist you and the supervisor in addressing problems. Follow-up and monitoring are important and include completion of performance evaluations of staff members in a timely fashion.