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− | [[People's Concern Process]]
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− | [[Citybikes Grievance Procedure]]
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− | ==Citybikes:==
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− | This one's a bit simpler. When a Citybikes (CB) policy has been disregarded,
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− | the observing party/ies should:
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− | - Immediately talk to the offender and ask that the behavior stops
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− | - If no change, consult another worker. If the other worker agrees that
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− | there's a policy breach, also asks offender that behavior stops.
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− | - If still no improvement, report is made to personnel coordinator or review
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− | sub-committee, which, if they agree that policy has been broken will meet
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− | with offender to arrange sanctions.
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− | Sanctions go like this:
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− | 1st violation - offender suggests sanctions agreeable to the committee
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− | 2nd - Committee suggests further sanctions agreeable to the offender
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− | 3rd - General Meeting (includes all staff) determines further sanctions
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− | 4th - leave of absence or dismissal
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− | Non-owner can be terminated by a majority vote of all owners.
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− | Owner can be terminated by a vote of 80% in favor.
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− |
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− | ==Some questions==
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− | Check 'em out, make suggestions for changes or additions, etc.
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− | What I'm trying to find out:
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− | * What about an organization leads to successful dealings with staff issues?
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− | * Is there something that could be changed about our structure/policies that would help us avoid staff discipline issues altogether?
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− | * Once discipline is needed, what's the most humane and effective way to do it?
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− | Questions:
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− | * What works well about your procedure? Why? Describe a time when it worked well.
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− | * What doesn't work well? Why? Describe a time when it didn't work very well.
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− | * Does it feel fair for the participants? If not, why not?
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− | * Why did your coop decide to give the procedure the structure it has (CB is more direct, Peoples' works through the CT more)?
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− | * What changes would you suggest to your coop's discipline procedure?
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− | * Review process help avoid staff discipline issues?
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− | * What else helps aviod staff disc. issues?
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− | * Reviews: signed or anon? What's better?
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− | :Sounds great - the key in finding help/suggestions lies in the difference between Coorporate America and Collectives. If we talk with Coorporate America, it may not fit our needs. -- Kathie
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− | * Does it feel fair for the participants? If not, why not?
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− | * Suggestions to cut down on the us vs. them mentality?
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− |
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− | ==An interview==
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− | Hey. I interviewed Lori of Peoples' on Wednesday the 10th of November and
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− | Harriet and Noel today. I wanted to get some notes down of these two
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− | meetings before the info disappears from my brain.
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− | You might want to review the original summary (redux is indeed not the right
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− | word) of the policies that I made a couple of days ago:
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− | http://lists.freegeek.org/private/hr/2004-November/000040.html
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− | Comments, questions, etc. are good things.
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− | Shawn
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− | -----------------------------------------------
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− | Peoples'
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− | Peoples' has lots of methods of feedback. Lots. To understand a little bit
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− | about some of their methods, I gotta talk a little about structure. They
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− | have about 6 standing committees (they call them 'teams'). Each collective
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− | position includes duties on at least one team - preassigned. For example,
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− | part of the development director's job is to serve on the Coordinating Team.
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− | The Coordinating Team (CT) is the committee that deals with most of the
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− | discipline issues. I think there's 4 or 5 people on it (including Lori).
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− | Discipline procedure (Performance Improvement and Concerns):
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− | It seems I was a little wrong in how their procedure works. I said it was 4
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− | steps that all seemed very similar. In reality, the first step, Performance
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− | Improvement, is a lot lighter than the others. Kind of like a "We notice
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− | there's something up, what's going on?" sort of step. The concerns process
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− | is more serious, and happens after the PI part.
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− | Not in the policy doc is one step in the concerns process: the CT, when
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− | they're going into the process, will hand the worker a written document that
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− | outlines the concerns. She said that the wording of the document can make or
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− | break the feeling of fairness of the process.
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− | Something else left out of the documentation is the fact that a third,
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− | neutral party can come to every meeting involved in the concern process (not
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− | for Performance Improvement - it's not serious enough yet).
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− | She emphasized more than once that speaking to the individual (one on one)
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− | is encouraged and works best to avoid using the discipline procedures a lot.
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− | She also said that the part of the discipline process that helps the
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− | disciplined worker through the process works well. This is the part where
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− | some people from the coordinating team sit down and voice the
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− | concerns/problems, let the worker talk and clarify, they find a solution/next
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− | steps together, and make a written plan that goes into the worker's permanent
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− | record or not depending on whether it was a PI or a concern. There's a
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− | check-in after a period of a few months in any case, and she thought this was
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− | something that added to the success of the procedure.
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− | Another thing she thought was a good idea is limiting the size of the group
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− | that talks to the disciplined worker. They have 1 CT member, 1 witness, and
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− | the worker at the concern meetings.
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− | Peoples' workers make a lot of goals for themselves. There's lots of goals
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− | for the disciplined worker that come out of their discipline procedures (the
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− | written agreement's got 'em). They work consciously to make a measurable
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− | outcome for each goal. This could be 'come to work on time 3 months
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− | straight' or 'be more open and responsive to feedback' or whatever.
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− | Problem with discipline process:
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− | It can be hard to keep up the process at times. Check-ins tend to fall by
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− | the wayside every once in a while.
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− | Some others in the collective have a hard time because the members of the CT
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− | haven't been elected onto that team, yet they always are the ones giving
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− | discipline. Serving on that specific committee is part of each member of the
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− | CT's job description, and there's no rotating off to another team. Lori
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− | qualified the structure by saying that the entire collective is involved in
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− | making decisions on discipline issues (I forgot to ask where the whole staff
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− | is empowered to make decisions on the process other than the choice to
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− | terminate or not).
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− | Reviews and other forms of feedback:
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− | Reviews for individuals happen once a year for each collective member.
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− | There's a series of about 20 statements that each staff person rates the
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− | reviewee 1 - 5 on, and all the numbers are averaged. There's also a section
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− | for 'does well' and a section for 'need to work on' that people can write
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− | things in for. The reviewers (always CT person, head of some other team, and
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− | reveiwee's dept. head) compile the answers into one short document to hand to
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− | the person being reviewed. (I think this isn't a bad structure for the
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− | review document, but we might want to do 3ish sections of does well/needs
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− | improvement answers for stuff like furthers FG goals, work at and concerning
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− | committees, job performance, and/or maybe something else.) At each review,
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− | the reviewee walks out with a list of goals to work on. They also do a
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− | self-eval of their performance over the past year. They store copies of all
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− | the documents and bring them to the reviewee's review the next year so they
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− | can see if things have improved.
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− | Eventually, they're going to move into a system of reviews where the team
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− | fills out a more intensive form than the rest of the collective. The balance
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− | of the forms will in turn be made shorter.
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− | Lori said that she liked signed reviews. Since the review sheets are all
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− | tabulated and summarized, I don't think the reviewee ever really knows who
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− | says what. It's useful, though, if the team doing the review can know who
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− | filled out the sheet so they can find him/her if something's illegible or if
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− | the feedback's too harsh and needs rewording.
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− | They do feedback in some other ways, too. First of all, the team a person
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− | is on is supposed to be responsible for taking care of issues with
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− | individuals before they get too big. Preventatively, there's always a 5-10
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− | min section at the start of each team's meeting in which one team member is
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− | focused on. They talk about how things are going with them and ask questions
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− | and advice of the rest of their team for how to do a more effective job, etc.
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− | If something bigger comes up, it's brought up as an agenda item in the
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− | team's meeting. The team member just gets a little nudge, I guess.
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− | Every quarter, each staff member puts together a document that lists all
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− | their goals from their job description, reviews, the part of the
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− | organization's goals that they've taken on (like stuff from the 3-year plan),
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− | and Performance Improvement and Concern processes and list the progress
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− | they've made on each goal, and the next steps for each goal. All documents
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− | are posted in the staff log. At what's called a 'quarterly team meeting'
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− | each team member's quarterly progress document is reviewed and talked about
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− | (the documents are supposed to be read before the meeting).
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− | I'll be talking to Jason soon, and I'll report back on his viewpoint of the
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− | Peoples policies.
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− |
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− | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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− | Citybikes
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− | Citybikes' discipline procedures are a far cry from Peoples'. Even though
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− | they have a process for discipline, it's not really used. Most issues are
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− | addressed on an individual to individual basis. They give each other lip and
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− | nudges, and occasionally just tell each other that something that's happening
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− | isn't OK. There's even an unwritten sort of policy that says that stuff
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− | that's brought up in reviews (which each worker receives annually) shouldn't
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− | be new: it should have been brought up to the worker individually before the
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− | review.
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− | The last time a discipline issue was dealt with on more of a group basis was
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− | probably 5 years ago. It was a sexual harassment charge, and they dealt with
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− | it off-the-cuff. They dealt with it in-house by doing a sort of conflict
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− | mediation-style talk with both parties. It didn't work out that well because
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− | no one was trained in how to do conflict mediation. I think the group that's
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− | training themselves in conflict mediation probably arose as a result of this.
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− | The conflict mediation team is now available as a way for those who are
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− | intimidated by those they have issues with to get the problems addressed.
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− | In terms of reviews, there are yearly reviews with 3, 6, or next-review
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− | check-ins if necessary. I think they bring the paperwork from the last
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− | review to the current one. If there's a major issue, they sometimes move the
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− | problem-worker's review up a few months.
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− | Most of the issues they brought up had to do with lateness, and they said
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− | they haven't done any forced trainings or suspensions. If they could change
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− | anything about the procedure, Noel mentioned that he would have a grievance
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− | slip available to workers. Harriet really likes their system because, she
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− | says, it allows the workers "room to be human". Since she's so outspoken and
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− | friendly, she tends to know what's up in many of her co-workers' lives, and
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− | therefore understands if someone's work is slipping because of
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− | life-outside-of-work problems. She's okay with cutting slack when
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− | appropriate, because people usually get back on top of things. She's also
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− | really good with stating boundaries.
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− | I asked Noel and Harriet why they thought no major issues had arisen. They
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− | said that, since the bike mechanics all work within a pretty close proximity
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− | to each other, that they tend to be pretty accountable and mature.
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− |
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− | The Problems:
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− | Harriet said that one of her biggest problems with the Citybikes community
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− | is that they tend to be too liberal and laissez-faire about stating
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− | boundaries when someone's going over a line (she's probably one of the
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− | biggest heavies when it comes to lateness issues and bigger issues).
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− | I've also heard some stuff through Noel over the past year and a half about
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− | people being really passive-agressive or just too shy. There's been times
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− | when he's stood up against an idea during a meeting and experienced no
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− | support during the meeting, but people then walked up to him immediately
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− | following the meeting to voice their support to him. This looks a little
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− | like the weenie-liberalism that Harriet spoke of. I think a lot of it is
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− | most likely situationally-caused.
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− | I think an example of this attitude is this: apprentices and junior workers
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− | get their work checked by senior workers. Cool, but once a senior's work was
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− | found to be flawed (I think a customer complained). The senior worker was
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− | told about it and refused to start submitting his/her work to once-overs by
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− | other workers. Nothing else ever happened - the senior worker just kind of
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− | said, "No," and since no one was willing to enforce the non-enforced policy,
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− | that's where it still stands.
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− | Another issue at Citybikes is chronic lack of communication between workers:
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− | meeting minutes, policy changes, decisions are all posted at one of the
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− | shops, but many don't take the time to read them and, as might be expected,
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− | there's no real email networking between workers. I don't really know
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− | exactly how this affects the problems there, but it probably does somehow.
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− | ------------------------------------------------------------
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− | So, overall, learning this stuff has convinced me that Free Geek, as an
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− | organization that has never done staff reviews and only begun doing staff
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− | discipline, needs some good avenues for feedback. From what I've seen of
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− | these two collectives, I think we need a good balance of policy and
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− | straight-up, individual-to-individual problem solving. That way, the hr
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− | committee won't be called upon constantly to fix problems, workers are
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− | encouraged to deal with each other in mature ways, and, if something is
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− | pretty serious or a long-term problem, we have a clear avenue towards a
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− | solution. Yes, reviews and a discipline policy will help, but writing
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− | individual-to-individual discussion into our policy and modeling it for the
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− | rest of staff may also take us a long way towards avoiding major problems.
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| [[Category:Policy]] | | [[Category:Policy]] |