Talk:Collective Member Review Policy

• I think this best reflects the discussion we have had in HR about the new review policy. Add your thoughts/concerns!

• Policy:

The HR committee will rotate through all staff collective members on a weekly basis for an informal review. This way, each staff member will be reviewed more frequently. Those being reviewed will leave the room during the review discussion in order to protect the anonymity of their fellow staff members.

• Procedure:

HR will review collective members alphabetically by first name, starting with the beginning of the alphabet. All staff will know who next for a review and will be encouraged to provide feedback. Collective members will provide feedback to the HR committee in the form of an e-mail or a face-to-face talk. Additionally, collective members are encouraged to provide feedback whenever they think of something that needs to be addressed. In other words, there is no need to wait until someone's review is next to provide feedback.

The facilitator of the meeting will be responsible for gathering the feedback. The scribe will include the review in the meeting minutes that are sent to the HR list.

The 3-month check-in and 6-month review for new collective members will remain unchanged by this new policy. As part of the negotiation we might treat committed staff members like a collective member for the check-in and review.

dave wrote:

In the case of letting a person in as a full collective member or
letting them go, the collective must come to consensus without blocks in
order to move forward (stand asides are not enough to stop the process).
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    This paragraph does not make sense to me. Are we talking about two
    different situations (letting someone into the collective, and firing
    a collective member)? 

We're not setting policy on how to fire people here. We setting policy on how to let someone into the collective on a permanent basis (or not let them in). This policy wouldn't apply to a situation where an existing collective member needs to be fired. That would take a separate policy, as this one only applies to "Probationary Members of the Collective". See the section Collective_Member_Review_Policy_Proposal#Probationary_Members_of_the_Collective that it's in?

Maybe the terms should be defined a little better. Something like could go in a section above:

"Probationary Member" is a new hire into the collective, not yet given full member status.

"Full Member" is a member that has passed through the 3 (or 6) month probationary period and the collective has agreed to grant full member status.

The paragraph in question might read:

"When granting a probationary member full status, the collective must come to consensus in order to move forward. If the collective cannot come to consensus the probationary member is not granted full status and his/her employment must be terminated."

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About the Review panel and quarterly reviews: especially as the staff grows larger, it will be difficult to people a review board consisting of people who work closely with every person to be reviewed. However, 2 out of 3 may be enough, and having the point of view of someone who doesn't work closely with another might be useful (to keep things from being too personal and to ask for clarification on things like goals that may be understaood by people more closely involved). The people in the panel should probably be encouraged to claim ownership of certain parts of the process (getting questions, hounding people for responses, compiling responses, scheduling) at the onset. --Ideath 18:59, 20 Jan 2005 (PST)

The new, more informal process

First stab

This previous review procedure was not working well for us. When problems arose with staff members the scheduled review was often too far in the future. The process was detailed enough that implementing it became too difficult to find time for. Therefore the reviews became both less relevant and more work.

We decided to streamline the process and do a review a week. Here's a stab at the new process:

• HR maintains the Staff Review Schedule. It's HR's job to integrate the more formal three month goal setting, six month formal reviews, and the ongoing reviews into this schedule.
• At HR meetings someone from HR is assigned to be a point person for each upcoming review.
• At each HR meeting a note should be sent out to staff reminding all collective members who is being reviewed and asking for feedback.
• The point people for the reviews collects the feedback and pokes any people who may have informally raised issues with the reviewee, making sure all issues are raised.
• The point people sit down with the reviewee and update their goals on the reviewee's user page on the secure wiki, taking care to address any new issues raised.
  • Goals should be as specific and measurable as possible, but the point people should use their best judgment.
• The point people report back to HR and back to the staff collective at regular meetings of each.

3 month goal setting

This is for new collective members and should happen as close to their three month anniversary as possible.

• The point people for a new collective member should distribute to all staff collective members (and other staff as needed?) a basic form with the reviewee's Job Description that solicits (a) positive feedback, (b) constructive criticism, (c) suggested goals, and (d) any other issues.
• The point people then collect this information (in a spreadsheet, for example) for analysis
• The point people summarize the results in a document on the secure wiki
• The point people arrange for a meeting with the reviewee (use schedule at freegeek dot org as needed)
• At the meeting, the point people and the reviewee come to agreement on specific goals after reading the summarized results.
• The point people record the goals on the reviewee's user page on the secure wiki
• The point people report back to HR and staff

6 month review

This is for new collective members and should happen as close to their six month anniversary as possible.

• The reviewee is scheduled for a standard review as spelled out above (and scheduled onto the Staff Review Schedule).
• Collective members are specifically reminded that this is the six month (in or out) review and advised that this may be more important than a regular review.
• The actual sit down with the reviewee should happen before an HR meeting.
• The point people report back to HR at the HR meeting
• At the staff collective meeting following the review (and HR meeting) the staff collective must raise the question of accepting the reviewee as an ongoing member of the collective.