Free Geek Staff Structure Rethought

As Free Geek grows, the administrative and daily task are increasing to the point that it is becoming very difficult to prioritize, optimize and and coordinate tasks within and among areas of the building. Confusing factors such as doubts about ownership, fear of interpersonal conflicts and lack of communication prevent staff from feeling part of new changes and endeavours. Some job tasks are just not fun or interesting, but they need doing nonetheless. Without oversight and ownership, all too often, these tasks remain undone.

This rethink of our Staff Structure is an attempt at dealing with these types of issues. Its goal is to increase individual ownership and managerial-like over site of the various areas of Free Geek while maintaining an egalitarian consensus based workplace.

Questions still to answer

1. What is working with our current staff structure?
2. What is not working, or what could work better in our current staff structure?
   • Things slip through the cracks
   • Priorities and general oversight are some what lacking
   • People don't feel empowered to tell other people to do things
   • Lack of ownership to the degree that we are not able to isolate problems.
   • Good tasks are taken and bad tasks are avoided.
   • Lack of long-term planning in each group.
3. What changes will Free Geek encounter over the next 1 - 2 years?
4. What changes will Free Geek encounter over the next 3 - 5 years?
5. Are there any alternative staffing structures that we could explore?
6. What are the for seen positives and negatives of these structures?
7. How will any one of the considered solutions effect our volunteer base?

Departments

These departments or teams are set up in a way to balance out the type of tasks that need to get done, not necessarily the levelling of task load for each department based on how many people we have.

• Production (Build, Advanced testing, recycling, receiving) 5 fte, 2 paid interns
• Sales (ebay, bulk, commodity, retail) 3 FTEs, 1 paid intern
• Operations (books, facilities, SysAdmin, payroll) 4 FTEs, 1 paid intern
• D4 (Tech support, education, outreach, inreach, hardware grants) 4 FTEs, 1 paid intern

Alternate Departments

Martin, these don't look very different than above?

• Gizmos (prevent stuff from piling up)
• People (keep our labor pool running)
• Operations (provide general support to the above two)

Department SubTasks

Tasks that currently have a very high administrative load would be spread more evenly over the entire collective by way of departmental structuring. Each department would be responsible for the following tasks within its area of operation: For some of these we would form working groups to help give support and help decide what is and is not in there bucket of tasks. These tasks would be rotated amongst the members of the department.

• Scheduling - formulating a working scheduled to include major, minor, and admin (weekly qty)
• Basic books/forecasting - budget review, Review of assets and liabilities
• Documentation aimed at new/occasional department members and volunteers
• Basic Facilities - setting up the areas we work in
• Setting weekly priorities - whats on our plate
• Managing the group - facilitation meetings. Make sure all subtasks, and department goals are prioritized and being met
• HR Tasks: hire, training, fire, reviews -

Managing

There are lots of ways that we could manage our selves, and divvy out our tasks. here is a few ideas.

major + minor

Each staff member picks one main area of focus (major) and one minor area of focus (minor). The major is the staff members main job. The minor is a focus on a more narrow interest. Each staff member will participate as a floating manager for their major group. Staff members do not act as floating managers for their minor group. For minor group participation, staff members can be more focused on individual interests or talents and not have to worry so much about the big picture or the administrative back-end. The number of groups that a staff member may be a part of is purposefully limited to two to keep staff focused and to prevent individuals from being spread too thin.

floating manager

The floating manager prioritizes tasks for their group for the duration of their term. The responsibilities of the floating manager are:

1. More admin time, less floor coverage
2. Big picture oversight, coordination
3. Report to staff meeting (main meeting)
4. In charge of scheduling for the group

Transition

• each staff picks major, minor
• trainings for selected group members: bookkeeping, facilities function
• scheduling and HR would need to split among all groups