Staff restructuring process

It seems like there are a couple sets of decisions we need to make. One set of decisions has to do with staff compensation, responsibilities, etc., and the other has to do with committee/department/group decision-making structure of staff.

Here's how I propose framing the discussion so we can get through it clearly. Break the big, amorphous issue into parts (A-I below). Tackle each part in turn, but work through them all before implementing any major change. As we go through each of these we need to consider the values of the organization, many of which Luiz listed in his recent email to the staff collective. I would add to that list the question of how big we want to be (or how big do we need to be)? Everyone should think about each part in a preliminary way up front since the approach we take to one part will affect the other parts. In other words, think holistically (big picture) but also go through the pieces one-by-one.

If we can agree on the proper ground rules (A) then this conversation is a lot easier to have in the wide open view of all staff members. We could use the main wiki page, talk about it on the paidworkers list, etc. If or when we're using names of people the conversation needs to be treated more confidentially, however.

Where does this all take place? Not in any one staff meeting, nor at a single retreat, but in several staff meetings, however many retreats needed, several existing committee meetings, online surveys, over beer, in the halls, etc. The key is to have a road map for the conversation and a way to see progress through it and on to more consensus on these issues.

All of this is subject to tweaking of course and comments and thoughts on the process are appreciated. Are there chunks of the debate that I missed or need to be broken out more?

The breakdown

A. Establish ground rules

For the purposes of these discussions, let's purposely avoid using the following category terms: Collective, Committed, Nother, NPA. There may be an exception or two to this, but in general the categories and names are loaded at this point. We'll eventually come back to the categories and see how they fit with what we think should happen, but that's later on.

Also try to not use people's names in most of the coming discussions. (Same rationale.)

There is a potential third ground rule about committee names in chunk G below if we think it necessary.

B. What qualities match higher and lower pay scales?

We have already established a three tiered compensation system. Here are the three "pay scales" in brief:

1. $13.55++ (Salary based on high hourly rate, plus most benefits)
2. $12.55+ (Medium hourly rate, plus some benefits)
3. $11.55 (Lower hourly rate, no benefits)

We could change the number of pay scales, but I am assuming there will be more than one. Assuming there are reasons some people should get paid more and some less, we need to state why that is. Let's brainstorm a list and try to reach a rough consensus on that.

C. Define the terms

I imagine such a brainstorm might include terms like "aptitude", "experience", "commitment", "professionalism", and such. Let's list all those terms and define them so everyone knows what they mean to each other.

D. How do we measure these qualities?

Let's also discuss how each of these qualities could be measured for "any worker" as best we can. (That'll be a little tricky, but we'll come up with something.) How we measure each of these terms will depend partly on the job being performed. (If I have a boatload of experience in a warehouse it has very little relevance to a front desk job, for example.) So ...

E. Define all the stuff we do

List all the jobs in the basket of tasks that the whole staff is responsible for. We can start with our job descriptions and committee areas of responsibility. We need to add anything that falls through the cracks. This is not as hard as it sounds. We can look through previous "big lists" of these things, and/or another brainstorm session.

F. Put it on a big grid

I think this is a useful exercise to help people visualize the state of the conversation as a whole. List all the pay scales down along the top of the grid, the highest pay scale at the left. List all the jobs and tasks down the left hand side. If we wanted the least expensive staff possible (in the short term) we'd want to fill all the jobs in the rightmost column. (I'm NOT saying we want that. It's just a mental exercise.) Now figure out which jobs we want really want covered at what level and why.

In the example grid below an X indicates that someone thinks a particular job could be done by a worker in the indicated pay scale based on the job description and the criteria developed above.

Staff Structure Grid

Job/Task	Group	Pay Scale 1 ($13.55++)	Pay Scale 2 ($12.55+)	Pay Scale 3 ($11.55)
Keeping the books	admin	?	?	?
Recycling oversight	warehouse	?	?	?
Hardware grants coordinating	production	?	?	?
Some other job	?	X	X
Some other task	?	X	X
Some other job	?	X	X
Some other task	?	X	X
Some other job	?	X
Some other task	?	X	X	X

The "group" column could be used to assign a job to a committee/department/etc. (See below.)

G. Group the jobs and tasks

Then we need to make sure all the jobs are grouped in some sort of scheme of committees/groups/departments. (This means regrouping the left hand column of that grid.) There are ways to do this, but fundamentally different people will have different ways of seeing how things should be grouped, and some kind of thorny discussion could ensue here. If we can agree on what existing groups are working well, that's a good start, but if necessary we can start the conversation from scratch and add a ground rule to avoid terms like C7, Production, Sales, HR, whatever.

There will probably need to be some kind of administrative group or groups. I mention this because one option is to have this group provide a scribe and/or facilitator to the other groups. A scribe makes sure that decisions are recorded and available as institutional memory. A facilitator simply makes sure the discussions stay on topic. Neither of these roles need to be involved in the actual decision making for the group, but rather act like secretaries at a board meeting.

H. Define how big picture decisions are made

When we agree on what groups there should be and where the lines should be drawn between them, we need to step back and determine which kinds of decisions can be made in groups and which kinds need a larger staff buy in. Decisions typically fall into one of a few categories:

1. Can be made by a group without whole staff discussion.
2. Can be made by a group with whole staff approval after the fact. (forgiveness)
3. Can be made by a group with whole staff approval before the fact. (permission)
4. Need a thorough discussion by the whole staff.

(For all but the last one, there's a variation where two affected groups can hold a joint meeting or establish a task force, but the relation with the whole staff remains the same.)

The big question here is (once we decide what types of decisions need what kind of whole staff buy in) we need to answer the mechanical question of how those bigger decisions are made as the current staff collective structure ceases to work at a larger scale. There are some options here:

1. A hierarchical structure, typical on mainstream nonprofits (which would violate our principles -- included for completeness).
2. A representative structure where someone from each group participates. Reps would be selected by each group, but each group would need to be able to recall their rep in a democratic way. There could be term limits, rotation, etc., but these types of restrictions need to be thought through carefully.
3. Proposals can be made in one group and then passed around through all the groups, avoiding the representative structure. This takes longer and runs into some problems when conflicting "amendments" create disparate versions of proposals, but we might be able to work out a process to handle that.
4. A giant all staff group can work for certain types of discussions and decisions but there are logistical issues to consider (such as how often the group could meet, and what kind of discussions are pointless in such a large group). This option could supplement one of the other options.
5. Overlapping membership between groups can reduce the number of proposals that go to the whole staff

I. Identify and fix likely problems

We may need to identify factors that would make "any group" function well and make sure that those factors are taken into consideration when divvying up the jobs that go with each group. The note above about administrative groups providing scribes/facilitators helps address some of these concerns, but there may be others.

Implementation

Once we've worked through all that, we should have a solid idea of what Free Geek's staffing and compensation structures should look like. We can identify what pieces are already in place, and how to migrate to what we want to do.