Talk:Collective Level Expectations

Ali already started this page at Staff Survey. We should combine them somehow.

RfS 00:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

We need to hash out the expectations in the Needs more discussion area so that we are all agreeing on the same thing. Feel free to move any item from the Solid and ready to go section to the Needs more discussion section if you feel we should talk about it more.

general question(s)

I have read the content below and I don't know what angel to look at it in. I think there should be a discussion on what is a working group, and what is a committee. (I´m sure thats defined on this wiki somewhat.) I also don´t know what projects and goals we are all working on, perhaps that would help define what is a working group, and what is a committee. --Matteo 20:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Needs more discussion

All collective members will keep up with communication tools (email, rt, wiki).

This is a no-brainer. Of course they should (speaks one of the occasionally guilty). -- MW 20:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

To enforce this we will need more internal training on how to use them properly --Matteo 20:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I also think though, that keep up does not necessarily mean "be expert at". -- MW 20:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

We can keep people honest without this. This seems kind of micro-oriented. It will only be used as an "in addition to"-style complaint for someone who is already regarded poorly. I say meh. Luiz 21:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

All collective workers will get paid for attending meetings.

There are two items that we did not agree on that also deal with this item:

Should staff get paid for attending all meetings or just some?

collective members should be paid for all meetings they attend. If a member abuses this, and attends all meetings, sleeps through them, and is generally unhelpful, we would have to deal with that. If someone did this, they would most likely be slacking in other areas as well. As long as staff members are working and helpful, I think they should be paid for all meetings they attend. Laurel

I like this. We will state clearly what we expect, while not trying to legislate against the exploitation of loopholes. If exploitation happens, it will be dealt with as an HR issue Dave

As long as collective workers are salaried, this is a moot point, as we're paid by the week, not by the hour. As far as paid hourly workers, it's different. Tonyc 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really. Salaries are calculated on the expected amount of time it takes to complete the work, and so the question becomes which meetings are included in the job description. RfS 20:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The relevant portions of the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR 839-020-0044 ) states, (1) Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as work time if the following four criteria are met: (a) Attendance is outside of the employee's regular working hours; (b) Attendance is voluntary; (c) The course, lecture, or meeting is not directly related to the employee's job; and (d) The employee does not perform any productive work during such attendance. (2) Involuntary attendance: Attendance is not voluntary if it is required by the employer. It is not voluntary in fact, if the employee is given to understand or led to believe that the employee's present working conditions or the continuance of the employee's employment would be adversely affected by non-attendance. George 17:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Key phrase in the above text is "need not be counted as work time." We may not be obligated to pay people for every meeting, but we could if we wanted to. It's more a matter of what we feel is fair. I wouldn't tie this to job descriptions for a few reasons. First, some of us do not have functional job descriptions; Second, some of our job descriptions are far more specific than others'; third, our current model relies on collective members to participate in admin areas completely outside of job descriptions. Not everyone on HR has that in their job description, and they really shouldn't unless we really changed things up. (adding admin to operational job descriptions would make things far less meteorproof). The biggest problem here is people taking on so many committees that they don't have enough time to be effective in both the committees and their designated job duties. When we talk about "floor shifts," and ratios, a lot of what we're talking about is people doing more work in committees, meetings and admin than others, as a ratio of paid work. How about this wording:

"Collective members should strive to balance administrative and operational work to maintain a fair and equitable distribution of both among all members of the collective."

This more closely addresses the next subject, but they're closely related and may end up being folded together(?)Tonyc 02:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

That would seem clear enough that most meetings we attend would need to be paid time. -- MW 17:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

For example: My attending C7, Knowledge Bees and Technocrats would legally need to be paid time. If I were to suddenly start attending production or sales meetings it would not, unless my job description got significantly changed. -- MW 02:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't really follow your logic here. your job over laps with production and sales, it is in your job description (thos are the people making and distributing the products you support). In my opinion id say even more so than c7 and possibly technocrats. Are job descriptions only address a small portion of what many of us do, some are better than others. I could use Darryl and I as an example, his does not say hes a facilities guy, and mine does not say that I'm a startups wrangler. --Matteo 03:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

For me it is more relevant to address the question of the ratio of floor shifts to admin before answering this question. This is because each committee results in some admin and eventually this can really skew the amount of time a person does committee work versus floor shifts. This over time creates, from a benign/positive seeming behavior (being on lots of committees) a slow creep towards dividing administrators and workers. Luiz 21:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I think there is allot of overlap here (between committe work and floor shifts) and I agrey with you. if a floor shift is defined as something like "spending time with volunteers in a meaning full way" then id say we can turn anything into a floor shift (and should). Its hard for me to think of things that could not be defined as floor shifts. In reality what happens is we end up doing the work we create and call it admin work.(I'm probably writing this in the wrong section) --Matteo 03:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Should there be a cap on the number of committees a collective worker should participate in?

Before we can make sense of the first statement we need to decide on the other two. Dave

There should be both a cap on the number of committees a person is on and the number of committees that exist. Again, the ratio of admin time to floor time might be a more useful thing to look at than just a number. Luiz 21:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this involves two, separate things: how much do we want to pay non-salaried folks for meetings, and how much is too much to expect from salaried people? One is a budget issue, one is a burnout issue. Tonyc 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Since these are expectations for Collective members and since all Collective members are salaried, there is no need to consider in this discussion what non-salaried workers get paid for in terms of meeting attendance. Ali 20:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this one is ready to go. We will pay Staff for attending the meetings that they go to and not try to set a cap for them. If someone is going to way too many meetings and burning out we should talk to them about it and try to get them back on track, but not try to set a hard standard for what is "too much" Dave 19:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

All collective workers are required to work a certain minimum number of hours per week.

What should this number be?Dave

Assuming all collective members are responsible for individual areas/programs, 24 seems like a realistic expectation to me. This allows for at least three 3-4 hour shifts in core coordination areas, a few shorter floor shifts, and enough hours for committee participation/admin time. We should also remember to factor the minumum amount of time we decide collective members should spend working with volunteers into this.Serge

I am happy with this number Dave 19:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

In my recent experience transitioning from full-time to part-time, I initially started out at 24 hours but then switched to 28 about 2 months later. My level of general awareness of what's going on around FG was severely limited by being at 24 hours and it's been a noticeable difference for me to be at 28 hours. For this reason, I think that 28 hours should be the minimum. Ali 02:06, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Couple fussy thoughts:

If we're paid based on hours, but the benefits (health/dental/retirement/etc) are equal to all collective members regardless of hours worked, then technically some of us are being compensated more per hour than others. I don't see this as an issue, really, as long as we're all allowed equal flexibility in hours as our situations require. The ability to drop to part-time as needed is a benefit in itself. This is the biggest wrinkle I see here: some job descriptions/positions are more able to support this flexibility than others. This starts to stray into other areas, such as the ability to take vacation time/personal time based on job-description....you know...Meteor-proofing.

As an org, would we be able to afford this policy if half (or all!) collective workers worked only the minimum? I don't think it's a problem right now, but it could become one.

Having many, part-time collective members could tweak the spirit of the ratio policy (collective/non-collective workers). Could be addressed by changing the ratio policy to reflect hours in each category, not the number of workers. Just a thought. Tonyc 03:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe benefits for collective members could be based on hours worked. e.g. if you were to work 24 hrs/wk (60% of full time) then you could get benefits, but would supply 40% of the cost for them. Darryl 21:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we pay ourselves too little to require collective members to pay for any portion of their benefits, providing they are working whatever we set as minimum number of hours. Tony brings up interesting points about the flexibility issue. In my opinion, everyone on the collective has the flexibility to change their schedule based on their personal needs. I don't foresee a problem with this, as I can't imagine circumstances where too many people would take advantage of this at the same time. Laurel 01:49, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree Ali 02:06, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

How about this?: All collective members are required to work at least 28 hours per week. Dave 19:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I can get behind that. As long as the collective can maintain the flexibility to allow any member to drop in hours to the minimum, I'm fine with bennies remaining full for all and the number being set in the ballpark of 28.Tonyc 02:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

There will be a cap on how many hours per week collective members should be paid for.

What is this cap? Are we hourly or salaried?Dave

We are salaried. The cap should be 40 hours/week. Laurel

I agree. 37.whatever is silly. We all work over 40 hours. We should all be paid for that amount, at least. Tonyc 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

If we re-calculate our salaries at 40 x $11.55 instead of the current 37 x $11.55, that (a) gives a raise to most of us, and (b) puts the full time workers at the bottom of the bracket where we don't need to worry about legal liabilities relating to overtime laws. I'm a proponent of getting everyone who wants the full time work to be paid for salaries based on a 40 hour week (like the rest of the world). RfS 20:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Can this one go away? We are trying very hard to be salaried workers so that is what should be reflected in these expectations IMO Dave 19:53, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Instead of going away, the expectation could be re-worded:

"Collective members are paid based on an expectation they work 40-hours/week, no more and no less."

All collective workers are required to spend a minimum amount of time working with volunteers.

What is this minimum?Dave

Do we want this number to be the same for all collective members, or should this be a percentage for those of us that aren't full-time?Serge

That's a good point. Should the number of "floor" hours be expressed as a percentage of paid hours? What about half? Tonyc 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes!... as a % of paid hours. Darryl 21:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that we should require a minimum number of hours spent working floor shifts (unless it's something really small like 8-10 hrs/week), but I do think it's important to have meaningful contact with volunteers and an understanding of the organization as it changes. For example, some positions require much more time spent coordinating volunteers than other positions do. But it is necessary for any Collective member to be in touch with what's going on around Free Geek, especially to have a finger on the pulse of volunteers and to genuinely understand the flow of things. Ali 20:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

What about changing the text to this: All collective workers are required to spend an adequate and equitable amount of time working with volunteers

I feel this better expresses the spirit of the concept as well as the ideas in the discussionDave 19:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

All collective workers are required to perform tasks that nobody wants (or not enough people want) to do.

What are these tasks? How do we split them up and hand them out?Dave

I think what the tasks are (exactly) will vary over time. RfS 20:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Rotate these like chores on the fridge "wheel of drudgery" Darryl 21:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I feel that we don't want to get into too many specifics in these statements and this is a statement that really needs specifics in order to at all meaningful. We should try to figure out what we are really trying to say and rephrase it. It seems like this is kind of a "boss clause". How do you get people to do undesirable parts of the job when there is no one telling them to? How about: All collective workers are required to perform and complete parts of the job that are neither fun or meaningful Dave 19:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I like that. simple and to the point. MW

Just 4 ways to deal with tasks nobody wants (historically), slaves (n/a), wage slaves, pay more, share. We should share. And by "share" I mean "share equally." And by "share equally" I mean "spend roughly the same number of hours each on tasks each week no one wants to do."

I've been thinking of these last few items as being interrelated lately. Basically, I've been thinking of the collective level work around FG as breaking down into 3 categories (not the two-level breakdown that seems to be represented in prior discussions):

• operational
  • working floor shifts
  • working alongside volunteers
  • getting your feet in the mud
• administrative
  • necessary tasks that can't be farmed out (spam filtering/list monitoring/beancounting/HR, etc.)
  • overseeing and administering operations
  • admin related to volunteers
  • committee work related to general functions
• executive
  • participating in the vision, process, discussion and direction of the Geek
  • policy development
  • committee work and meetings related to the above
  • typing on pages like this one

I think the last category has been largely left out of the discussion, or muddied with admin work. I feel a healthy balance would be an equal split between all three of these categories of work for all collective members.Tonyc 02:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

All collective workers are required to participate in a minimum number of committees.

What is this number? Right now it seems to be two.Dave

I don't think it seems to be two. It is two. That's what I was told when I joined. If we want to change it, let's. But I'm going with a default of two. Tonyc 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow. I musta been cranky when I wrote that! I gotta start using more emoticons.Tonyc 03:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

We used to say two for full-timers and one for part timers. There are currently 18 committees/working groups when all are running. There are 13 collective members. (2 part-timers, 11 full-timers). This would work out to 24 slots available for the 18 groups, which is 1.33 people per group (plus hourly workers and volunteers). Please remember this math when thinking about creating new committees. Point is, people are actually on more committees than the minimum, and if everyone is on the minimum amount, some committees would be short. RfS 20:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

It's two! Any objections? Dave 19:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

My only need for clarification here is whether a Working Group counts as a committee. If there's a distinction, it should be clarified in our policy. Could word it to be two committees and on WG? Just a thought. Truth is, it's a baseline that's just not an issue right now since we're all in up to our eyeballs.Tonyc 03:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Some people are only involved in the minimum number of committees, so this is a relevant discussion. If the minimum is 2 committees for a full time Collective member, and the majority of folks are actively involved in much more than that, is it fair that others are only engaged in 2 committees? If there is X amount of committee work to be done and not everyone is sharing in that work, how do we address this? What if someone's 2 committees only meet once a month and are very light-weight in terms of work load? Oh, and I would not count a workgroup as a committee. Ali 20:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I would really like the word meaningfully or some word like it in there: All collective workers are required to participate meaningfully in a minimum number of committees. Dave

Should we state the number as well?: All collective workers are required to participate in at least two committees in a meaningful way.Dave 19:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this is good. -- MW 20:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)