Hello!
Just wanted to give a brief update on a piece of analysis recently posted regarding the* first employee hiring of Wikimedia organizations*. For those who contributed, *THANK YOU* for your participation!
The main information can be on found on meta: * Background of information[1] * Survey results[2]
Though a very small sample set, the main takeaways of the survey are:
- Organizations tend to hire in one of two scenarios: (a) there is a particular activity that needs to occur which is* time-sensitive* and hard to manage via volunteers (events, partnerships); (b) the amount of *administrative work* required to maintain and grow activities is overwhelming to volunteers - *All types of hiring* and staffing are used! Interns, contractors, employees, part-time, full-time. When the workload is known to be re-occurring, it is most needed to have staff over contractors. - It is essential that *job descriptions accurately portray amount of admin work* - Currently, there are *not clear on-boarding plans*, and this can cause some growing pains with a Board of Directors which are generally used to be more hands-on - Organizations are* hiring sooner* upon recognition by AffCom
While not earth-shattering results, they provide us a good starting point on better understanding why, how, and when to shift away from an all-volunteer model. It helps bring up some consistencies across groups as well as discrepancies. This is just one input into better understanding the state of and trends in our movement organizations.
If you have thoughts, PLEASE - participate in conversation on the talk page. It would be great to capture more stories from the ground of the purposes and challenges of bringing on a new employee. If you have experiences from other volunteer organizations, please feel free to augment the conversation with these as well!
Thanks - Jessie
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_First_Employee_Surveyhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_First_Employee_Survey/2013_Survey_Results [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikimedia_First_Employee_Survey/201...