Pine

What exactly do you suggest that you or the rest of us could actually do with a "better understanding" of these issues? Without taking any position on whether there is some form of stress, is it likely to be anything other than exacerbated by exposing it in public, with no real prospect of that exposure leading to any kind of amelioration?

Henry

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 21:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:

Hello,

Something I am sensing from multiple sources, sometimes more through implication than specific statements, is that there is a sense of turmoil in WMF. I think that some amounts of internal politics and staff turnover are normal, but over the past few months I am sensing an increase in internal turmoil. I am noticing the departures of some staff people that I personally like and respect. I am wondering if WMF Talent and Culture or maybe someone on the ED's office would be willing to comment regarding these issues. I'm not intending to add additional stress to people who are generally competent and are trying to do good work. I would like to better understand the degree of turmoil (perhaps my impressions are incorrect), what might be causing the turmoil, and whether the turmoil is good or bad. Hopefully any increase in turmoil is temporary, but I am somewhat concerned. If staff are focused too much on internal WMF issues then this may affect their productivity on projects that support the community, and having highly stressed or discouraged staff would be a problem.

Thank you, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

On 02/10/2019 22:09, Pine W wrote:

Hello,

Something I am sensing from multiple sources, sometimes more through implication than specific statements, is that there is a sense of turmoil in WMF. I think that some amounts of internal politics and staff turnover are normal, but over the past few months I am sensing an increase in internal turmoil. I am noticing the departures of some staff people that I personally like and respect. I am wondering if WMF Talent and Culture or maybe someone on the ED's office would be willing to comment regarding these issues. I'm not intending to add additional stress to people who are generally competent and are trying to do good work. I would like to better understand the degree of turmoil (perhaps my impressions are incorrect), what might be causing the turmoil, and whether the turmoil is good or bad. Hopefully any increase in turmoil is temporary, but I am somewhat concerned. If staff are focused too much on internal WMF issues then this may affect their productivity on projects that support the community, and having highly stressed or discouraged staff would be a problem.

Hello Pine,

[turnover] rate i a measure of how many employees leave an organization compared to the total number of employees. It greatly varies by season, sector, type of organization, area, country etc. See the wikipedia article for more details.

From a [board meeting public report, page 18]:

Turnover rate per fiscal year:

| Year | Rate |-----------|-------- | FY14-15 | 15,40% | FY15-16 | 16,80% | FY16-17 | 7,30% | FY17-18 | 7,00% | FYTD18-19 | 3,54%

The last line might be based on Dec 31 2018, and maybe can be extrapolated to 3,54% x 2 = 7,08%.

For more recent numbers, the list of staff and contractors are listed publicly. That has long been on a wiki [staff history] and is now on the [official website].

It is thus not too difficult to grab those data and make them machine readable, which is unofficially available at: https://github.com/thcipriani/wmf-staff-and-contractors

June 27 th: 367 persons October 2nd: 375 persons

29 people joined 21 have left

Which based on the Wikipedia article calculation would gives:

Turnover rate = 21 left / ( (367 + 376) / 2 ) = 0,0565

Which would be 5% since July 1st. Remember that turnover is often seasonal, but linearly expanding that quarter to a full year assuming the three other quarters would be similar:

29 join on Q1 * 4 quarters = 116 join 21 leaves on Q1 * 4 quarters = 84 left

Delta 32 Total 399

And the formula would yield:

Fictional turnover rate = 84 leaving / ( ( 367 + 399 ) / 2 ) = 0,219

Or slightly less than 22%. But again, turnover is often seasonal and the foundation headcount (and thus rate of leaving/joining) grows. So that number is pure fiction. One would need to: * do some backtracking over the actual data for the last few years to be able to draw any conclusion as what those 5% for FYQ1 mean or the fictional 22% I have made up. * analyze who and why people left during Q1, which might well be independent from the WMF and just be conjectural.

Again that is situational and I am not sure whether one can draw any conclusion from the numbers I am indicating here.

The board of trustee report indicates that they turnover rate is reported to them which probably implies it is a key indicator.

As for the claimed internal turmoil, you might want to give details about what leave you to think there is any turmoil. Having some view from the inside (I am a contractor to the WMF), I don't have that feeling.

cheers ;]

References:

[turnover] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnover_(employment)

[staff history] * https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Staff_and_contra...

[wmf-staff-and-contractors] * https://github.com/thcipriani/wmf-staff-and-contractors

[official website] * https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

[board meeting public report, page 18] * https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/cb/January_30_2019_Board...