On 8 May 2012 10:40, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
I am pretty certain that nobody doubts how hard we work in the office but part of our job will be to make sure people understand what we are doing and delivering.
Indeed, I haven't heard anyone doubt that you are working hard. The question is just regarding what you are working hard on.
As Fae says there is a weekly report to the board which covers the twenty or thirty key events of the week. To be useful this contains a lot of detail that is personal or involving third parties so it is not appropriate for public dissemination.
How much work would it be to redact the confidential parts so it can be published? If it can be done without an unreasonable amount of extra work, it would be a good thing to do.
WMUK works like any charity (or employer). I have regular meetings with the Chair, and the staff have them with me where we go through their work patterns and priorities.
It is my job to deliver the programme agreed by the community through the board and manage the staff accordingly. This is an ambitious programme and with only four staff supporting the volunteers time is a very precious commodity. There are also competing demands from different projects and this needs balancing.
I would be loathe to add hours of staff time writing work diaries. (I also think this could be patronising and demotivating.)
I agree, full blown work diaries probably isn't a good option (at my work we have all sorts of compliance requirements that means it can sometimes end up taking longer to document what you've done that it actually took to do - you definitely don't want to end up in that position!). Simple timesheets wouldn't be too much work to fill out, though, and would be useful both for communicating what you are doing to the community and for monitoring project budgets (at the moment, I don't think staff time is included in the budgets for projects, but it really should be - for a lot of projects, it will be the main expenditure).
The biggest problem is avoiding burn-out. Our contracts expect us to work 35 hours a week but in reality we tend to be on duty seven days a week with a lot of evening and weekend activities. I rarely work less than 50 hours plus checking and replying to texts and emails at other times.
Yes, whatever system is implemented needs to be one that doesn't take up too much time. I'm sure a system can be devised that meets our needs without being an unreasonable drain on your valuable time.
I am sure we have really talented and dedicated staff and am keen to show the community what they are achieving.
They are often seen at wikimeets and events Visitors to the office meet them They are active on the lists They respond to calls, texts and emails
But not everyone goes to wikimeets or reads the lists.
That is why, as part of the ongoing communications review, I am looking for ways to keep volunteers, members and supporters better informed.
This could involve more blog posts from the staff, 'my diary' postings to our webpages, regular IRC's etc.
Feed your ideas into the review http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Communications_Review
Those all sound like good ideas, but there is something to be said for the community having some idea of the day-to-day activities of the staff and not just the bits that are interesting enough to blog about or hold IRC conversations about. I suspect the interesting bits will be things we already know about, but it's important for the community not to underestimate the importance of all the stuff you do behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly.