[Wikimedia-l] compromise?

[James Salsman]

Thomas Morton wrote:
>
> If you know nothing about surveys or statistics it is probably a good idea
> not to describe a properly calculated metric (yes, I sat down and did the
> math) as absurd....

I stand by my statement that trying to pin down donor opinion on
whether they approve of meeting or exceeding market pay to a 1% margin
of error with a 99% confidence interval is completely unnecessary. If
a survey with a few hundred respondents turns out to be ambiguous,
additional donors could be surveyed later. I have been trying to
discuss this with Tom off-list.

Pine wrote:
>
> I'm a little confounded as to why you're still looking to Glassdoor as your
> primary source of information on employee satisfaction after Gayle indicated
> that she has much more comprehensive data on this subject from the employee
> survey....

Please have a look at the slides from that survey at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=60m -- Particular
questions I have about the employee engagement survey so far include:

(1) Is a survey of 84 respondents which asks age, marital status,
ethnicity, gender, department, tenure, and organizational level an
anonymous survey, or would nearly all of such responses be personally
identifiable?  Glassdoor offers much stronger anonymity,

(2) In general, were there any questions pertaining to whether
employees are satisfied with their pay?  I can see none on any of the
report slides. I do see questions pertaining to "recognition" which
are repeatedly identified as problem areas. Pay is by far the largest
complaint on Glassdoor from both satisfied and unsatisfied employees,
but it does not appear to have been measured on the Foundation's
survey. At 1:12:30 it is said that the slide deck will be made public.
I hope we get to see the list of questions too.

(3) The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=65m is
astounding. What does it mean that all three of the executive
respondents completely agreed with the statements that "we treat
everyone with dignity and respect" and "we consistently hire strong
talent and recognize strong performers" but only 54% and 52% of the
twenty-four managers responding agreed, respectively?

(4) The top two questions at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=65m45s indicate that
those who have been working for the Foundation for more than two years
have very profoundly different assessments of both recognition (which,
again, seems to be the closest thing to pay that the survey asked
about) and the competence of people in key positions compared to newer
employees. Do we want to trust employees opinion in proportion to
their experience with the organization?

(5) At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=68m "attracting
skilled individuals for hiring" is identified as a specific
improvement need. How is it being addressed?

David Gerard wrote:
> Anyone in IT knows that there's such a thing as "charity scale", where
> you get paid less because you're working for a nonprofit in exchange
> for less stress and/or doing actual good in the world.

The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=62m10s
indicates that in comparison against 120 corporations and 7
non-profits who have participated in similar surveys over the past
seven years, the Foundation scored in the 76th percentile on this
survey.  I am not sure that reflects very well, given the state of the
economy over that time period.

I do believe paying people more does lower their stress and attract
and retain more talent. Although there is apparently no shortage of
opinion to the contrary, I have yet to see any data in agreement with
those opinions.