Talk:Reports 17Nov12

Fæ's report

I'm leaving comments on Fæ's report here - I wasn't sure whether to put them here or to intersperse them amongst Fæ's points. I note that using the report page for requests to our staff is rather unusual, and I hope that they have been properly pointed towards this page.

On (1), I note that the trustees have already been provided with information that answers some of these points. Personally, I would be more interested in seeing a cost:benefit analysis, as well as an assessment of the current and long-term benefits of the program.

On (2), yes, I was also rather surprised by the high costs here. Improvements to our procurement methods do need to be made here.

On (3), I'm not sure that this is a matter for the Chief Exec; it's a much more general issue that relates to the board. We should talk about this at the meeting. However, I'm not sure that this task was properly handed over during the change of chair - I note that I (as an exec board member) only became aware of this issue yesterday.

On (4), this is a delegated responsibility for our CE to manage. If we want to revisit this, then that's a much wider question than you're asking here.

On (5), I think we've actually purchased 4 laptops here. I'd love to see their bookings being tracked on a wiki or public calendar. But this is a low priority issue compared to everything else...

On (6), yes please. I'm rather concerned that this may have exceeded the budget allocation without the board having been informed of that fact, and being presented with a request to modify the budgets.

On (7), I think we already have access to that information...

On (8), I believe that this is being tracked and dealt with. I look forward to seeing an update on this.

On (9), (a) and (b) see my email earlier today on this, I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the situation here. On (c), I note that WMUK's hosting is currently being provided for free by myself, and that QRpedia is currently hosted by an external body. We'll be migrating both to a WMUK-paid server imminently, but I expect that the costs specifically relating to QRpedia then will be somewhat lost in the noise (since we're moving to a single general-purpose server, rather than dedicated servers for specific activities). On (d), I note that this will be the same sort of situation that Wikipedia operates under routinely.

On (10), I note that the contracts for development work are being awarded via a competitive bidding process that has taken place to the best of our abilities, with two trustees being involved. No consideration was given during that process as to whether the applicants were active volunteers for WMUK or not. The costs (which are on the basis of hourly or daily work) have been duly recorded - if there are other locations where that information needs to be recorded then please let me know.

On (11), I note that our trustees are also putting in rather significant hours per week, but I'm not sure how this is being tracked and managed to avoid trustee burnout. The idea of staff timesheets has been opposed by staff, trustees and volunteers equally in the past, but we do need to figure out a good approach here that balances the increased workload on staff that would be needed for them to keep track of their time against the need to record the amount of staff time that is put towards different activities - and that also needs to be done in such a way to maintain staff and trustee morale. I'm sure that there are 'best practice' documents available here, but they haven't been flagged in our discussions on this topic yet.

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

On the how to respond point, I am expecting the CE's report and specific reports if necessary to be available which will address the questions. These can be cross-linked when available in advance of the meeting. If you know the answer already exists in an easy form, then it would be fine to add a cross-link now under any specific question. For example (7) probably is 'calculable' from current information, but it has never been presented in a simple form in an executive summary and is a commonly used key metric for assessing the efficiency or improvement of charities.

BTW, as Richard is quoting this report already, I would guess staff are aware of these questions being raised. --Fæ (talk) 22:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I haven't yet had time to read the report in full, Fae - have been too busy! Is there any chance that you could do a short section at the beginning of your report - or via email if you prefer - on where we currently stand with GLAM, a 'handover report' as it were, so that I can plan for future spends in the GLAM budget? I'm currently re-working the budget to take into account overspends and underspends. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 23:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I am the volunteer you refer to in (10). I am happy to be named, and for us to discuss this publicly - indeed I strongly encourage it. The main reason I have not done so to this point is because it was my understanding my report & recommendations were awaiting board input. If the board, or you Fæ, wish me to answer questions or fill in details directly please do get in touch. --ErrantX (talk) 09:23, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Re. point 7: Staff salaries are not an administrative cost, except when they are doing administrative work. Their salaries while they are doing programme work is a programme cost. That is one of the reasons I have been stressing the need for some kind of tracking of what staff are doing with their time - otherwise it is impossible to answer these kinds of questions. Knowing how much time is going on admin vs programmes is vital for any charity, but WMUK doesn't have a clue because the relevant information isn't been kept. --Tango (talk) 12:05, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Optimising time is an important thing that the staff should be considering. As a consultant my time tracking is crticial and I use various tools including on screen time tracker (choose the project then click Start/Stop) and automated monitoring tools. It might sound invasive (and any implementation should be done with care and sensitivity) but I've helped implement these sorts of mechanisms in small companies and seen dramatic improvements to staff motivation and reduced burn out.

Working lengthy overtime is non-optimal and if it is happening it needs to be examined and addressed.

Of course; implementing such tracking can sometimes be bad if it ends up focusing on deliverables or the monitoring is used against staff. Never good.

But allowing staff the ability to monitor their work and then go over the data with a line manager will probably give you massive gains in staff happiness :) It lets you identify areas of improvement to productivity (e.g. you might find that afternoons are *really* not your productive time so schedule lunch a bit later to take advantage of morning productivity). Alternatively a lot of people answer non-urgent email throughout the day; I've seen big performance gains by reading/replying to email in blocks (usually before lunch and before the end of the day). These things can all be identified/monitored with time tracking.

Also if staff have multiple programmes of work then this sort of thing will help them schedule it throughout the week. Everything should focus on deliverables ("By Friday I want to deliver a complete quotation for X, have phoned Y about Z, written document A about D and C") with staff creating daily todo lists that they can check off.

Productivity tools are often frowned upon as very "corporate"; but with proper training and use they can cut down long hours and improve staff sanity! :) --ErrantX (talk) 12:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Second that, although it isn't quite that bad. Katherine & Daria are relatively straightforward, then it gets more complicated. Johnbod (talk) 16:00, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I've moved your comment below ErrantX's to maintain chronology. Katherine's time may be fairly straightforward. Daria's isn't. She's been managing the interns, organising the logistics for board meetings, and probably various other administrative things. And even if it she was working 100% of programmes, you still need to know how much time she spends on any given event in order to know the cost of that event in order to know if it was value for money. Given all the attention the accountants and WMF have been giving to WMUK's accounts recently, did neither of them mention your failure to accurately account for staff costs? --Tango (talk) 17:04, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

No, neither of them mentioned monitoring (or even apportioning) staff time, even briefly, as far as I can recall. I think we're getting two different things confused here: firstly, staff measuring their own time for personal analytical purposes (like ErrantX is suggesting). I think that is OK - "allowing staff the ability to monitor their work and then go over the data with a line manager" is something that I do myself, and others do from time to time as well. The other sort is what Tango is suggesting: time monitoring for budgeting and cost analysis. I think that for such a small organisation - just four staff - it's going to be impossible to do that with any real accuracy. As far as that goes, I think it's simply best to make a broad split at the end of the year - something like "60/40" or equally broad - just for the first few years. And also, with the greatest of respect, I'd really prefer if my working style was managed by Jon, rather than by volunteers on a wiki - I am genuinely worried about this being used against staff, even with the best of intentions. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 10:37, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

A small organisation is precisely where this kind of thing is important. In a larger organisation, people tend to have narrower responsibilities so you know what they're doing with their time. WMUK staff split their time between lots of different things because there are so few of you. The individual work patterns of staff members are, of course, Jon's responsibility, but oversight of the staff as a whole is a job for the board, and oversight of how the board oversees the staff as a whole is a job for the members, so this is a legitimate topic of discussion on this wiki. --Tango (talk) 16:40, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, neither did when I spoke to them at the end of the reviews, nor is it in their written reports. Personally I favour a self-assessed "broad split" monthly - you can never remember over a period of a year - but not daily time-sheets. We are never going to be able to produce a neat Income & expenditure account for each event - quantifying, let alone monetizing, the benefits produced, such as new editors or edits, is the really difficult part. For bigger events we should produce more detail, but for the majority of small events, with barely any actual cash changing hands, it's not worth it. Scheduling/project management software is a different matter, and probably useful, but one to leave to Jon and the staff, at least at the moment. Johnbod (talk) 15:26, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Monthly is too long. In my experience, even leaving my timesheet until the next day makes it difficult to remember what I did. I record my time to a much greater precision (both in terms of time and task) than WMUK staff will need to, so I expect weekly would be sufficient, but if you leave it until the end of the month it will just be wild guesses (people tend to be very bad at estimating how long jobs took them - that's why the kind of start/stop timers ErrantX mentions are so useful, although I find I get interrupted too often for them to work for me so I just keep track of how long I spend working and then divide that time up at the end of the day - I often find I have an hour or two left over because I didn't realise how long jobs too me).

I think recording each week's work in half-day (ie. 10%) blocks would be sufficient for WMUK's purposes. Keep in mind, filling out a daily timesheet takes less time than filling out a weekly one (even in aggregate) because you spend less time asking yourself "Now, what on earth did I do on Monday?" and going through your emails and IM conversations to see if any of them jog your memory (which is especially annoying when your timesheet is all that stands between you and the pub at the end of the week!), so I would suggest staff members fill it in daily even if it is only submitted at the end of the week.

I think it is very important not to think of the cost of an event in terms of how much cash changes hands. The staff costs will be the biggest cost for most events, I would expect, so they really can't be ignored. Even if you can't quantify the benefits of a project very precisely (although we should be trying to get better at that), you can at least figure out the cost to a reasonable precision. You can then assess things relatively - you know one project cost twice as much as another, so you ask yourself if you think it was twice as beneficial. That will usually be easier to answer than trying to quantify the absolute benefits. Then you know what are the more efficient projects you do and can either concentrate on them, or concentrate on making the other projects more efficient.

I'm going to invite Garfield to comment here, since I would be interested to hear how the WMF handles this. I expect most WMF staff are sufficiently focused on one task that they can just allocate their entire cost to one budget, but that won't be true for all staff. --Tango (talk) 16:40, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Midas Training

c. Confirm how many and which volunteers that took part are interested in using their received training to gain personal benefit in their future commercial or career purposes (noting that being a paid WIR would be counted as such a benefit).

Look at the Objects:

The Objects of the Charity are, for the benefit of the public, to promote and support the widest possible public access to, use of and contribution to Open Content of an encyclopaedic or educational nature or of similar utility to the general public, in particular the Open Content supported and provided by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., based in San Francisco, California, USA.

I think the point here is not so much whether "volunteers that took part are interested in using their received training to gain personal benefit in their future commercial or career purposes", but rather to what extent they have provided training for WMUK on a volunteer basis.Leutha (talk) 21:21, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. I'm not sure where this idea has come from that you can't benefit personally from charitable work. The personal gains are one of the main reasons people do charitable work (there is such a thing as pure altruism, but it's not as common as we might like to think). I've certainly gained personally from my time as a trustee. The skills and experience I gained in that role have been very valuable to me, and I think having it on my CV was one of the main reasons I got my current job. You have to put the interests of the charity above your own interests, but that doesn't mean your own interests can't be served as a by-product. --Tango (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

To put this in context, Wikimedia UK is spending several hundreds of donated pounds per head (I crudely estimate at least £800 per head including expenses) for these courses and giving certificates and (the equivalent of) grades for those that pass enabling them to offer different levels of training services. We do this for free, without much consideration or vetting to check if the person taking the course will be likely to help the charity delivering courses for Wikimedia projects and partners, and without any discrimination between those who have no intention of offering commercial services from those that are only interested in continuing their effort as a free charity volunteer. We are open to making proposals with partner organizations to recommend certified trainers who may well offer professional levels of remuneration for the trainer's time. I fully recognize that there are good things going on here, perhaps great things, but as someone heavily involved in the programme (having passed the course and been certified myself), I am also aware that:

• we have no policies for handling declarations of volunteer interests with respect to this expensive training programme
• or a process making it completely clear how future certified volunteers will be invited to deliver training to Wikimedia UK partners
• or how Wikimedia UK will ensure that the process is suitably open and positively encourages volunteers who are happy to work for free (such as myself) rather than being in the odd situation where another volunteer effectively delivering exactly the same type of training would be paid £500/day for doing so, possibly even being paid by Wikimedia UK itself
• Wikimedia UK has not discussed how recommending Wikimedia UK certified trainers who may charge a day rate for their services, is effectively turning Wikimedia UK into a agency for these professional services, or at least a professional certification body

One of the much overlooked requirements on trustees by the Charity Commission is that trustees must consider if any non-core service might be better done outside the charity's internal administration by bodies who can do so more efficiently. These on-going training courses and the eventual marketing of this service should be reviewed in the light of this requirement. I have raised this before with the board, but discussions have become bogged down and bypassed with the pragmatics of staff being busy with ensuring the courses are delivered to schedule as agreed and contracted with Midas. I only recently discovered that the Midas contracts cannot be terminated, which may explain why there is such a lot of pressure to protect the training schedule rather than consider the governance and ethics of what we are doing. --Fæ (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Can we get confirmation of that £800 per head figure? I had no idea it was so high. We definitely need to think about whether that is good value. How are you allowing for fixed costs in that costing? --Tango (talk) 10:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I asked for the per head figure in Question 1 of my report - "Detail the the running cost per head of Train the Trainers including all expenses as well as Midas fees." If I had confirmed figures, I would not be asking for them, only for them to be published.

My crude estimate only accounts for what I have been told about the contract price with Midas, and what I know average per head expenses for volunteers staying overnight in London are likely to be, and makes no allowance for fixed costs, which I have assumed to be "free". --Fæ (talk) 12:29, 23 October 2012 (UTC)