5) Review Job Descriptions and Redistribute Duties
The committee felt that all of the current staff positions are too large. Recommendations varied from splitting certain jobs into two, to adding assistants (could be paid part-time, workstudy, interns, or volunteers) to existing jobs, to creating whole new positions. In each specific case, changes may depend on available funds and may be grown into or scaled up,
but some action needs to be taken immediately for each position. Project Managers could be hired as LTEs to see specific projects through from start-to-finish such as: Capital Campaign; Building Remodel, Website Launch, or even New Program Schedule Launch.
Comment from a participant at Wednesday’s Public Session:
“WORT needs to be careful to not add more staff than can be financially supported (including benefits).”
Comment from another participant at Wednesday’s Public Session:
“Staff (and governance/committee structure) may be the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE that comes out of this process because it will enable EVERYTHING ELSE! Specifics are tough, but generally we need more ACCOUNTABILITY and PRODUCTIVITY. Leaner, meaner staff? 3 key stakeholders plus a lot of volunteers, part-timers plus ‘project’ workers?’”
Comment from a third participant at Wednesday’s Public Session:
“Music facilitator position is expanding and morphing. Staffing needs to reflect this. In addition, it’s important to support music facilitator in community projects that don’t necessarily relate to the station operations because these serve the community.”
Comment from paper submission to WORT2020 mailbox:
“Hit on UW Communications students?”
I would like to hear/see some discussion of adding staff to the music department, especially with an increased focus on digitization, social media and outreach. It seems like managing the music collection, music volunteers, “WORT welcomes” shows on top of that would be a nearly impossible task for one person alone.
;-} It IS impossible already, even with a work-study assistant 8-10 hours a week for two semesters per year, several weekly off-air music volunteers, the promos production group, and the work some volunteers do besides their show such as reviewing CDs. WORT is different from most community/public stations in that we have a music-heavy 80%/20% ratio to news, plus we play nearly every genre of music there is, which means much of the work needs to be done by different people who are familiar with that particular genre. Also, nearly ALL programming [minus 1-2 hours] on weeknights between the hours of 8pm and 8am and all day and night on the weekends is music, which makes it difficult to work with, train & properly supervise many of those volunteers.
From Glenn Mitroff:
As a 12-1/2 year staff collective member, I think we have to balance our need/desire for additional staffing with our financial capabilities. I would like to see us increase the FTE
for the music and news departments. I think that adding a 1/4-time or, maximum, 1/2-time assistant to each department could help each of those departments tremendously. But can we afford to create those postions without first adding fundraising staff? It’s a “chicken and egg” dilemna. We could increase our fundraising staffing and demonstrate that we can cover the cost of that position AND generate enough additional income to increasing staffing in other areas on a sustainable basis.
Since we have limited financial reserves, I’m concerned that without a solid plan for increasing our income we’ll burn up our reserves and not be able to sustain the newly created postions.
This doesn’t exactly sound like a long range planning proposal. Instead of focusing on “action needs to be taken immediately,” I would suggest establishing a plan/protocol that reviews paid jobs and job descriptions on an ongoing basis and setting up criteria for when jobs need to be eliminated, changed or added to. An analysis of how our collective structure is working or not working, education for everyone on what it means to have a paid staff collective, etc is needed. More useful in this area would have been to look at the “why’s” – why are the positions too large, what priorities are being set by the staff and how are they meeting or not meeting them, what are obstacles and what are helps?
Notes on this proposal from the roundtable discussion at March 28th Public Session:
Maybe some duplication of duties
Music workload may increase with web – [will] add more volunteers to supervise
Support Music Director in being involved in events in the community (not connected
with day-to-day operations [e.g. – “boombox the wasteland]
Remember jobs are “facilitator” NOT “director”
Maintain horizontal structure not top down
Training for staff – this should be a priority – training, evaluation & follow-up
More accountability, make flowchart simpler – few key accountable people
3 key areas – Programming; Volunteer Coordination; Fundraising & Outreach – these
should be the accountable stakeholders
Positions have morphed over time. This will be reviewed with formal Job Analysis [ie –
figure out how much time is spent on each task in job description]
Technologies to assist in making jobs easier and more productive
Things we can drop from job descriptions
More cross-training between staff
Off-air volunteer hours to ease burden on staff
Permanent vs. LTE hiring issues
This comment could be posted under several of the priorities. Looking at the Google doc about staffing it seems the recommendations are creating 8 new positions (5 by splitting positions and 3 extra positions). It seems that not all of these are full time positions. But still, I understand that even the recent successful fundraisers have left the station with a deficit budget. Many of the proposed new positions will not lead to more revenue in the short (or even intermediate) term or have an impact on the listener’s experience. That staffing increase seems unsustainable.
As a listener, but not a volunteer, I am not able to judge which needs are the most critical nor can I judge which will have a impact on the sponsorship levels by changing the listener experience. I can, however, offer some thoughts.
A. The youth program is, I think, a benefit to the community. Youth work is expensive in terms of hours of mentoring needed for each hour of programming produced. This is an area in which collaboration with existing programs (such as WORT’s existing collaboration with Goodman Center) makes sense. Funding for this position should, IMHO, come from grants and not be undertaken with in-house funds. Grants for youth work are available from a number of sources (e.g. Rotary, Cap Times Kids Fund, By Youth For Youth), unfortunately, often in too small amounts. Grant applications will be strongest if they are jointly submitted with existing youth programs such as those at community centers. That ties in with the recommendation for more collaborations. There is also some money available to run youth programs with the money coming from the centers. This is generally not a lot of money, but it would be a way to get started in a small way with out using general funds.
B. Instead of hiring an assistant to the board, I would suggest the board consider expand the number of named seats. I believe there are currently some seats nominated by programers and some by listeners and one from the staff collective. I suggest that you might also nominate people for specific skill sets, such as board development. Or perhaps put up a number of roles and ask people running for the board to say which roles they would be willing to work on.
This restriction would make it harder to find candidates, but the candidate might not need to be an expert, just be willing to work on that aspect of the board experience. A few hours from a consultant to augment the board member would be cheaper than hiring even a 1/2 time person. In some ways this just makes the expectations for those candidates clearer and gets them on public record. We currently in an economic era where it is harder for working people to volunteer — that argues agains this idea. But we are also in the place where more baby boomers are retiring and unemployed people in general have useful time to donate. So enthusiasm for this proposal will depend somewhat on how much of a curse/blessing you think baby boomers and unemployed people are to the station.
The biggest disadvantage of this proposal is that it might make it harder to get several kinds of diversity if you are asking for a larger commitment from board members. Since the members vote, they can decide how valuable a board member is even if they do not have, or are willing to provide, any of the listed elements.
C. The online/social media position is more of a question for me. If listeners will get extra benefit from the new digital content then perhaps they will become contributing members. One way of gauging this is to look at the usage of Spinitron. I often stream shows from the archives, but I seldom go to spinitron. Other people are only too likely to be different. So having more volunteers as in proposal 9 seems a way to start even if it is not on every show.