[Fg-general] better staff reviews

[Luke Closs]

Since I've been involved on the HR committee over the past few months, I've
learned how inconsistent our current staff review system is.  My analysis is
that the system required too much time to do for each person, that it didn't
become part of our regular process, and then we quickly got behind and never
caught up.

At the last HR meeting we talked about improving the process.  At a high
level, here's what I'd like to see:

* more frequent feedback for staff
* an ongoing process as opposed to a every 6 months process, so it's easier
to budget our time for
* a process with less burden on the organization


I'd like to propose that we adopt a HR review procedure similar to FG
Portland.  I talked with Matteo and it seems to work well.

Here's how it would work:

Part of every HR meeting would be spent reviewing a particular staff
member.  Before the meeting, one person would collect feedback on the
selected person - (directly from peers or via email).  The feedback would be
shared with the HR committee, and they would discuss the feedback and how
that person did towards their previous goals.  The HR Committee would come
up with a list of feedback to share with the staff member and a suggestion
for future goal setting, and then one person from the HR committee would be
selected to share that feedback with the staff member.  They would work to
decide a goal for the next period of time.

Portland rotates through their staff members alphabetically, and they meet
every week (IIRC).  I think we currently try to or should meet every 2-3
weeks. Portland's HR committee is ~5 people, all staff.  Our committee is
currently 2 staff and 1 director (me).  I'd like to see more staff here in
vancouver on the HR committee.

I suggest we adopt something close to this plan, perhaps first starting in
order of time since last review.  I'd like some feedback on this outline of
a policy.  Is it something we'd want to adopt?  Lets get some feedback, and
then the HR committee can write up a working policy on the wiki, then we can
start doing it.

The idea is that we'd give people more continuous feedback, and make the
staff review process part of our weekly/monthly flow, not some every X
months type of system.

Thoughts?
Luke