Comment on Resignation of OTW Directors

  1. Elf (Elf_Herself) Mon 31 Jul 2023 06:31AM UTC

    Elf in anime style.

    I'm not catastrophizing. I'm not saying "people would quit and therefore we must not do this," or we must delay this, or we need to investigate every possible way to reduce the hassle effect. I'm just noting, there will be a hassle effect, and it's very likely some people will quit over it.

    It's not "quitting in a huff." (Well, there probably would be some quitting-in-a-huff, because this is fandom and wow can we do huffs. But I'm not talking about those.) But we have a lot of, "I'm volunteering because this is my Happy Fun Work; the tasks I take on because I love fandom and I want to be part of building something good - but if the volunteering stresses me out and makes my life worse then I need to walk away from it, even if that makes me sad."

    And adding bureaucracy to the existing jobs is probably doing to do that for some people. Probably not a lot. But I don't know if there's some committees where that'd be a third of the people involved, who are already stretched thin and have no spoons to deal with new responsibilities.

    ...There are always people on the edge of burnout. It's pretty much certain that any org-wide change in process is going to be someone's tipping point. And that's not a reason not to do the change, but it does mean checking with committee leads first to say, "hey, is this going to cause real stress for your crew, and if so, how can we mitigate that?" (Which is not, "then okay maybe we won't do it." And is not, "get back to us in 6 months and we'll see about moving forward." This is, "would detailed instructions make it less stressful? Or would they like the four-bullet-point overview instead?")

    Adding basic admin tasks would eventually just be folded into the standard workflow, and also would hopefully FIX some of the current burnout problems. But the transition period would be rough on some people, and I don't want changes approached with an attitude of "anyone who can't handle this SIMPLE THING can GTFO."

    It's not going to be simple for some people. It may be that they have to leave, for their own mental health, or because they literally cannot do the thing, for whatever reason. It may be that they need accommodations or support of some sort. Planning for org-wide changes should include the awareness that it's going to be disruptive, and some time & energy needs to be budgeted to help people deal with the disruptions.

    Comment Actions

    1. switchwitchbitch Mon 31 Jul 2023 12:20PM UTC

      I deleted my previous comment you replied to because I felt it was too rude, but I'll add a more considered reply later when I have the time :)

      Last Edited Mon 31 Jul 2023 01:48PM UTC

      Comment Actions