Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: tracking hours?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 15, 2008, at 6:08 PM, Denise Meier wrote:

> I bet there's something in the archives about this but we are about to
> reassess, after 9 years, our decision NOT to track work hours. I'm
> wondering if there are any insights from other communities about this.

We have voluntarily started tracking hours. Many of the community  
members are participating. The hardest part was defining jobs. The  
team worked a long time on this and it was still incomplete.

We might have done better to just define several large areas and then  
allow people to list the jobs under one of those categories

Maintenance -- Commonhouse
Maintenance -- Landscape
Governance -- Board and Membership Tasks
Governance -- Team Tasks
Special Projects
Etc.

And assigned a certain number of hours to a job. Then a person can  
just take on the job and not track the individual hours. One hour for  
mowing the lawn, etc.

The big disagreements are around meetings and meals. We excluded meals  
since they are essentially self serving here -- those who eat work,  
and only about a third of members participate in meals.

Meetings are still and issue. We excluded membership meetings since  
everyone is supposed to go, but actually we have to work to get a  
quorum (51%), usually by scaring up people who are onsite but sitting  
at home. They come in to be counted.

So fewer than half actually participate in membership meetings.

Team meetings vary. In the facilities team meetings we really work. We  
have made as many as 15 decisions in meetings and often are reviewing  
bids and contracts.

The Admin team by contrast discusses issues but does most of their  
work outside the large meeting. They make few decisions and most  
things are delegated and reviewed outside meetings. Then the team  
receives a recommendation.

Community Team pretty much works the same way.

We do include credit for note taking and facilitation.

Many people work primarily on workdays and that is pretty much the  
easiest way to track. They show up and we make a list. That also gets  
a lot of nit-picky maintenance jobs done. Many people have also moved  
their jobs to that day. It does take some work to set them up.

I highly recommend work days. We have one every other month -- some  
times a landscaping day in between. Since we started them, people have  
done more work for the community and more jobs get done. People just  
do not look at a list of jobs on a bulletin board and do one.

For workdays, teams make lists of things that need to be done. One  
person puts them into a spreadsheet in categories -- indoors,  
outdoors, priority, etc. People come to a job broker in the dining  
room who explains jobs. We now have two members in wheelchairs. For  
the last workday, one served as job broker in the morning and the  
other in the afternoon.

People choose what they want to do and sometimes add jobs to the list  
-- "I'm doing this." I often do this because I have a lot of regular  
jobs and it feels good to do them when everyone else is working. The  
list of jobs completed is posted on the bulletin board and sent to the  
internal email list.

We have simple lunches served on paper plates. I think a $50 budget.  
The cook this week went over the top, however, with lasagna: meat,  
vegetarian, vegan, and  kid.

We do morning and afternoon but most people only do one or the other.  
We have a paid sitter, usually, who does mornings. Sometimes someone  
has taken the older kids, the tweens, to a movie or the zoo in the  
afternoon.

I saw an idea posted here and suggested shorter workdays every month.  
A solid 4 hours in the morning starting at 9:00 and a celebratory  
lunch at 1:00 so people can linger if they please or have the  
afternoon for their own errands. The work day organizers decided if it  
isn't broke don't fix it.

We also still have two meetings a month so it is hard to schedule more  
than one day a month and avoid a holiday or a membership meeting the  
same day.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org