Discussion: Ratify Seasons & Formalise Simple Process to Enable Paid Time-Off

Purpose: Ratify Season & 2 Week Leave
Status: Proposal Discussion
Voting: TBD
Authors: @lee0007

Main DAO proposal to ratify the model of seasons proposed here and formalise a process for contributors to notify time off. I request that ANT holders simply to vote Yes or No to the following three questions

  1. Y/N ratify the seasonal cadence “On Season” of 3 months, followed by a 1-month “Off-season”, together considered as one Season.
  2. Y/N All 4 months within the season are paid
  3. Y/N To the development of a very simple documented process for taking leave

This is proposed as a means to ensure we provide contributors with the opportunity to take leave while retaining the security of income. The reasons people might take leave can be many and varied and while there should be no need to disclose their purpose for taking time away, it would be best practice to ensure that some notice is provided.

Hands up if you’ve had a holiday in the past six months?
Please like this post if you think DAO Core Contributors deserve a break (at times)

Rationale

In April the DAO Steward proposed that

We are currently operating on a four-month seasonal cadence

S1 1 April - 31 July
S2 1 August - 31 November
S3 1 December - 31 March

This matches the current Main DAO proposal from the S2 S3 Guilds Community Eagle Ops

However, it appears that we are not yet providing core-contributors the opportunity for people to take time off during a season with the security of being paid. Therefore I am proposing that we implement a process similar to the one currently used by TEC

@JuankBell as lead of our currently funded Conflict Mediation Service has recommended this process summarised simply as

1: Make a notification in writing
2: Confirm transition date with Stewards.
3: Transition work and shift priorities
4: Announce/communicate the departure
5: Follow up

It is not proposed that we define the process via this forum, simply that we vote for or against the development of a policy - a very simple, documented process for taking leave that captures and reflects the community input that this proposal and other conversations surface.

PROPOSAL ENDS

Discussion

My open questions include.

  1. How much time can we reasonably request as paid time off? One month per season seems to much to me as we are not kids attending school. 6 weeks per annum reasonable pro rata, based on FTE of 40 hours?

  2. Where does a process like this need to be documented? This feels like an operations procedure but if it is formally voted and detailed here do we need to duplicate it elsewhere and what would be the process to change/adapt/edit the process

  3. Notify in writing: a formal post here on this post?

  4. Confirm with Steward: who needs to know, just your guild steward? Who needs to know if a steward is applying?

  5. How do we ensure responsibilities are taken care of while on leave? Seems like this might be a process requiring some community oversight, from who? cc @Shawncubbedge

  6. How best to communicate leave? @MaxCaspar @Incandenza Several locations come to mind

  • shared in which discord channel?
  • announced via bi-weekly all hands?
  • Set Discord Status as Do not disturb with an OOO Notice?
  1. What would be the minimum eligibility criteria? Core Contributor eligible once a three month “On Season” is complete?
  • 12 Weeks Paid Annual Leave, 4 Weeks Per Season Due Process Required
  • 9 Weeks Paid Annual Leave, 3 Weeks Per Season Due Process Required
  • 6 Weeks Paid Annual Leave, 2 Weeks Per Season Due Process Required
  • 4 Weeks paid Annual Leave, 1 Week Per Season Due Process Required
0 voters
5 Likes

Posting this specifically because I intend to take the the following dates off and am not aware of any process to notify the community and am interested to have this discussion in advance of taking Zef on our annual family ski trip.

When: Monday 15 August - Friday 19 August. Back online Monday 22 August
Who: @lee0007 lee0007#8152
Eligibility: dGov Core Contributor (S1) & ESD Member (Inception)
Request: 5 Working Days

1 Like

Thank you @lee0007 for taking the lead on this initiative and for tagging me. I find the TEC policy written by @JuankBell quite valid. A few thoughts:

1-7) Six weeks a year is what they normally give where I live (Italy) so that seems reasonable. However, I would not make a distinction on the weekly working hours as that is already reflected in the salary received. I would rather calculate the amount of leave days accumlated on the length of the contribution period. For example, at the completion of each On-Season Contributors who worked for the entire season are entitled to 2 weeks of vacation (if we keep the 6 weeks per year).

3-4) It would make sense to me to do it this way:

  • For Contributors: post the vacation request on a dedicated Discord channel (to be created - could be a private one for Contributors only, to avoid noise) or a forum thread, tagging their Steward who is in charge of confirming the request and eventually assigning their tasks to someone else within the team.
  • For Stewards: post the request in the Discord channel and communicate it during the All Hand Meeting, also specifying which person within the team or the Dao will take over their duties during their absence.

In both cases also set up the account on OOO.

We should also indicate what is the notice period required to notify the leave request (1/2 weeks?).

  1. A database with all leave taken should be created and updated by an HR specialist (could also be someone from Ops, Finance or Community). It would be better if this was On Chain.

I agree with the On Season/Off Season division, but I think a little flexibility should also be left for emergency management (not everyone takes days off just to go on vacation). Unless we want to treat these issues differently with a specific policy. Furthermore, if we all use the Off-Season month for vacation the Dao will remain desert in that period.

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yay, thank you for your valuable input. I agree with what you have outlined above. I think the leave could be taken for any reason at any time, provided due process. Two weeks’ notice seems fair and reasonable, where people are aware this far in advance.

Good call also on accounting for emergency leave in case of i.e illness, family, bereavement. Would it also be necessary to request people account for taking leave over the Christmas and holiday periods too?

@alibama @SpectraCryptoVerse any thoughts on how we set up an on-chain record for this?

2 Likes

Rest is one of the most valuable pieces for good contributions. This is really valuable initiative, think 6 weeks is the acceptable level for most of Europe and a good standard.

Wonder if contributors could mint a “Rest & Recovery” POAP for each week the take off. Would be easy to track and would then be on-chain for the year. Would then be very easy at the end of a season or year to see how much time has been taken off.

On the Christmas period, we should hope to have a diverse set off contributors globally so not everyone will take it there for I think contributors could take one of those weeks or more for any holiday they choose.

3 Likes

This might be irrelevant, but I’m just curious - what happens to those who choose not to take leave? Will they receive some kind of special compensation? Because I think they should.

Also, we might want to consider offering even more possibilities for how leave is taken. For example, 6 weeks leave = normal salary during leave, 9-week leave = normal salary - (50% or 25%) salary, 4-week leave = normal salary + whatever %, etc.

I guess the person taking the leave knows better who to assign in their absence.

I don’t think there should be a perk for not taking leave, I would see it as a drain on productivity if individuals were not taking good restful time off. There could be the possibility to carry over though in to the next year.

Like the thought for extended leave.

2 Likes

I was thinking some people might not want to take leave every season.

Yes then I think we carry over the time so it is available in to the next season.

3 Likes

i’m from the usa, and we don’t generally do vacations well culturally. Around 5 years was my longest stretch…

i’m also in therapy to address issues with close personal relationships. so i wouldn’t say that it’s going well.

so from my perspective it needs to be mandatory. some carry-over may be acceptable, but if you want to tell me to take time off you’re going to have to mechanize enforcement, whether that’s onchain or a cultural intervention is up to the team.

i have no idea how to approach this… it’s a serious issue and if we want to actually decentralize and not let a handful of workaholics dominate this space it’s something to address.

i would vote for people being kicked out for a few weeks at a time regularly… there are clearly risks associated, and not to scapegoat here, but @Incandenza and deep democratic debates would be a nice place to land this next :slight_smile:

1 Like

Not sure the about the debate, at the core, the way seasons we designed originally there was 3 months work, 1 week planning, 1 week retro and 2 weeks holiday or that was the plan. Think this need better comms. It is a huge issue, sorry to hear about the therapy.

Think it is then up to the guilds to choose how they work the four month period. I am not sure people should be forced when and when not to take work though.

We can maybe provide DAO wide guidance also depends of how long a proposal is running for and part/full time. These I think can all be at the discretion of the Guilds though with some DAO guidance

2 Likes

+1 here
During the discussions that sprung from Ben’s original post, some of the clarifications that came to be are:

  • 2 weeks off per season, as Alex summarized above
  • Guilds self-manage this - in the spirit of sovereignty and autonomy, we would aspire to minimize DAO-level governance and bureaucracy. If the guild decides that they want to take more time off and still ship, it’s great. If they fail to ship and don’t take time off, maybe they were overly optimistic about their scope.
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Also agree on providing flexibility and don’t think a debate is needed on this topic, but I’m happy to organize an open discussion to finalize the details and document the process if needed.

Thanks for tagging and sharing stories @alibama, the more we openly talk about these issues the stronger the community will become.

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Thank you for raising this discussion @lee0007!

Agreeing on setting a guideline for 2 weeks a season (for core-contributors) and give the teams autonomy to further decide what to do @fartunov

Would be great if the monitoring could be governed / standardized through the DAO (to help guild leads monitoring). The on-chain visibility via an “OOO POAP” that @AClay mentioned is an awesome idea!

1 Like

@alibama I’ve been there on 5 years no vacation. It takes a toll for sure. Also being someone in the DAO who hasn’t taken any time off in the past 9 months, I think this is definitely needed. I agree that 2 weeks per season is reasonable.

Although I think we should mention that an entire guild probably shouldnt all take time off at the same time as this could cause issues with any initiatives they are currently working on. Otherwise, it should be up to guilds.

I like the POAP idea @AClay. Maybe we can finally find some use for those things :joy: It would definitely be a way to ensure someone has taken their time off.

I think it would be pretty easy to create a form for a time off announcement (purposely not using the word request here.) Also, there should be some requirements for notice. 2-4 weeks should be enough time to transfer responsibilities. It could cause issues if someone says I’m taking two weeks off starting tomorrow lol. However there are always exceptions to the rule, there will always be emergency situations that arise and people should feel comfortable taking time off in those situations without having to worry about their job or making sure their bills are paid.

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just in case anyone is following this thread DID Review for LexDAO - Google Docs would enjoy following up on how decentralized ID and things like credit and such might be related… seeing POAPs in the thread made me realize perhaps it would be appropriate to follow up with a broader conversation on the subject

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This is cool! Are you part of LexDAO, or did you pick up a bounty to do the research? Very useful. Have you also heard of anima protocol (they are doing DID as well).

Hi @BearBudget no - i’m part of Aragon dTech = a support subdao of Aragon, and this is partly a useful project for Aragon as well as my application to become a member at LexDAO :slight_smile:
i’ll add the anima protocol to the list = thank you + meet in discord to discuss more on thursdays if you’re interested

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To follow up on this discussion, in the Community Guild we have developed an internal policy for organizing Guild members’ time off. We thought we would share it as it might be useful for others as a template.

If interested you can find it here:

https://www.notion.so/aragonorg/Community-Guild-Paid-Leave-Policy-52d98ddcac1648e5ac1ff7cd29931b66

Feedback and comments are welcome.

cc: @Shawncubbedge

4 Likes