Happy Valentine's Day! And an Analysis of the State of the Tech Desk Address

During this week's Team Leader meeting, the other TLs and I realized that Wednesday, February 14 had worse coverage than usual. I suggested that this might be due to Valentine's Day commitments, while Karan disagreed, voicing a slightly insulting assumption about the average Meyer consultant in the process.

This prompted an investigation into exactly how many of us are in relationships. Since I didn't feel comfortable asking every member of the team their relationship status, I conducted a Facebook survey (the online tool of choice for statistical research such as this). Kenneth and the other TLs not only condoned but encouraged this – in fact, I do not believe it was my idea.

Here are the results, some speculation included regarding those who did not list their relationship status:

All Consultants (and a Consulting Manager)

• Married: 1 (5%)
  
• Engaged: 1 (5%)
  
• In a Relationship: 7 (35%)
  
• Single: 11 (55%)
  

Total: 20

Feel free to suggest corrections to my tally. If we obtain different results, I may or may not divulge the secret behind my calculations.

Karan may be right about the high percentage of singles at Meyer, but I still think Valentine's Day is to blame for the poor coverage. Who says singles can't have V-Day plans, or at least stay out of Meyer in the hope that they will be free should they wish to make last minute V-Day plans?

In all seriousness, this post is supposed to be a long overdue interpretation of Kenneth's State of the Tech Desk Address, starting with the changes to scheduling.

Scheduling
Last quarter saw poor coverage at the desk, with many sub requests unfilled and shifts remaining empty, and many attributed the poor coverage on our revised sub clear and late/no-show policies. After many hours of discussion and observation, we have decided that those policies are here to stay, at least for the year, but we are looking into a revised system of scheduling.

Since last autumn, the schedule has been released on a weekly basis. When the TL system came into place, TLs made the schedule on a rotational basis, releasing the schedule of each week (Monday to Sunday) eight days before the beginning of the week. Consultants were given the option to change their availabilities as frequently as they wished, and the schedule tended to fluctate from week to week. Since then, changes in the availability of consultants have prompted us to rethink our scheduling scheme. Some consultants expressed the wish for a more fixed schedule, especially those balancing their Tech Desk jobs with other commitments.

We are now employing a hybrid scheduling scheme to accommodate both those who wish for a fixed weekly schedule and those who wish for flexibility on a weekly basis.

TLs continue to make the schedule on a week-to-week basis. Those who wish for a fixed weekly schedule are given priority to the hours they desire, and the rest are assigned the remaining hours based on their weekly availability. Some consultants submit a certain number of hours below their desired weekly number that they wish to be assigned and fulfill the remainder of their hours by choosing shifts from the swap board. Some degree of self-regulation and self-correcting scheduling continues amongst consultants via sub requests and the swap board. Overall, the TLs have had to send out fewer requests for empty shift coverage this quarter.

We hope that this keeps up. Good work, everybody!

Team Leaders
Also related to scheduling is the redistribution of duties among TLs. Rather than having all three TLs make the schedule on a rotational basis, we have redistributed their duties. Making the schedule used to be a time-consuming process due to the large degree of variation in scheduling from week to week, but with the new hybrid scheduling scheme, it has become less work due to the fixed or partially fixed schedules of many consultants.

Emily and Karan take turns making the schedule. In placing scheduling on the shoulders of two TLs rather than splitting it amongst all three, we hope that the TLs in charge of scheduling will be able to better track the scheduling needs of our consultants. Rather than having consultants report to their TLs individually and risking disjoint communication between TLs, we hope that consultants will now be able to report to teamleaders@lists.stanford.edu about their scheduling needs. The same TLs will alter consultant availability, send out reminder emails, and clear shifts that are sub cleared before the deadline.

I am in charge of monitoring attendance records and, unofficially, handling irregularities in clock-on and clock-off times. Statistics are compiled each Sunday, and consultants receive emails regarding lates, no-shows, and make-up shifts.

This division of labor is still in its preliminary phases, and consultants who wish for a speedy response to availability change requests or clock record corrections should email the teamleaders list.

Concluding Remarks
Naturally, we realize that an inherent problem with hiring student consultants to service the Tech Desk is that certain uncontrollable factors come into play: the number of hours each consultant desires to or is capable of working per week, the amount of overlap between consultant availability (influenced by extracurricular and academic commitment), and events such as Dead Week and Finals' Week. The efficacy of any scheduling policy is not easy to judge and varies from week to week and quarter to quarter, and we always remain open to suggestions, realizing that, from time to time, changes may need to be made to our scheduling policy, so that whatever system is in place best serves the needs of both the patrons and the consultants to the highest possible degree.

Once again, Happy Valentine's Day!