[Osmf-talk] Hiring help for OSMF administrative tasks

[Dudley Ibbett]

There is quite a big difference in many countries when it comes to having an "employee" as opposed to an "independent contractor".   Given the uncertainty it may make sense to employ an "indepedent contractor" to start with as the US chapter appears to have done.  If you have an employee you will need to comply with all relevant employment law in the country in which they are employed.  

Employees don't have to be full time.  Zero hours contracts are quite popular in the UK, although a little controversial.     

Taking minutes is a routine administrative task for employees within the vast majority of organisations in the UK.  The responsibility for the content of the minutes sits with the chairperson/CEO and the committee/board.

Regards 

Dudley   



From: m at rtijn.org
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 09:33:04 -0700
To: frederik at remote.org
CC: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] Hiring help for OSMF administrative tasks


On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
I am writing to ask your opinion of this idea (what tasks would you like

to see OSMF do more of, and where an administrative assistant could

help), but even more so to ask for your experience: Are you involved

If this is something that you all were able to reach  a quick agreement on I don't think there is a need to consult this list for opinions. You know best what your workload looks like, and what your priorities are. You are an elected board and we entrusted you with the power to make these calls.
Sharing experiences may still be useful, and I can share ours from the US chapter where we have hired several folks, all on a contracting basis. A lawyer is helping us out (for a fixed fee) with getting registered charity status in the U.S. This is a complex process where we are benefiting greatly from his experience. We hired an accounting firm to help us get organized with our tax filings and bookkeeping, again on a contracting basis, but this is billed by the hour. We made sure we first got a decent estimate of what the total cost would be. We are also hiring a person to do our day-to-day bookkeeping, also on a hourly fee basis. These are contracts we can re-evaluate and terminate at any time should we wish to do so. The cost-benefit analysis clearly plays out favorably: we are able to focus more on the things we want to accomplish, like organizing events and growing the mapping community in the US. I would highly recommend looking into a setup like this. An internship as suggested below may seem attractive for its low (zero?) cost in €, but comes with overhead: this is a person who comes to primarily to learn and not to deliver results for the organization. They will need guidance and often there is a responsibility for us to report back to the institution where the trainee / intern is enrolled. All of that distracts from reaching your actual objectives.
Martijn

-- 
Martijn van Exel
skype: mvexel


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