Posted by Cale Reilly in Questions for the candidates - All candidates
Hello candidates,

Over the last few elections and in this one too the discussion of member experience and retention has been brought up, quite often in regards to new members. With this in mind and considering not only my real life work issues and experience this term but also the recent post in command by a returning member I have the following questions:

1) What to you is the “stf member experience.”

That sounds like it should be a museum special exhibit or a theme park ride, like the David Bowie Experience or something. Not a phrase I’d normally use, but I’ll take a crack at this.

There are different kinds of ways a member can experience STF. They’re all interacting with other people, or at least reading things other people have said. There’s the roleplaying aspect, the community aspect, and the dealing with administration aspect, which all make up what a person experiences here.

2) When does a member cease being a new member after a year, a month what?

Well, that isn’t a black and white thing. But I feel like someone is still new if they’ve been around less than two years. Even if they are doing important things and even if they are a CO. More experience gives you more understanding, and you can only gain that with time.

3) What specific actions do you have planned which you think will increase member retention and is this in general or geared towards existing or prospective members, if geared why that particular group?

We need to continue the work that was started with the community organizer role. We need to define it and hopefully we can get someone in that role working alongside the MAC. The MAC has already been focusing making community events happen, which I’d love to see continue. The better job we do at building up community, the more likely people will be to want to stay.

Also, we need to have a better staffed Personnel Department. I haven’t seen any data that shows that faster processing times are better for retention for joining members, but I know from the delay I experienced when I signed up in 2014 that there’s a very real possibility of losing people if we don’t act faster. Matthew and I worked to get our new member processing times down to 28 hours on average during the stretch I was in the Personnel Department this term. I count that as a big success considering we had two people doing placements and it certainly was an improvement over where we had been. If we’re going to continue to get better, we really need to get at least three people who are all active at processing apps. The President needs to monitor that situation as we’ve too often slipped to the point of having only one or two people do all the work there. Long term there’s room to automate the placement process further than it has been and I’d love to discuss what we can do to continue to make things easier for that department.

4) How would you support a member hit with real life issues that impacts posting etc as a) a cadet, b) a Main ship JO, c) a DH, d) an XO or CO (with a member retention hat on)

Regardless of the position they might hold it helps to listen and make the person feel like someone cares about them. I’ve had a couple instances where someone couldn’t post due to real life concerns and a member of the crew responded poorly to that. So I’ve been in the position of trying to explain what’s going on and try to encourage reasonable responses.

I don’t think we need to tether a person to whatever position they have in STF. But if someone needs to go we should support them and care about them as they leave. I think that makes them more likely to come back.

Adam
Adam W / Thomas B

I may ask follow up questions based on your responses.

Thank you in advance

Cale