The Winnetka Youth Department has lost another smart, personable Librarian. This woman wanted to work exclusively with children, not with adults, but again and again she was given shifts on the adult desk.
She found a new job where she can just work with youth, which is her passion. You would think the library would know that each department requires different skills.
In Youth, you need to know about developmental stages, literacy levels and issues and how to advise parents, with differing parenting styles. Both youth and adult librarians are specialists.
When you've lost 22 out of 43 staff in 11 months, why would you want to lose another trained librarian? When will they learn? On October 21st a patron spelled this out for them perfectly (see video above). In the Youth Department there is only one employee who worked for the library district a year ago. This poor Knowledge Management hurts the library and holds us back.
One of the problems started at the end of last year when the new scheduling was announced at a staff meeting. Katie C. stated that they looked at the number of staff and all the time slots they needed to fill (at Winnetka Circ/Reference/Youth, Northfield, Studio) and they had "enough" staff to cover all shifts. The basic premise of this is flawed. First, not every person is trained, or has desire to, work at all desks. Second, not every person is available every shift. At that point I realized that library staff were looked at as interchangeable pegs and not as individuals with strengths and preferences. At that same meeting it was announced that staff would be required to work every third weekend instead of one weekend per month, which is a 50% increase in weekend time. They then published a weekend schedule six months out where they had not asked anyone about their availability or preferences (which is the way it had been).
ReplyDeleteAlso, switching is needlessly complicated. Before you could just switch with anyone and then present the switch to the Scheduler.
DeleteNow first you're supposed to use the software to request approval from Katie to see if she'll let you ask people to switch. After that's approved, you can then reach out to your coworkers to see if they're able to switch.