When Staff members are less active after you hire them

Has it ever happened to you that after you hire someone as staff, then they suddenly become less active? Isn't that very frustrating? Then you can tell they simply joined staff for the title, I mean before being on staff they were very active and would post around often and then as soon as you hire them they are nowhere to be found?

Im talking from past experiences as that as happened to me many times. Its very hard to find dedicated staff members these days so you got to be careful with who you hire.

Has this every happened with you?

 

Can't say this as ever happened to me. Sounds annoying though.

 

Yea it is very annoying.. specially when you could've hired someone else who applied as well.

 

Although even if they go inactive you always have the rite to fire them and put the other member on trial.

 

Yes I have, and it makes me feel disappointed & let down as I thought they were my friends and could be trusted to do their jobs, etc.

 

Yea I know... it really is a disappointment but what is there to do assuming they were told that if they didn't do their jobs they would be fired.

 

If your talking about your inactive Community moderator then he is not worthy of being Moderator

It had happened to me ages back

 

You got to understand that staff members are in different timezones, have different lifes, and may have problems to deal with. So, I always cut my staff slack when they are gone a couple days. Unless they are gone for week(s) at a time, I usually just remind them to post a little.

 

Yeah i know , Owners don't really understand what problems we will have to solve.

 

Thank you!

By the way who ever did it thanks for deleting my thread.

 

It has happened to me many times before. It kind of gets frustrating. You think you found the right guy for the position and he just disappoints you.

 

Well I think you might be in luck.
Most of those person do it for the challenge or as you said the title.

If you look at their mindset they are not in it for the role or the "fame" that the title brings to them.
They are more in for it because its thrilling for them to achieve that rank or title as soon as they can and as long as they consider it as a challenge they will continue to give 100% but once they complete the challenge or obtain the goal they set in their mind you will notice that that 100% goes down quite fast and by a nice amount too.

The thing I would do is that I create more ranks on the forums.
Its nothing unusual to see some forums having 10+ ranks each with their own benefits.

So for example a tree line would go:
New Member-->Member-->Trusted Member-->Elder Member-->Premium Member-->Contributor
and so on.

The catch is to always give those people little things to do that will occupy them and that they will see as a challenge that interests them but that is not to hard.

For example you can give them a duty to create certain forum events that may or may not be related to the whole Forum theme. Its just important that they perceive it as interesting and challenging.

Wow now that enough talk about psychology.

 

When a staff member becomes less active than when they were hired, I send them a kind message:
"Hey, how are you doing? Just curios, as to why your activity seemed to have dipped since we made you a staff member." Any reasons why?

 

I do the same as cpvr..

I was one of these staff before, but just on dead forum. I find that the admin himself is inactive, so why shall I be active?

 

Exactly - if the admin isn't active, then there's no point of working for them. It's called find a better place to work.

 

Well I remember when I was on this one forum (and I'm there still today) admins were almost the only ones that were posting so all the posts were from admins and a few new users that were trying to spam around.

Now the problem was that admins were active a lot but new blood didn't come in so it kinda got old for me and I took a rest from it.

To keep a forum alive you really need to not just post and be helpful but you also need to have small events and games. For example a signature of the month event is held on a lot of forums that are oriented towards design but they are also held on forums that aren't directly oriented on the design.

That is because a forum is made out of many different people that have different skills and interests.
So on a business forum you may just find people that in their free time do Photoshop and will enjoy the event and the others that don't make the signatures can participate with voting so everybody is included.

 

This is just for a discussion, Im not referring to any current staff, the one you are referring to was removed, but has nothing to do with this thread.

I cut staff members slack as well, when they are trustworthy and have been on the staff for a certain time, but not new staff members when they still have to prove themselves.

Lets get on thing straight here Daniel. Before hiring you I told you that we were looking for dedicated and active staff members, if not dont bother applying.. and if you didn't live up to it we have the right to remove you.

After hiring you, you didnt do anything within the 4 days of being a staff member, you would think when someone first gets a job they do their best and don't miss days or anything and in your case you didnt do anything at all while coming up with excuses like "Oh, my girlfriend broke up with me so I cant post today," which you didn't and you didn't even bother posting the next day either, and then the other excuse "My Internet will be down so I wont come on tomorrow," but the funny thing is you did come on to PM me why I removed you. So in the 3 or 4 days you were staff you managed to make only 8 useful posts while the others were in you marketplace thread. So don't bullshit me Daniel I have had it with you.

And you're thread was removed as obviously you were bashing me, I was nice enough not to ban you for it.
Consider this your warning.

 

It sort of depends on this question for me.
I have a staff member on my other forum that hasn't really posted in several months, but the other mods are taking good care of the site so no need to demote him.
If I had found a user on this site, like @cpvr is helping us out and had to take off for a month, I would leave him as staff. If he had to leave for 6 months I'd likely find someone to replace him. It's nothing personal and I try to make that clear to that staff member if this happen. It's just that we need staff to help run the forums and they need to be active.
I have in the past (not this site) offered money to my staff when I've had it, just something a little extra to let them know I appreciate the work they're doing and time they spend on my site.

 

Ya, then you have staff members that take time off for school. I understand this one and I always welcome them back to the team when they're ready. I don't force any staff members to post, but they're obligated to let us know when they're not so available. That's okay though because my staff team just steps up when a staff member leaves for time off. Heck, even my co-owner is in UNI and isn't fully devoted, but he stays on the team because he's our co-owner and without him, we wouldn't be that great of a community that we are today.

 

This often happens. The only thing you can really do is give them stiff warnings and give them little incentives to post and keep active. Otherwise, Fire 'em!