How Many Days a Week Does a Community Manager Need to Work?
Recently, on e-mint, Caspar Aremi shared an interesting BBC News story about whether or not people should be off on Fridays.
What was interesting about it is that the first person quoted in the story is Steven Shattuck, who is a community manager for Slingshot SEO, a company in the U.S. where employees work from 8 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Thursday.
9 AM to 5 PM is considered by many to be a typical work day (I don’t know about a typical work day in the field of community management, but generally speaking). In other words, 8 hours. But they extend the work day by 2 hours and eliminate one day of the week. However, 2 extra hours for 4 days of the week equals 8 hours. They are working the same number of hours, technically speaking, as someone who works a 9 to 5 for 5 days a week (they save some time in that they don’t have to get ready for work on Friday or commute).
This kicked off a discussion as to whether it was feasible for a community manager to work only 4 days a week. What happens on the other 3 days? Aren’t community managers supposed to be on call? Can someone really manage their community effectively in only 4 days a week (or maybe even less)?
I don’t really see this as that big of a deal. Then again, I was homeschooled and I also didn’t see it as a big deal to get all of my work done in 4 days and have 3 days off, either. Heh.
I think sometimes we believe that our communities need us all the time when, really, one of the greatest marks of a successful community is that they don’t and that the random annoying stuff that happens that we need to remove can even live for a little while without it being removed because they know to ignore it and they know we give them the privilege of post-moderation, rather than the annoyance of pre-moderation.
Setting proper expectations is a good thing. Unless you have the budget to pay for 24 hour, around the clock, intensive moderation, guideline violations will be around sometimes and it isn’t bad that people know that this happens. It’s like the principal who called on parents to ban their kids from social networks. Hide it from them all you want, but one day, they’ll get there. Your choice is in how you educate them on safe practices and expectations.
If you have a quality team of moderators (volunteer or otherwise) that know how to escalate things to you directly, then things should still (for the most part) be taken care of. A department head will always have little fires to put out. You can’t let it consume you and look back in 30 years and wonder how your kids got to be this big.
The bottom line there is only rarely one way to do something in online community management and this sort of thing is determined by many factors, including subject matter, audience, activity level, the support system in place and more. A community targeted at kids is different than general all ages communities on food or martial arts or Photoshop. A community on <insert really sensitive topic here> will be more sensitive. A community in <insert circumstance that pops to mind> will need more close attention. Most of us aren’t managing communities that are so critical – but some of us are.
Keep in mind I’m talking about community management, though. I’m not talking about managing Twitter for a brand mention crisis and all that stuff, which only a small percentage of organizations (usually the big, big ones) need to worry about 24/7.
Community management is hard work. But, at the same time, how many days a week that you spend on your community does not necessarily speak to your commitment or how successful you will be. Let’s maintain flexibility.
Hi again Patrick,
Nice article. I recently made a posting on the facebook page associated with my community explaining to the users that I was having problems at home, girlfriend’s Dad died, house maid had been rushed to ER and that I would be away for a couple of days. The amount of support from the users was really amazing. Most people understand.
I think it’s the same when thinsg go awry and you’re not online. It has taken a long time but the regulars on my site now just post me one PM and ignore the class idiot then one appears. I am very impressed by their behaviour.
I am actually kind of against 24 hours per day CCTV as I call it, as I don’t like the clockwork orange syndrome to kick-in, but then mine is a games site with a real-time chat limited to the last 50 messages or so where it is not deeply important to have messages removed etc.
Thanks again for your article.
Kal
Thanks for the comment, Kal. I appreciate you sharing that perspective.
Patrick
It depends so much on the product that is connected to the community. If the community is stand-alone or connected to a product without a lot of changes / new versions / updates / a lot product life cycle, then I agree. But in a fast paced and dynamic industry being out 3 out of 7 days is not possible I guess.
Thanks for the comment. Ben. I would just say that there are a lot of variables. For example, most online communities don’t have a product associated with them. So, that variable eliminates the vast majority of online communities.
And then, within that sphere, what you said could be taken as “well, if you’re got a hot product, then you’ve got to work 7 days a week! but if you’ve got a dead one, then yeah, sure, who cares?” Heh. :) I understand the perspective, but is it that simple? Is there really that big a difference between 2 days off a week and 3? Especially if you’re working the same number of hours?
If someone told me that they felt that they HAD to work 6-7 days a week or work 10-14 hours a day as a community manager, I’d probably tell them that they might need to take a step back, evaluate their life and sort out just what can wait, what can’t and how effectively they are doing their job.
Thanks,
Patrick
services management (and communities are a kind of service for me) is different to products. we have to think about peaks. we have to think about time management. i guess that working 7 days a week for 5,5 hours each day would have a better impact than working 4 days 8 hours. why? products can be stored. services cant be stored. so we have to reorganize and “offer” our service during peak times.
you are right – of course this is connected to a lot of factors, a community about a “dead” product or a “timeless” community will just need special services during special events (a chess community during the chess world championships or big tourneys), but all these “hot” communities are basically asking for service 24/7. and they dont know weekends, if youre unlucky the weekend is the peak of the week.
thus we have to find ways to serve our community 24/7, e.g. moderators. prolly working differently than serving in a local business. (even though in my eyes local businesses should also try to adapt their working hours to their customers and peaks… ;)). this means: more days, less hours.
dont worry: im not saying CMs should work 24/7. but i think we might have to get used to different working hours and hiring 2 instead of 1 CM if we really want to do a great job! :)
I don’t know about other community managers but I pretty much work 24/7!
I find that the job is never ‘done’.. you can’t just start at 9 and finish at 5.. just doesn’t work like that.
I genuinely believe it’s pretty much a 24/7 job, at least if you’re in the inception phase as I am, you need to be ‘on call’.
But to be fair I’m also the site’s developer as well as community manager, so if I’m not managing the community I’m buried in its code fixing glitches, tweaking/enhancing features or pondering how to make a certain feature more easier to use/pleasing to the members’ eyes to enhance their experience.
It certainly is a demanding and time consuming job!