HR Director says no problem with turnover at ICANN.
Perhaps responding to questions about some high profile departures lately, ICANN Director of Human Resources Steve Antonoff just released an analysis (pdf) of turnover at the non-profit.
His bottom line: turnover is less than the typical high tech company and has mostly to do with factors outside of ICANN.
In the financial year ending June 2010 the company had 8.73% turnover with 10 departures. Antonoff compares this to the U.S. high tech industry average reported by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of 25.8%. (Show me a high tech company with that sort of turnover in their professional ranks and I’ll show you a sinking ship.)
For the first 11 months of the current fiscal year turnover is 11.38% with 14 departures.
For fiscal year 2010 more of the departures were from involuntary departures (i.e. firing) whereas 2011 has seen more voluntary departures than involuntary.
Why have so many people left during the current financial year, just as ICANN gets ready to embark on a massive expansion with new TLDs?
Antonoff writes:
Exit interviews confirmed that these departures were not due to issues at ICANN, but generally were motivated by external opportunities, family issues, and retirement. None of the staff members who left voluntarily over the two years indicated in their exit interviews dissatisfaction with management or with ICANN in general. Many continue to actively support ICANN and its management team.
That his statement directly refutes people leaving for dissatisfaction with management or ICANN suggests that there are concerns of exactly this sort of issue. Exit interviews are OK, but not great at getting to the bottom of departures. At the end of the day, most people don’t want to burn bridges.
What would be more interesting is if an outside group came in an performed anonymous evaluations. You know, like “The Bobs“.
It would also be interesting to see if people who have offices overlooking the bay have lower turnover than those facing inland.
FarmerJohn says
Turnover isn’t that bad although the dough is heavy and very flaky.
Gazzip says
“Why have so many people left during the current financial year, just as ICANN gets ready to embark on a massive expansion with new TLDs?”
Perhaps people are leaving to go and start up their own TLD’s ?
There’s obviously alot of money going in that direction by the sounds of it so maybe they’re after a slice of the pie ?
Maria Farrell says
Exit interviews are an infamously poor source of information, as anyone with sense will try to protect their reputation and any departure package by keeping their mouth shut. An independent, anonymized study performed by a trusted third party might yield useful information. Self-servingly skewed “statistics” do not.
The distinction between voluntary and involuntary departures is nice in theory, but in an environment where almost the entire executive has left within 18 months, it doesn’t mean much. The US doesn’t seem to have the concept of ‘constructive dismissal’, when someone’s job is made impossible to do and they are forced to resign. But that is the reality.
If you want to talk statistics, let’s talk about losing >80% of the senior staff and what that does to a nonprofit. Trying to muddy the discussion with disinformation about whether these people jumped or were pushed is a PR tactic, nothing more.
Bottom line, ICANN management still thinks it can control the flow of information in a community where it is practically impossible to get away with misinformation. Around here, you can’t fool all the people even some of the time.
Kieren McCarthy says
I have to say it’s a surprisingly persuasive analysis.
It is nonsense though.
There has been a very high turnover at the top, and as a result a lot of mistakes have been made. That’s what people are referring to, and everyone knows it, so it’s slightly worrying that ICANN is being so determinedly disingenuous about it.
How I fit in with the figures: I was a voluntary redundancy in November 2009.
But I never had an exit interview.
Kieren
Kieren McCarthy says
So I’ve been thinking about this.
There is some statistical fudging going on. The 25.8% “high tech industry average” figure is extremely high.
I would like to see from where precisely it was pulled.
If you look at broader figures over time, like here on the Bureau of Labor States website: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2010/ted_20100816.htm
…you’ll see that the total separations rate for private industry for the past three years is between 3.5 and 4.5 percent.
Now, if you look at this study of jobs in Silicon Valley (also by the Labor Bureau): http://www.bls.gov/opub/regional_reports/200908_silicon_valley_high_tech.htm
…then you can see that between 2001-2008 there was a slump in employment in Silicon Valley. And there you can find your mid-20s turnover percentages.
I strongly suspect that ICANN has used the dot-com crash figures as comparison. And used Silicon Valley as a comparator for ICANN.
But here’s why that is an illegitimate comparison:
1. ICANN is not in Silicon Valley (it has an office of, I think, three people there) and it is not a high tech industry.
Yes, it is *about* the Internet but, according to the Bureau, a high tech industry is defined as one where “employment in technology-oriented occupations accounted for a proportion of that industry’s total
employment that was at least twice the 4.9% average for all industries.”
But only a small percentage of ICANN staff are actually in tech jobs. Most are in policy jobs. Or customer relationship. Or compliance.
2. The comparison assumes that all staff are based in the United States. Many are not. Probably a third at a guess.
3. ICANN’s income is not impacted by the high-tech industry. It receives a steady stream of income based on domain names.
This income has never gone down, and is largely insulated from the state of the economy. So whereas in high tech industries people are laid off for economic reasons – and the Silicon Valley study makes that clear – at ICANN there is no economic component to turnover.
So what ICANN has done, I believe, is take the huge dive in jobs in Silicon Valley post the dot-com crash and used that as an “industry average”.
I’m not sure the 25.8% figure is legit, and I am certain that the comparison between ICANN and that figure is illegitimate.
So if you compare ICANN with the public sector as a whole over that time, what do you get? That it is in fact more than double the average rate.
In other words: yes, there is a major problem with staff turnover at ICANN.
Which is something we all knew anyway.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Kieren –
I’m sure your exit interview would have been glowing.
I agree that # is way off. Even if this were a tech company in the valley, 25% would be way to high for an ongoing, stable company.
This report kind of reminds me of the first Carlton report on the economics of new TLDs. Someone inside ICANN basically said “prove this case”, and this is how they did it.
Gazzip says
There’s a good post discussing it here
“There are fears that the sudden influx of new money into the gTLD space could easily attract ICANN’s top talent away from the organization, making it less effective.”
domainincite.com/calls-to-fix-new-gtld-revolving-door-at-icann/
Antony Van Couvering says
Maybe Kieren and Maria won’t want to hear this, but my experience as an outsider is that it’s been a lot easier dealing with ICANN staff since Rod Beckstrom showed up.
Before, it was a lunacy of private sub-kingdoms and petty vendettas. For instance, I was denied use of a meeting room because I had written a blog post critical of ICANN. Since Rod’s arrival, I have found the opposite to be true: ICANN staff being willing to engage in conversation, taking on suggestions without defensiveness, and generally being helpful.
I will say that staff are “diplomatic” about Rod himself. But from a user’s perspective (I don’t have to work there), it’s been all good. The only senior staffer to leave that I know personally was Doug Brent, whom I was sorry to see go. But he told me he just couldn’t take the commute any more, simple as that.
Turnover rates, or numbers of senior staff leaving, are not stories in themselves. They are perhaps indicative of something, but it’s not clear what. My experience of ICANN staff under Rod Beckstrom has been very positive, while under the previous administration it was abysmal.
Kieren McCarthy says
I think you may be comparing apples with oranges Antony.
I agree that staff have grown more relaxed and less paranoid as a whole. But I wouldn’t attribute alot of that to the CEO (sadly). The situation was improving in the last two years under Paul Twomey.
I do think that one of the things that Beckstrom *has* got right is to be more open (although it has frequently blown-back when he’s said something stupid).
The biggest positive example I can think of was when ICANN published the dot-xxx Independent Review Panel decision.
I have no doubt that it appeared despite strongly expressed staff concerns. Would it have appeared so quickly under Twomey? No, not a chance.
So in that sense, Beckstrom may have broken the unwritten rule of secrecy. And so that may have lifted the staffer fear of getting into trouble by being open.
Plus there is the virtuous circle where if staff are more open and friendly, the community respond positively, which means the staff doesn’t need to be as defensive, and so on.
Re: meetings and meetings staff. I think you can pretty much put that down to Nick Tomasso who took over as meetings head about three years ago and has an open, problem-solving approach to things. His predecessor is still at the organization but in a different role.
And the policy staff improvements are thanks to David Olive, who is working on removing the incredibly destructive culture that existed under his predecessor. She is also still at the organization but in a different role.
The issue of staff turnover is about something very different – and that is ICANN’s strategic decisions as well as all the stuff behind the scenes that makes ICANN viable in the eyes of big organizations that want more of a role in the Internet.
In that respect, ICANN has really slipped. Which explains in part why the DoC has been so publicly critical for the past six months. And of course the relationship with the GAC has been tested to breaking point.
ICANN doesn’t really have any sway or presence any more outside of the United States or outside its own little ICANN bubble. That’s what people are worried about.
So, inside the bubble, it’s got a little better. Not a lot, but a little. Outside the bubble, ICANN is almost entirely dependent on others’ goodwill at the moment. And that’s dangerous for an organization in charge of the domain name system.