guest eo

[Kyle]

Essentially, the guest roles used to be for alumni and now they are simply part time positions.


~~from phone

[Inseriousity.]

Sorry jazz thought you were guest too for some reason, my bad.
I was talking more generally about the role hayden. There will be exceptions in every department but fundamentally, the role of 'guest' [insert role here] is a lazy attempt to hang onto older members of staff and I have seen enough of managers' varied attempts to do this to know that ultimately it is not often in the best interests of the department long-term.

For instance, there have been numerous occasions when managers have asked older staff to return to the department. Being wanted and valued means that they very often do. Then they remember why they left in the first place.
I had a rule as comps manager that I wouldn't try to persuade someone to stay. Staff that wanted to leave were replaced and if they wanted to return they had to wait until applications were open. The one time I ignored this rule to try to maintain the very good atmosphere that the department had was also the time that a couple of months down the line, 3 members of staff resigned roughly around the same time when it would've been more staggered and easier to manage had I followed my own rule. Short term benefits, long term losses.

Departments are struggling to hire new staff so it is easy to bring in guest staff and water down the criteria needed to become 1. Personally, I would scrap the role - I think it does more harm than good - and focus on getting an active Habbo presence with the full time staff you've actually got to attract new people who will want to commit themselves full time. These are the people we need. I would expect at least half of the guest staff would actually go to a regular role were the option of less work not available to them.

[Matt]

The criteria has already been tweaked since the role of Guest Events Organsier was initially introduced. It used to be that in order to qualify for the Guest role you had to have been a Senior or above within the Events Department. We got rid of this to encourage more staff to consider returning and in this case we did see a lot more interest in the role. If we changed it so that you didn't have to be a previous Events staff member, I get the impression we'd see people who are unfamiliar with the official protocol joining the department and ... how to phrase this, be a waste of a Guest role? I believe that if someone wants to join the department and hasn't had substantial experience (which means I can be assured they will follow the correct procedures etc), they should be a trialist and/or a normal EO. So to answer your question, I find it very unlikely that the current criteria will change to allow for people without experience to join as a Guest. I have turned down people due to the fact they have not been in the Events Department at Habbox before. If people really wanted to host events they'd join as a trialist and gain experience as a normal events organiser. 3 Events a week really isn't that much!

I did origionally offer people trials and then give them the option to step down to a Guest, however I kind of changed my mind on that and decided that the Guest Role should be a privilege based role. I think it's great to have people who have stood out in the past, rejoining and becoming a Guest. If you've had no experience hosting Events at Habbox, what harm would it do if you had to put up with the role of a normal Events host in order to gain that experience, to show us that you are more than capable of hosting and that you aren't just wanting to join and get away with hosting the bare minimum each week. Trialing you for a week and then giving you the role of Guest, to me, is too much like easy work as you've only just entered the department for the first time.

I would totally disagree with the 'inspires laziness'. I have Guest EO's that host 3 Events a week and are willing to go above and beyond what is required of them as a Guest. If we scrapped the role of Guest at this moment in time, I'd be left with literally 1 EO. The way I see it, the Guests host Events, they are there and willing to host when asked, they enjoy hosting and they quite often host more than the 1 Event a week. Although it's a lesser minimum than normal staff and they could/should just host the 3 Events a week, it's better then having no staff at all.

Gaining more staff is so much easier said than done. If I scrapped the role altogether and tried to focus on gaining more staff, I'd get a feedback thread asking me to explain why it's only me and like 2 other hosts providing the entirety of Habbox with Events. My current Guests give me something to fall back on and I know for a fact that they are hosting each week due to it being a requirement. Their minimums were changed to 1 Event per week instead of just the 4 per month as we had staff members sitting in that role and not hosting for months on end and just being pure lazy. This meant we could hand out more warnings (on a weekly basis rather then a monthly basis) and dismiss staff who were being lazy. This also make it clear that we expect Guests to be active in their role throughout each month and not just pop up in the final week in each month to meet their requirement.

I will keep a cap on the amount of Guests I have - it just seems that no one wants to/likes the idea of being normal staff at the moment. This is something which hopefully will improve as time goes on.

I've been working all weekend and just got home, sorry if this is really hazy!


TL;DR - The Guest role isn't just for lazy people & I don't see a need for the criteria to change at the moment.

[Chippiewill]

What is all this talk about laziness? It's an unpaid voluntary position, if they want to be lazy then so ******* well be it.

Only at Habbox could we moan about people only giving up an hour of their time per week.

[Bloop]

@Kyle; ok I swear I posted a reply yesterday zzz

Anyway, I have restricted use on my laptop and sometimes come on lesser than 1 hour or gtg all of a sudden. I would love to host events for Habbox tho, but its just impossible (which I wish not to elaborate here). If I could sign up as a triallist, I must as well be a full eo? but anyway, thanks matt for your reply x.

Hosted an unofficial event and got scouted by habbcrazy to join their events team, so thought that I coulnt be too bad could I? guess ill stick to hosting unofficial events for habbox .

- - - Updated - - -

Oh woops realise I'm pretty selfish requesting the rules to be changed because of me

[Inseriousity.]

Yes it is an unpaid voluntary position but if you create a tier of volunteering where some are able to volunteer less than others then naturally people would rather be in the one that is less work, same staff privileges. At least when the role isn't there, there is a level playing field and everyone is expected to volunteer the same amount of time.

It is also lazy because it is so much easier to tinker with bureaucratic systems than the much harder task of actually getting out there and attracting new people. As matt has pointed out, he would only have 1 EO if the guests were scrapped so essentially, the guests are a crutch for the short-term that is ever expanding into the long term (as evidenced by tinkering with the criteria for the role) and it is simply not a sustainable system of doing things. If some guest staff are already doing above and beyond the minimum expected of regular staff then I am sure that they would go into that position if the guest role was not around.

[Chippiewill]

If people choose to volunteer less then they volunteer less. As long as their level of volunteering isn't having a negative contribution then there is no criticism that you can levy against the people who do it or the policy that enables them to do so.

[James]

guess ill stick to hosting unofficial events for habbox .

Surely if you can host unofficial events, why can't you join and host official ones?

[Empired]

Some of ur posts are really long and I'm watching TV so I haven't read through the posts properly on the second page but yh.

I think you shouldn't have to be an ex member of staff to be guest staff in that department. In fact I think if people step down to guest it's already pretty certain they're gonna leave. Each case should be looked at individually by mdport. and maybe Shonly and then a decision can be made about whether or not they're right for the role of guest EO. Don't just look at their application, look at their activity on the forum, what kind of person they are, whether or not you think they'd be good at hosting events, etc.

Perhaps change "You must have been an Events Organiser+" to "It would help if you were an EO" but it's not compulsory yh

[Inseriousity.]

There is if that policy has a negative effect on the level of volunteering long-term, which Habbox cannot afford to rest on its laurels. I saw with my own eyes as AGM the damage it did to the HxL department with senior staff resigning to become a guest DJ. I scrapped it. Those staff that resigned eventually returned as regular staff. When Grig returned to the department and increased the members of international staff by actually building up a network of contacts, the department's staff numbers were revived so it can be done and it is possible. Now if managers wanted to test lowering/scrapping the minimum for everyone to attract new staff, that is up to them and I would consider it a bold and risky step that Habbox could do some more of. Until then, I will still argue that the guest roles do more harm than good.