October 29, 2021
Highlights from A.A.W.S
The A.A. World Services Board met on Friday, October 29, 2021, at the Sheraton Times Square Hotelin New York, NY, with a videoconference hybrid. Chair of the A.A.W.S. Board, Jimmy D., welcomed all in attendance and opened the meeting with a moment of silence.
A.A.W.S
General Manager's Report
General Manager Bob W. provided the following report:
The General Service Office employees are back at 475 Riverside Drive. On average, about 32 employees are working from the office each day during the workweek. Due to individual circumstances, some employees continue to work from home during the transition period to a full return to the workplace with hybrid schedules.
The general manager attended his first A.A.W.S. Strategic Planning Session September 20, bringing forth goals to carry out office-wide. The central theme of the goals is rooted in the development of “Service Standards” that will address how services are delivered. Emphasis will be placed on prompt response times, answering and routing calls and emails and in-depth training of employees on all aspects of service to the Fellowship. One goal is to continue expanding the native functions offered by NetSuite. Another is to address ongoing issues of translation. These issues are not solely focused on the growing translation needs surrounding the General Service Conference but the number of translation requests throughout the office as Well. A working group will begin to look at possible solutions for the strain this puts on our resources.
Archives
The Archives staff is currently aiding two International A.A. entities with their research inquiries. Italy has reached out to us for information about the start of A.A. in Milan and Japan has contacted us for materials on the history of A.A. in that country for their archives. These are extensive and time-consuming projects.
Approximately 20 cubic feet of unprocessed materials from pot International Conventions were brought into the archives for future processing. From January through October 2021, about 233 new items (mostly A.A. printed materials such as service pieces, pamphlets, books, etc.) were accessioned and filed into the repository.
The archivist participated at the 65th Ohio State Convention, held on August 20 — 22, 2021. The theme of the Convention was “Our Great Responsibility,” which was the topic of the Archives presentation.
Operations
The Fellowship Connection Release 3.0 launched on October 14, 2021. The following enhancements requested by the end-users during sharing sessions were included in the FC 3.0 release: new, user-friendly Dashboard, ability to automatically provide end dates to outgoing position holders, the ability for area registrars to see when the service kits were ordered, ability to choose to receive digital or physical kits or to opt out of receiving any kits.
The Member Service Department launched June 28, 2021 (memberservices@aa.org). As of October 20, the department had received and responded to 9,850 emails. As of September 30, the team had received about 1,000 phone calls. Since the launch of Fellowship Connection on December 14, 2020, area registrars made 13,375 updates directly into the portal; the Member Services associates made 8,490 Area and Group updates in NetSuite.
Human Resources
Nay Williams (nonalcoholic) formerly Conference staff assistant, was promoted to staff services manager. Grace Ralbovsky (nonalcoholic) joined the Staff Services team as staff services assistant on the Regional Forums assignment. Camilo Fiore. (nonalcoholic) joined the Operations team as a Member Services associate. Samantha Nieto (nonalcoholic), formerly Communications administrative assistant, was promoted to Communications project coordinator.
At the end of September, the entire workforce celebrated the retirement of Clement C., senior manager of Communication Services effective October 1, 2021. Applicants are being sought for a director of Communication Services. Full compensation review is underway with our new compensation consultant, SmithPilot. It is anticipated that some employees may need market adjustment to make sure everyone is compensated in line with our compensation philosophy.
Technology Services
Technology Services continues to play a significant role in the aa.org website development project, including identifying the new vendor (Perficient), leading negotiations and contracting, and facilitating Perficient’s Assessment of the previous vendor’s work. The TS team continues to project manage the internal work to ready the content for the new site and guide the development efforts.
The team began drafting an Incident Response Plan to mitigate cybersecurity risks and identified an approach to as-
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