ACA Home Forums Program Directors/Assistant Directors - hrs/week?

For all you full-time, exempt assistant directors and program directors - how many hours per week on average do you work in the offseason? Or if you are an executive director, how many hours do your assistant directors and program directors work?

The reason I'm asking is, I work at a camp in Texas as a Program Director. It's a full-time, exempt position (of course meaning that I don't get paid hourly, but rather a salary).

I understand that during the summer I'm pretty much going to be working 16 hours a day, every day. That comes with the territory.

But it's the offseason now and I am apparently ALWAYS expected to put in major hours. I mean, a lot of weeks I am working 60 hours a week. And it's not like we have very many rental groups or family camps or anything going on right now. It's just normal office work.

So my question for you other directors out there - how many hours per week do you work in the non-summer months? I want to know if I am in a unique situation or if the hours are this long no matter which camp you work for as a program director or an assistant director. Thanks!

Hi!

In short: it depends on the camp, and the season. The 24/7 job idea doesn't end in the off season, and sometimes that means working long hours to meet deadlines and get things done.

For example, I work at a tiny camp in North Carolina, and am not solely a program director as much as that and a little bit of everything else. We currently don't have programs beyond about seven weeks in the summer. That said, we're expanding into more short-term programs and have an accreditation visit this summer, so right now we're working really long hours. 60 hour weeks right now are not uncommon, especially with traveling. It's 'go' season. That said, in the fall, we had a lot more flexibility and I would work even less than 40 hour weeks in anticipation for this and for some work-life balance.

In my opinion, taking time for work-life balance is important for yourself and for the business. It clears your mind and helps you be more productive when at work, and often other parts of your life can lead to great new ideas and innovations. So, it's important to make that time for yourself, even when you're really busy, and to use that time wisely especially since it's limited.

Best of luck!

Hi! Thanks for the response. I'm glad there are at least some people sort of lurking around on these boards here.

I totally agree with what you're saying about work-life balance, and have always been a big fan of it. I'm a hard worker and I'm not lazy, but that doesn't mean I enjoy working really hard all the time.

The problem is, it's not really by my choice that I am working so much. My exec director just kind of, dumps it all on me. Like, "This Tuesday evening we are going to be doing this, and then on Saturday we've got this going on, and Sunday afternoon I need you to do this." And if I don't come in at the usual time in the morning or stay long enough in the afternoon, I receive questions about it, so it's not like I can just come and go as I please. In other words, despite me being a full-time exempt employee, I don't really get to set my hours.

When you talk about working lots of hours some weeks and LESS than 40 hours some weeks, I guess that's kind of what I had in mind when I signed up for an assistant director position. A balance of long, hard weeks with some weeks that are much slower, stress free and with fewer hours.

For example, at the end of our actual summer camp program, which ended on a Sunday, I fully expected for all of us to take at least a day or two off, after having worked 56 days straight for 16 hours a day. But we were expected to be back in the office the next morning to get going again.

It's nice for me to see that you are in a similar job position within your organization, but that you have a much nicer balance of hours than I do. I know that I'm not going to be at this current position forever, especially working 60-70 hours weeks all offseason. But I was hoping to find out that not all camps expect these sort of ridiculous hours from their assistant directors year-round.