<aside> 💡 At Chat Thing we think it’s important for you to work when you want and when you feel like you’re on the top of your game. If you work better in the evening feel free to sleep in and put in the hours later in the day; If you’re an early bird then we don’t mind if you start at the very crack of dawn and finish nice and early. We trust that you will deliver high-quality work on time. It is your responsibility to manage your time and we trust that you can do so! To make flexible working hours work then we rely on a few processes to keep everything running smoothly.
</aside>
We have a channel in slack called #hi-and-bye, when you start work, go to lunch, back from lunch or off for the evening then this channel is just to keep everyone in the loop and let everyone know. There are times that we all need some focus time with no interruptions, so we just put our slack onto “No notifications” - this allows everyone to see you’re in “deep work” or real focus mode.
After we have said hi on slack we should then write our Daily stand-up.
This is a great way to start off the day, because it forces you to think about your priorities, but it also lets your teammates know what you're working on (which gives them a chance to help / ask questions / give feedback) and it creates a great feeling of teamwork.
NB: If you're on vacation, stay away from this channel and take a deep breath 💆♀️
Once everyone is online we will then jump on a zoom call and all have a chat about how our previous day went and what we are up to today. We often have a laugh and a giggle during these stand-ups too.
Along with stand-ups, weekly roundups is one of the most important things to do in the week. It’s also a nice way to round up the week and see all of the beautiful work you have achieved in the space of just a week! Be proud!
The idea of round ups are for project management to see visibility of how projects are going and to plan accordingly. For projects to run smoothly, it’s crucial that communication is on point, especially with a remote team. Often management are busy especially towards the end of the week, therefore we’re looking for staff to be proactive and update management so they don’t have to chase on progress of projects particularly before the week is out. Planning for projects is the first thing done in the week, and sometimes is done over weekends, therefore an update at the end of each week is important.
The working week is 37.5hours, split into 7.5 hours a day. We don’t mind you jigging this around, working longer hours one day to have a half day another day etc. This just needs to be signed off by management, and organised beforehand.
Working hours are flexible although you must be working between 11am - 3pm to allow known times for company communication (other than a lunch break of course and unless previous organised).
We understand that sometimes you want a longer lunch breaks to go have a dip in the sea, go for a jog or a nice long dog walk and that’s absolutely fine. The main thing we ask is for you communicate and say you are taking a longer lunch prior in the #hi-and-bye channel.