Employee Remote Resources
Udemy open sourced an online course on Best Practices for Working Remotely
Trello shared a guide for How to Embrace Remote Work.
Guide to Remote Work - advice from innovative remote teams at Atlassian, Evernote, InVision, Zapier, Stack Overflow, Litmus, Buffer, and UNICEF.
Slack Pro Tips
Jennifer Farris, CPO at Terminal, and Darren Murph, Head of Remote at Gitlab, recently joined a webinar to talk about Preparing your team for remote work.
This is a great time to be creative and bring people together. Here are some ideas we’ve heard teams are trying to keep employees energized and connected.
Always on Zoom meeting "water cooler"
Daily team stand ups
"Fun" slack channels - meal preparation fails, pet or kid 'working' photos, office setups
Tik tok Flip the Switch challenge
Creating fun virtual backgrounds
Theme of the day - Fun hat, crazy glasses, all business (dress up), no makeup, 90s, PJs....
Spotify collaborative playlists
Sharing pro tips for WFH - asking managers and leaders to share day in the WFH life
Virtual happy hours
Response Plans and Policy Updates
Amplify Talent and People Tech Partners crowdsourced list - response plans, summary of employee travel restrictions, companies encouraging/requiring remote work/interviews, closures and cancellations of events, schools, and offices, articles & resources.
LifeLabs COVID-19 HR & People Ops Prep doc - policies and changes, comms templates, resources, Q&A
Summary of policies by company - https://stayinghome.club/
Self-Care and WFH Reminders
Find opportunities to support each other - email, these type of live discussions, Slack channels
Be thoughtful - create as much clarity and empathy as you can for your team, clients, and candidates
Take care of yourself. Here are some tips we’ve found helpful after working remote for several years.
No commute means some time back in your day - invest it in yourself (meditate, exercise, connect with your family)
Create a workspace with as much natural light as possible - some VC tools let you use virtual backgrounds if you need it.
Get dressed or it’ll be 6pm and you’ll still be in your PJs
Master your technology - consider upgrading your wifi temporarily to avoid being the person frozen in time on screen
Find a routine - wake up as you normally would, schedule work blocks, know when to shutdown
Take time for a break - walk outside, change locations for meals
Over Communicate - connect for big and small moments, still celebrate as a team
Re-read what you write before sending - tone and words take more importance when not face to face
Operational Adjustments, Hiring & Emerging Best Practices
Tech Interview and Whiteboarding Tools
Recommendations for conducting whiteboarding and presentation interviews virtually
Teams are taking the opportunity to re-evaluate the need for whiteboarding for certain interviews since they’re awkward even in person in some cases.
Coding: HackerRank CodePair- useful for coding interviews.
Presentations: Zoom - for seminar/presentations, teams are experimenting with additional features available in the Webinar add-on.
Whiteboarding:
Interviewer Training
How are you preparing interviewers for the transition to remote interviews?
Setting expectations for the hiring teams - sending out an email before virtual interviews happen.
Describing solutions for If the candidate doesn’t show up or if there are connection issues
Resources Employees/Interviewers
Hiring team decision making
How can we help our hiring managers make confident hiring decisions without meeting candidates face to face?
Lean into identifying the information manager is trying to get face to face - use deeper reference checking to help fill in gaps where possible
Flagging the challenges of making a hiring decision upfront
What information do we get when we meet with someone in person?
Can we build things into the interview process to creatively get what we need to make a decision from meeting a candidate virtually
If the candidate is local, it may be possible to have them meet 1:1 somewhere vs going into the office
Structured and standardized interviewing is more important than ever. Rely on the rubrics and frameworks that you’ve developed.
Resource: GitLab Interviewing Handbook
CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE
Virtual onsite interviews
How do you prepare candidates for video onsite interview?
Adding a friendly infographic to virtual interviews
Sending candidates guidance and instructions for 3 basic steps to logging into zoom and what to do to troubleshoot
Adding RC cell # in case there are any issues.
Have one consistent VC link so the candidate doesn’t have to switch VC rooms for different interviewers on a loop.
Be transparent and have clear communication. It’s a moment for being more personal and less buttoned up.
Resources For Candidates
Candidate decision making
How should we tell candidates that the process may take longer due to COVID-19? How to keep candidates warm while working through process issues?
Candidates are starting to get ahead of where companies are. They’re requesting to either slow down (push out travel) or speed up to get through the process. Recruiters are starting to proactively ask both hiring managers AND candidates on their comfort level with face to face meetings and travel. Goal is to meet both where they are and adjust the process based on what you can support.
Onboarding
Virtual I-9 verifications for new hires while companies are mandatory WFH?
Teams are considering temporary shifts to I-9 verifications that rely on bank notaries with detailed instructions or 'authorized representatives' like spouses or roommates.
Are teams going to be managing virtual orientation?
Onboarding buddies are an option to quickly root new teammates into the team by sharing organizational context and helping figure out those final details on setting up company tools necessary to be productive.
New hire orientations are moving to virtual channels. Content is being recorded and facilitated through video conferencing tools like Zoom.
IT teams are setting up and shipping laptops to new employees' homes.
Market Environment & Context