Working in the Open: January 13–17, 2020
One of Code for Canada’s principles is to operate in public. These regular blog posts put that value into practice, giving readers a window into what we’re doing — and how we do it.
Welcome to our #weeknotes! Here’s Code for Canada’s Rose, Bud and Thorn for Jan. 13–17, 2020.
🌹 Rose: We did a lot of knowledge sharing at Code for Canada this week. The internal kind, where a few of us got to dig into what we’ve learned from our work and share it with the rest of the team. Merlin did an epic lunch and learn on monitoring and evaluation, where he whittled four hours of content down to a thought-provoking 60 minutes. He covered the value of having a system for M&E, and the challenges he’s faced as one of the first in the field to take up this work. The why of M&E practices, Merlin says, is to “prove and improve” so that we can be sure we’re focusing on the right things.
One of our newest team members, Flavi, dove right in this week and hosted an onboarding session with the new fellowship cohort. And Sagar sat down with Jason and Flavi to walk them through Active Campaign, our new CRM tool. We 💖 lunch ‘n learns, and they’re something we’ve committed to making a more consistent part of our team’s workflow from now on.
🌱 Bud: Raina El Mugammar led an anti-oppression workshop for fellows and staff. They discussed the difference between equity, equality, and liberation, and got our team up to speed on approaches to dismantling power structures. And Raina created an environment where all of us, staff and fellows alike, could share our personal stories. There’s value in knowing the different life experience that each of our colleagues brings to the team.
If you think this sounds like a lot to cover in a few hours, you’re right. We left with the feeling that we barely scratched the surface of an important topic during the workshop, but we’re also happy that we got the ball rolling. It renewed our commitment to keep the conversation at top of mind while we work.
📌 Thorn: We discussed our new staff compensation policy as a team for the first time this week. We talked about why our salaries are made publicly available in our disclosures, and shared things like how salary bands are set (based on industry norms at Canadian non-profits) and how they compare, as well as the process for staff raises and promotion. It was a pretty robust, and at times challenging conversation. The management team took back some learnings about how to prepare and share new or developing policies with staff, and we’re excited to continue iterating on the policy (like we do with all our staffing documents). One thing that won’t be changing is our commitment to working in the open. Research suggests being radically transparent about compensation “can help reduce gender and racial inequality in the workplace” and empower those who may not have a history of successfully negotiating salaries. Sure it’s not always easy, but it is the kind of workplace we want to be.
That’s it for this week! As always, thank you for reading, and if you’d like to know more about Code for Canada, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter.
