A Piece of Cake
When I was in the second grade, I attended my best friend’s birthday party. Her mother had fashioned a homemade cake into the shape of a hopscotch court. It was the most beautiful confection I’d ever seen.
I was so beguiled by this geometric sugar temple that when it came time to join other partygoers in the backyard my foot completely missed the first step of the deck’s staircase. Slice in hand, I fell head-first all the way down, hitting each step on my way.
My six-year-old pride was shattered, along with my once-perfect cake square, all because I was laser-focused on the wrong thing.
In the days following March 12, 2020 — the date FiscalNote’s team of nearly 500 shifted fully to remote work — my mind throttled back to this childhood faux pas.
This time around, the things in front of me did not include homemade desserts, but an unpredictable global pandemic, imminent civil and economic unrest, and an acute sense of urgency to keep our team’s culture intact through all of it.
And as we all very separately waded into the virtual unknown, I started to fixate, again, on the wrong thing: replicating and preserving what we did before.
In my current role, I oversee FiscalNote’s corporate social responsibility and internal communications functions. My post allows me to liaise with everyone across our international organization, in an effort to cultivate company culture and engage employees.
We’re a global technology company — maintaining connection shouldn’t be all that difficult, in theory. But daunting questions surrounding just how we’d protect the pulse of our internal culture remained ever-present.
Back to March 12, 2020: This day was supposed to serve as FiscalNote’s scheduled “Stress Test,” the first of 100% remote work, intended to pinpoint any glaring chinks in our armor ahead of what seemed like an imminent and indeterminate international office closure due to COVID-19.
In retrospect, some (read: many) might say this pandemic has been one long, uninterrupted stress test. And, spoiler alert: Over the last 12+ months, we’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we’ve learned from them — and made some critical and necessary progress, too.
What I’ve learned with regard to FiscalNote’s culture (and human nature, in general) is now ubiquitous and undeniable truth: In-person connections and interactions simply can’t be replicated. Events and inane water-cooler conversations can’t, either. But this fact deemed it all the more important to try, fail, and delicately sift through the rubble to find and nurture the bits of this virtual landscape that do actually work.
Twelve months of occupying a virtual workplace enabled deep introspection; it made space for us to reevaluate what’s at the heart of this company, its mission, and its core values — and that’s our people.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
In September 2020, we activated an eight-member Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. To get to that point, however, we spent the summer months consulting with a DEI firm, hosted a multitude of safe-space dialogues and town halls, launched a diversity and inclusion survey, and acknowledged — and continue to acknowledge — the many areas and practices across the company in need of intense improvement and evaluation with regard to DEI.
As 2020 drew to a close, we revealed our 2021 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & DEI Calendar, which details monthly themes of inclusion, awareness, and related programming. Utilizing Slack and other social channels to collectively ideate and share resources, thus far, we’ve observed Civic Engagement Month (January 2021) and Black History Month (February 2021). Gender Equity Month is currently in progress.
Last week, FiscalNote’s CEO Tim Hwang became one of nearly 2,000 CEOs that have come together and joined CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™, an initiative that cements both our internal and external commitment to advance D&I in the workplace. By signing on to be a part of this initiative, we’ve promised to continue cultivating a workplace where diverse perspectives and experiences are welcomed, respected, and celebrated — and where employees feel encouraged to prioritize and discuss D&I.
Virtual Events
Navigating the virtual event space has felt much like walking a tightrope — and let’s just say, as evidenced by my opening anecdote, “graceful” is not typically a term used to describe me. Between relentless Zoom fatigue and all of the nuanced challenges individual team members faced (and still face) on the homefront, forcing a constant barrage of virtual, camera-on happy hours simply wasn’t cutting it.
Instead, we engaged with FiscalNote’s broader network of advisors, investors, and community partners to craft and thoughtfully execute programming and events that both directly related to the business and our combined DEI and CSR efforts.
In February — Black History Month — FiscalNoters pledged to honor the ingenuity, experiences, and passion of our Black colleagues, clients, and community by way of employee education, storytelling, and celebration. Together, we attended some of Smithsonian Institution’s curated programming, which bore our book club title: 400 Souls. Then, there was the BHM Spotify playlist that yielded this piece of musical nostalgia by Brian Horace. Teammates (virtually) gathered for a Netflix Teleparty to view the first episode of “Time: The Kalief Browder Story.” At month’s end, we hosted 645 Ventures Co-Founder and early FiscalNote investor Aaron Holiday as part of our ongoing “fireside chat” series. Aaron and his co-founder Nnamdi’s early investment in FiscalNote was an instrumental part of our early success.
FiscalNote Pairings
FN Pairings, as we refer to it internally, is an opt-in program that offers the kind of one-to-one connection that’s helped maintain existing employee connections and jump-start new ones. At the top of each week, a Slack app integration dubbed “Donut” randomly and automatically pairs employees who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to interact with each other on a daily basis.
Donut’s Slack app introduces FiscalNoters via direct-message and encourages them to meet virtually via an icebreaker question. It’s been an especially integral and connective tool for new hires, who — due to the ongoing pandemic — begin their company tenure without physically meeting or occupying the same office space as their teams and colleagues.
Get Ahead Days
Next month will mark 11 months of our observance of Get Ahead Days, a company-wide initiative aimed at enabling employees to step back, take a deep breath, and turn their focus inward; to do whatever needed to simply get ahead. No one can better identify or define what that type of “pause” looks like than each individual employee.
By significantly decreasing internal meetings, DMs, and the general volume of intra-company activity over the course of a business day, we’re able to provide opportunities for relief from COVID-19-induced chaos.
Our next Get Ahead Day is slated for Friday, April 2, 2021.
Now, let’s return to my early ’90s party foul. Post-tumble, my pal’s mom graciously cleaned me up — wiped away the blood, tears, frosting, etc. She gave me a pat on the back, offered me a fresh piece of cake, and sent me back out into the world.
I’ve been all too careful not to focus on the wrong things in 2021. Like many, I tiptoed into this year very gingerly, with eyes open wide. But I remember what so many of my colleagues have done for me — and each other — over the last year. The thoughtful book or film recs, the sharing of puppy pics, those quick-but-sincere Slack sign-offs, and small-but-mighty virtual events — they were the bright spots. The figurative pats-on-backs that propelled us all forward.
