A handbook that helped 200 employees start remote work in 2 days

To protect our team and their families Flo has decided to start transitioning to a remote work model, encouraging our employees to start working from home, before an official quarantine in the country is announced.

The Remote Leadership team appointed to lead and manage the shift to remote work, developed this Handbook over the course of two days.

For us at Flo, as for many companies these days, transition to remote work has been a challenge. We are used to working all together in one office and feel strongly about the benefits of collaborating and solving issues face to face.

With this decision, we aimed to take care of our employees and maintain the highest level of reliable and relevant service to Flo users. To support and guide our team in the transition to working remotely we created this Remote Handbook. It was important to address the rules while helping our employees feel calm and safe. The Handbook is constantly evolving based on the feedback from the team we collect every evening with the short pulse survey.

We are glad to share this document and hope that it will be useful for your internal communications.

Remote Work Guidelines

In order to assure a healthy, safe, and productive period of Remote Work for all Flo employees, please follow these guidelines.

• Please prioritize productive and flexible working hours over a set schedule. We want you to feel comfortable and supported to do your best work. This is more important than the exact times you begin and end your working hours.
• Please document knowledge and processes to share with team members instead of providing verbal explanations. This is a more effective use of your time and creates a more efficient network of information within the company.
• Please use asynchronous communication whenever possible instead of a real-time communication. This removes the need for all parties involved in a communication to be available at the same time and helps projects be run more efficiently.
• Please use formal communication channels (e.g. Slack or email) instead of informal communication channels (phone call, video calls, texting). This helps keep all our communication well organized and easy to find.

How to Work Remotely

The Remote Leadership Team was created to ensure the highest workflow and communication standards in this new working context. It consists of C-level employees and specific team leads. If you have any urgent or unpredictable situation around the coronavirus (ex. “I was just diagnosed with coronavirus”, “I recently traveled from a country with many outbreaks”, “I was in contact with an infected person” etc ) please email [example@example.com] with this information.

Slack channel

We’ve created a special Slack channel for questions about remote work, or COVID-19. Please post about these topics in this new channel.. The #memes channel is also open to any memes about these two topics. Good mood is important.

Productive Communication When Working Remotely

While working remotely we can’t communicate face-to-face or quickly resolve issues by tapping one another’s shoulder and having a chat, so it is critically important for every team member to be aware of everyone’s project / task status. This will allow us to continue business as usual in any unpredictable situation that might be associated with the pandemic. So therefore in the current situation it is vital to minimize DM communication and communication in private channels and maximize the communication in open team chats and groups.

During the time we are working remotely each of us will be asked to regularly fill in a 3-minute survey about how you feel about the quality and effectiveness of our communication in the new framework. This will give us a sense of whether the current communication rules work well, what we need to adjust, and how we can help you and your team.

The survey will contain the same questions every day and will be conducted in Lattice. You will receive a notification to your inbox when a new one is delivered, and an email nudge if we didn’t get a reply from you. Here are the points we will need your daily responses on:

1. I felt productive today (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)
2. I had no technical issues (e.g. low internet connection speed/ hangouts or zoom glitches/ issues with hardware) that impacted my workflow (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)
3. Remote Handbook guidelines are straightforward to follow (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)
4. Though I / some of the team members are working remotely, I feel connected to the team (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)
5. When I was reaching out to the people on my team, I got timely responses (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)
6. If I had any challenges or bottlenecks and communicated them to the team, they were resolved (Strongly Disagree/ Disagree/Neutral/Agree/Strongly Agree)

Ways of working

1. Slack is #1.

While we are working remotely, Slack will be the key communication channel. Please refrain from using any other tools for business communication besides the ones listed in this Handbook (the list of permitted tools is provided below).

To do first: Check and update your phone number in Slack.

Before your first remote day: Label your working hours (e.g. 9am- 6pm, or 10am — 7pm) in your slack profile, and update it if any changes. Please do your best to be available during your working hours.

Every weekday: Update your Slack status (remote work / sick leave) if you have any changes

2. Check your email inbox and Slack at least 3 times per day: in the morning, in the afternoon and at the end of your working day. It is hugely important to be accessible even if you don’t frequently work with other teams.

3. Communicate in a timely manner. Please try to be as responsive as possible. Keep in mind that the expected delay in responding to your colleagues is: 4 hours in Slack and 8 hours by email. If you see that a colleague you aimed to reach doesn’t answer in the requested timing please reach out to their manager. It is made to ensure everyone is safe and sound.

4. For more information on Internal Communication principles please read the Company Communication Document

Teamwork

1.Keep team members informed. Each employee needs to provide the team with daily morning updates of their work in the public team / department channel in Slack.

• Please use ONLY #team- or #stream- channels for posting your daily status
• In these channels you can post your updates as separate messages OR in the thread DON’T use #**-standup channels for your daily updates.
• This update should contain the answers on the following questions:

What did I do?

What will I do?

Do I have any challenges/bottlenecks?

2. Don’t forget about Jira. If the team works via Jira, you must keep all task statuses updated. Any challenges / bottlenecks should be outlined in the comments.

3. The engineers must have daily code commits.

4. Communicate. Any changes in production (even minor ones) must be communicated in a Slack channel #update. This will help us not to lose track of anything important. Working remotely should not impact app functionality or user experience.

5. While working remotely all meetings should be conducted via Google Hangouts by default or Zoom (using corporate accounts only). If you have an important meeting with 10+ attendees you can get access to Zoom corporate account. Please request it in advance (one day prior to the meeting) via our IT Service Desk.

6. If communicating with your colleagues you refer to any source of information (e.g. from the Remote Handbook, a merge request, issue, commit, webpage, comment, etc.) please make sure to include a link if possible. This will help us to avoid misunderstandings in written communication.

7. One team — one Slack channel. Every team must have their own channel in Slack. Please use this Guideline for giving the title to your team channel (if you don’t have one yet). Please use the following naming convention: team-##.

Productivity While Working Remotely

Remote demo

1. Demos will be conducted via Zoom Webinar (you can find the link in your Google Calendar invite) so that everyone can participate in them remotely. During the first demo we will check how the new framework works and if/how we need to improve it.
2. The questions can be asked via the Zoom Q&A function. If you want to grab the attention you can use the Raise Hands function.
3. Please ONLY use the Demo Rolling Deck for your slides (it will safeguard us from troubles with the Internet):
4. We won’t show live demos (from the mobile screens). If you want to demonstrate any video during your presentation, please insert this video or screenshots into the slides.
5. Live Demo functionality will be added later if we manage to get such a technical possibility.
6. Demos will be led by the Product Owners. Product Owners may ask their team members to help in preparing and demonstrating decks.
7. Please join the demo from your work laptop and we highly recommend you to prepare a bit, i.e check the micro and have your headphones on hand.

Remote planning/grooming/retro

1. If at 1+ team member (cross-functional partner) is working remotely the scheduled meeting should be conducted via hangout.
2. The tasks should be divided into subtasks that each take up to 4–8 hours max. It is highly important to ensure process streamlining to avoid bottlenecks for the dependent tasks.
3. Online planning should take at least 1 hour and no more than 2 hours, based on the size of the team.
4. All the tasks need to be evaluated in Story Points.
5. It is recommended to take up to 80% current velocity as the baseline while planning (during the last 3 sprints).
6. If teams practice planning poker, the estimates can be published in the team’s slack channel
7. To make the collaboration during retrospective as productive as possible please use the following tips:

Use your laptop camera and make sure everybody is visible

Capture everyone’s opinions

At the beginning of the meeting don’t forget to overview the main important product and performance metrics

Start retrospective by evaluating the action items of the previous one

Focus on right action items which should be solved in one sprint

Suggested time of retrospective meeting is 60–90 minutes

Remote Performance Review

1. Intermediate meetings with your manager will be held remotely via Hangouts.
2. Performance review timeline will be prolonged.
3. The calibration process might be also held remotely.

Remote One-on-one

1. One-on-one meetings will be held remotely via Hangouts
2. We strongly recommend to use Lattice One-on-One for taking the notes and writing follow-ups.

Remote All Hands

1. We will have a company All Hands meeting on remote work on XX/XX, we will be sending an email with specific details.

Working devices

1. Test devices will be distributed among release managers, QA and localization team members.
2. Remote access will be organized for video content storage and Android Mainframer. To get access please create the ticket via Support Center.
3. If you use a PC, for working remotely you will be provided with a laptop. If you are working on a desktop, we will organize the delivery on March 18. Please contact the Support Center.
4. If any employee gets sick they may ask colleagues to bring their laptops home to them, but it is highly recommended to avoid personal contact (e.g. you may leave the laptop near the door).
5. You may take a set of headphones from the office. If you don’t have one, please submit a request to the Support Center.
6. Also, you can take your office chair, table or monitor if you need one. Please put the request via Support Center so we could organize the delivery.
7. Printers will be distributed among Accountants / Legal and Personnel Specialists.

Please take your laptop and its charger every time you go back home. Be especially sure to take it when you leave the office to start working remotely.

Security

1. Please use your work laptop only while working from home. The security team will update antivirus on each laptop in the upcoming days (however it doesn’t protect against COVID-19)
2. Be attentive. The number of phishing/ spoofing incidents usually increases during remote work. Please pay attention to the sender field in the emails you receive. Read what phishing is and who to avoid it here.

Additional information

Remote Work Tools

Please minimize the set of tools you use. The tools below are listed in the order of importance.

• Slack (desktop and mobile versions)
• Confluence (Draw.io for making diagrams)
• Jira
• Gmail
• 1password
• Milanote
• Coggle
• Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Forms/Hangout
• Brain.fm (ask for a license if needed via IT Service Desk)
• Zoom
• Grammarly
• Docusign
• Zendesk
• Good Internet connection. If you have a poor Internet connection please contact IT Service Desk — the company will help you with updating your Internet
• Screen capture. Use hotkeys:

for Mac: command + shift + 3 — a screenshot of your entire screen, command + shift + 4 — allows you to select an area;

for Windows: PrtScn — a screenshot of your entire screen, Windows + Shift + S — allows you to select an area)

A courier service

To deliver work items we launched a courier service.

To make a delivery request, you need to create a task “Courier delivery” via a special dashboard in Jira. Please specify the following information in appropriate fields:

• Sender info (Name Surname, contact mobile number, full address)
• Receiver info (Name Surname or Company name, contact mobile number, full delivery address)
• Due date
• Description (the number of packages to be sent, their contents + approx. weight and dimensions in case of parcels)

Standard delivery schedule for all orders: collected today from 14.00 till 17.00, delivered the next business day within working hours. The service is applied to Minsk+15 km location.

If you have family members that require your care (e.g. little kids) or distracting circumstances (e.g. construction work/ loud neighbours):

1. Please adjust your working hours so the most significant part of your working day (especially online meetings) happens in the hours you can work most effectively (when children sleep, there is no construction work).
2. If you have a partner try to schedule your work so that you can split your family responsibilities / chores.
3. If you have changes in your schedule please inform your manager and team members and update your working time in Google calendar and Slack profile.

Tips to stay happy, healthy, and productive while working remotely

1. Take frequent stretch breaks to keep your body feeling good. Get creative. Is there a new way to stretch your arms you haven’t tried before?
2. Happy, stressed, bored? Any time is a good time for an impromptu one-song dance break! (Except maybe if you’re on a Hangout call)
3. Stay connected. Make some time every day to connect virtually with people you love. Marco Polo is a fun asynchronous video-messaging app that is gaining in popularity.
4. Your workspace is your sanctuary. Decorate it in a way you like, and keep it organized
5. Get outside if you can, to breathe some fresh air, look at the sky, and let your mind relax.

Useful links about remote work and how keep being productive

• Zapier. Guide to Working Remotely
• Buffer.com Working From Home with Kids: 21 Tips From Our Remote Team
• Forbes.com 5 Tips To Balance Remote Working While Your Family Is Also At Home
• Forbes.com The Art Of Working Remotely: How To Ensure Productivity