Dear New Hire, Here’s Your Toolkit
It’s that time of year. Fresh faces appear at your doorstep ready to make a difference in your organization and maybe the world. Getting off on the right foot for them and for your company sets the stage for success. I find that too often the initial emphasis in on-boarding is on what the newest team member will do and not how best to do it. The technology we use to work and communicate as well as the specific challenges we use it to address, if shared immediately, can speed the on-boarding process and employee satisfaction early on. Here’s what I like to share with our people.
Dear New Hire,
I am so glad you are now part of our team. We can’t wait to start working with you!
Our team is growing (current count is eleven) and we are pretty scattered geographically, which brings some challenges. We also work with many other people in our organization which number over 350. On any given day, we are spread across at least four (but usually more) locations and so we’ve had to experiment and figure out some ways to allow us to work together effectively.
We want to set you up to succeed, so I’d like to share with you some of the tools (software and hardware) that we use most frequently. You could probably find a million articles out there about the most productive tools, and they likely each have some merit. I think the choice of tool itself is subjective, but the areas that they address reflect consistent areas of need. We’ve identified a number of areas for our team to function well, and we’ll use this list to get you up to speed.
I know what you are thinking — “Tools are cool and all, but what about our strategy?” Don’t worry. We’ll focus on the strategies that we’ve developed over time to remain productive across multiple locations; and also on how we manage our work.
OK, ready? Here we go.
Physical equipment
We have found that our new hires will need at least the following to get started:
- Internet connection — preferably not dial-up!
- Laptop with webcam (and charger) — our group consists of primarily Mac users and you will find that we use our laptops frequently for video conferencing too
- Smartphone (with a USB cable) — mix of Android and iPhone devices within the group. Anything that allows you to receive calls, emails and HipChat!
- Headphones — for videoconferencing from laptop and for respecting others in shared spaces
- Whiteboard (board or wall) — the larger the better for the workspace (I have one of my walls painted with whiteboard paint)
- Post-its | Stickies (various sizes and colors) — for notes, user stories etc.
- Writing utensils
- Access to printer|scanner
- Access to a kitchen that is stocked with refreshments — to keep you replenished
What else do you think you might need? You might have something that we’ve completely overlooked and can add to this list.
Staying connected
OK, so you’ve been given all the equipment you need.
Now what?
Well, we need to make sure you can communicate well with all your teammates; and with the rest of the organization. We also want you to get a taste of our team culture, so you’re going to need a few things like chat, video conference and screen-sharing. This is probably the most important area for us to excel in to overcome the challenges of working remotely.
HipChat
We live in this app. No, really — I’m serious. HipChat is for 1:1 and group chat and we use it for coordination, collaboration, videoconferencing (1:1), asking each other questions, status updates, stand-ups, getting alerted — just to name a few things. Most people in the organization use it so you can get in touch instantly with the majority of them.
There are many reasons we love HipChat but mostly because it cuts down our emails and doesn’t require us to wait until everyone is available to discuss something. Someone can participate in the conversation once he|she frees up from some other important task.
We have many rooms setup for our use with various functions (some are private; others public):
- Teams and subteams
- Alerts from various systems (JIRA, Github, Asana etc.)
- Projects
- Interesting reads
- Specific team initiatives e.g, planning for a retreat; reporting on our flex days
A key point though — because we rely so much on this tool, everyone on the team needs to actively participate and be responsive for this to work well.
Ensō and Jitsi
Since HipChat only permits 1:1 videoconferencing, we use these free tools for video conferencing with multiple individuals who are at their desks. Both allow live-edit minutes too.
Cisco Jabber
Since we have three office locations with video conference rooms, Cisco Jabber is a godsend when you need to wfh and still need to attend a videoconference where the other attendees are in one of the videoconference rooms. Just don’t dial in while in your pajamas!
GoToMeeting
We use this mostly for the following:
- Conference bridge and remote presentations — allows us to talk to and present to multiple people that are not in the same location as ourselves e.g. webinar or presentation
- Videoconferencing with people outside our organization
As an aside, don’t forget about your Cisco VPN client to allow you to stay connected to many of our internal-only resources.
Staying informed and productive
It’s really important for us to know who’s working on what or how something was done.
There are several components involved with staying informed and productive which we will outline below. For each of these components, there are several tools needed, and they play a necessary part in minimizing the impact of us working remotely.
Task and Project Management
This allows us to answer questions such as:
- What needs to be worked on in the next month?
- Who is working on it?
- When is it being worked on?
- What did we accomplish in the last week?
JIRA (Core, Software & Service Desk)
JIRA is an issue and project tracking tool from Atlassian and is heavily used not only by us but by our whole organization for various functions, such as:
- Fielding requests from other groups — using JIRA Service Desk
- Planning, Tracking, Releasing and Reporting — we use the boards in JIRA Software to track almost all the work we do for our products. If it’s not in JIRA, it shouldn’t be getting done. We track large projects down to smaller tasks that are part of that project.
Asana
Even though Asana can be used for project management, we use it mostly as a running to do list to keep track of things that are too small to belong in JIRA. It syncs well across devices.
Knowledge Management and Documentation
We believe in the value of documenting our work heavily for the following reasons:
- Ensure a shared understanding of what we are building out as we build it
- Allow us to refer to documentation so that we don’t rely just on our memories
- Easily on-board or cross-train new hires (like you)
- User self-service
Confluence
Confluence is an enterprise wiki that we use as the central place for almost all our team’s work. We organize our work, create documents, and collaborate on work directly there. Examples of what we use it for include:
- Planning — Goals and Roadmaps
- Team Processes and Information
- User Guides
- Projects
- Notes and Reports — Meeting notes, release notes, incident reports
- System Documentation
- Diagrams — see Gliffy
- Schedules — see Confluence Team Calendars
Gliffy
We use this primarily as a plugin in Confluence to create all our diagrams and insert them directly into our documentation.
Evernote
Used frequently to take notes in meetings especially because it syncs well across devices.
Dropbox
Another app that syncs well across all devices and allows us a place to store files primarily those that we intend to share with people outside the organization.
Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Drive etc).
We typically turn to Google Apps when we need real-time collaboration|editing of a document.
Scheduling
Confluence Team Calendars
This is add-on to Confluence and allows us to handle all our team scheduling, including:
- On-call schedule
- Time off
- Conferences or Travel
- Birthdays
- License Renewals
Microsoft Outlook Calendar
Since we use Microsoft Exchange and Office across our organization, the Outlook calendar is used for arranging all meetings and booking all conference rooms. I use it pretty heavily to records the blocks of time spent on all of the various tasks I do. This is very useful when it comes to tracking where I spent my time after the fact.
Business Productivity
Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Almost everyone in the organization uses Microsoft Office for email and so you will still need to stay on top of your mailbox to keep up with what’s going on. You will receive many, many emails. Not as much as you would have prior to us using HipChat but you are still going to get lots of it. You will also get this fed to your smartphone for easier access.
Technical Tools
If you are in a developer, systems engineering or other technical position, you will need many other tools that we will teach you about.
Personal interests
You might have a few tools that you use to provide you with the mental breaks you need throughout the day. My favorites are:
- Reading interesting articles — we have a whole HipChat room dedicated to sharing our favorite blogs and readings related to the work we do. We’d love to hear about yours!
- Quora (and Stackoverflow) — I love reading and learning about other people’s experiences and opinions in areas that interest me (product, technology and entrepreneurship)
- Music — I switch between my own library, Pandora, Spotify, Songza for background music or when I need a break
- Google (Search, Apps, Finance, News, Alerts) — I use many of these products mostly to stay on top of news
What are yours?
In addition to the tools above, you will also get a slew of other information for a smoother onboarding, including information on the company, products, other teams, systems and goals for you to shoot for.
We hope that this toolbox helps you hit the ground running!
From,
Your new Business Systems teammates
How do you set up your new hires for success? We are ready and waiting for more to join our team. Check out our open positions!
