As we work on tying up loose ends for our People Ops Q1 2019 OKRs, we thought we’d share a recap and our reflections of Q1 2019 - it’s gone by so fast!
It’s fair to say we started the year on something of a low - dealing with the aftermath of a difficult December, feeling sad for that which was lost, and concerned for everyone’s wellbeing, but with some hope that things would eventually get better.
Cut to March 2019 and things are starting to feel as close as they have to business as usual for a while. Swarms are moving along with momentum, and people have shown a lot of resilience in forging ahead despite challenges in the past.
What did we achieve this quarter?
(Amongst other things) we worked on:
- Shipping an engagement survey to get a pulse on how everyone was feeling and what could be improved. We’ve kept the results in mind and tried to use them to make improvements, e.g. addressing concerns in the TH.
- Worked on improving our pathways to contribution and engagement of contributors interested in getting involved in Status.
- Refreshed all our handbook docs, and refined policies (currently hosted on the People Ops site but due for migration across with all the other doc content as part of the web redesign).
- Reviewed our data privacy and information handling processes, conducting a sweep of all the sensitive info on file to ensure it’s all as secure as possible.
- Launched a newsletter, trying to bridge the connectivity gap we noticed people reporting in the engagement survey.
- Organising and hosting the new format Town Halls.
- Refreshed our trials process.
- Started working on feedback rounds as a way of surfacing recognition and developmental feedback for swarms.
- Renegotiated & reviewed our recruiting tools and subscriptions with an estimated $35k saving over the next 12 months.
- Undertook an in-depth documenting of our processes to ensure that nothing we do lives in the head of one person, and can be picked up seamlessly by another during AFK.
What did we learn this quarter?
- How to adapt! Going into the quarter, many of our tasks that were scheduled ahead of time like improvements to the hiring process, building a recruiting events strategy, onboarding surveys, etc. just were no longer relevant (for obvious reasons). We had to challenge ourselves to step back and think about how best we could support people in our new reality.
- That communication + values + group cohesion really are the cornerstones of culture. Losing a rich virtual office in Slack and communicating through pared back instant messaging was a huge engagement hit for many people. We’ll continue to advocate for enhancements to Status Desktop.
- The importance of transparent communication - we’re operating in a rocky environment, and anything we can do to surface as much of our decision making and the behind-the-scenes as possible, is helpful to give reassurance.
- That we (sadly) can’t be the right opportunity for everyone - we appreciate that market conditions have made Status a somewhat challenging proposition for people needing more stability in their working life. It’s never pleasant to lose people, so we need to focus on the things about the contributor experience we can control (work environment) and try to learn something from every departure.
What are our plans for Q2?
- Being more swarmwise - trying to structure our project work in a more familiar swarm format for alignment and transparency.
- Jarrad challenged us to be more involved in Meritocracy, DAO, and Contribution - challenge accepted.
- Our OKRs are still a work in progress, but we’ll publish them in the next couple of weeks as soon as they’re done. Want us to work on something? Let us know!
Shout out to all contributors - you’re an amazing bunch of people and it’s a pleasure to work with you! Thanks you as ever for all your patience and collaboration.
-People Ops - Rajanie, JB, & Ceri