Our team uses a variety of different communication methods and tools in order to collaborate with one another. This section covers the essentials you'll want to focus on initially, and the other tools and processes will fall into place as you go.
Effective and ongoing communication within Altruist Media is essential. As a remote, distributed organization, there's not a way to just "show up" without communicating it. The better communication tools you have, the better you'll be able to do your work. One important aspect of our communication is to document our decisions.
We often hash things out in phone conversations or Slack chats, and those are hard to track down later or for others to be aware of if they weren't involved. Whenever we have a decision on a topic that affects the whole organization or others on the team, it should be recorded in a more permanent medium. These will be an email to the entire team or those relevant to the thread.
Here is an overview of the main tools we use and how we use them:
| Type | Resource | Style |
|---|---|---|
| We use email to codify group decisions, send meeting summaries, and send out external emails. | ||
| Online Meetings | Google Meet and Zoom | Used regularly for internal team discussions and one-on-one syncs. Also great for screen sharing. |
| Group Chat | Slack | Use constantly, for consistent communication, brief collaborative sprints, and tracking staff engagement & productivity. Also used as the virtual "water cooler chat". |
On the first Sunday morning of the Month the CEO sends an email to the entire organization with the subject “This Month in Altruist Media.” This email will include any notable information about the coming month, the main topics for the monthly all hands meeting, and a quick list of anyone who is out of the office (OOO) or traveling that month. This is normally for informational purposes only, but if you have anything to add or correct, please respond to the whole team, and can also be found in our ‘What’s New’ team Notion Page (For staff: ‣).
We have one recurring, monthly organization-wide call that is mandatory for the entire organization. This call is every Sunday at 8:30pm Canada Eastern on Google Meets, and is scheduled for 1 hour, though it does not always last that long. This is a dedicated time to discuss organization business and general things going on that don’t fit in other calls.
Subsets of the team (e.g. trainers, marketing, etc.) have other regularly scheduled calls, and you will be notified of any you are expected to attend.
When you're working, you should be logged into Slack. It will likely be the first place that people will look for you if they have a quick question. It's also a great place to get help, answer questions, and share links to cool things on YouTube. Please use Slack's status to set yourself to "away" when you are done with your workday.
We realize that "workday" is a loose concept here, so we'll leave it up to each of you to protect your free time. Your "away" status means that others are probably not going to get an answer quickly, and an email may be more appropriate.
We have multiple Google calendars. The main calendar is for organization-wide information/events/reminders. The other calendars are for the different teams. You will be invited to all calls you are expected to be on, and once you accept the invitation, the calendar entry will appear in your personal calendar. This way you do not need to have all calendars visible to see your schedule.
We also have a ‘Shifts/Leave’ calendar which shows you all of our official holidays and days on which someone on the team is out of the office (OOO) for any reason. Here, you should outline all the ‘shift blocks’ you have based on your role-specific min. hours.
Our resources are somewhat scattered. It can be a bit overwhelming. Here is a quick rundown of our two main tools, and what we use them for:
Personal goals are not mandatory, but they can be useful. Goals are not meant to be a carrot or a stick for Altruist Media's staff. If you're here, it's because you're already a responsible individual who's great at what you do. Goals are not meant to be the yardstick that determines success or failure. Our business changes quickly and your goals may need to change in turn. We do not use personal goals as the basis for determining raises, praising or punishing at 3-month or annual reviews, or as a way to push staff to do more with less.
So how do we use goals at Altruist Media? As is so often the case, it's more about the journey than the destination. Goal-setting can serve as the basis for a valuable dialog with your manager. If you're feeling uncertain of your responsibilities or what success looks like for your position, goals can be a way to brainstorm and document these things.
At the end of the day, goals are just a ruler for us to define and measure success, but they're not the only one. They're also completely optional. If you'd like to go through a goal-setting exercise, ask your manager, and it can be set up in our ‘Performance Review’ team Notion Page (For staff: ‣ ).
Everyone can propose an idea (team social events, productivity ideas, outreach goals, etc.) through the COO once per year. Proposals will be reviewed by the COO and discussed on a 1:1 call. The final approval and planning will be done by the COO and the individual who proposed the idea.