The way we work

The way we work is critical for making substantial progress in our mission and vision. We will continue to experiment with new ways of working to become radically more productive and creative. As we do, we will update this guide to outline our current set of best practices and tools for the unique way we work at GlobalVision.

This guide is an overview, please explore the linked pages for more detailed information.

Remote-first

While we have access to workspace in Montreal, our HQ is Confluence, Slack, and Google Meet.

We are not the only one's who see the benefit!

In July 2021, Loom surveyed 500 software company employees in the United States.

We work remotely for three key benefits

Productivity

Deep dive

Working in-person leads to context switching between the digital and physical world. Each time you interrupt your context, you need time and attention to dive back in. The quick 👋 and the reactive “come quick in this room to discuss xyz”, pulls you away from your computer. By the time you settle back in, you have all of the notifications piled up on your desktop to sort through. Before you know it, your day is over and you have a 45-minute commute to get back home…

Our working life revolves around the quality of the content we can produce. As individual contributors and managers, we need to move away from reactive working and be intentional about where we put our efforts throughout the day. This is only possible in a remote-first working environment.

Diversity

Deep dive

Remote-first working comes with a massive and diverse talent pool. We believe that diversity in thought, culture, and experience will lead to better results. We used to have a sign on our Kirkland building that advertised “We are hiring!”, instead, we can find the right fit from the other 7 billion people in the world.

Flexibility

Deep dive

We all have different lives. Enforcing a 9-5 ET work schedule doesn't make sense. Instead, we believe everyone we hire should be self-motivated and responsible for their own schedule. This results in asynchronous working where we reduce the need for meetings and instead default to written communication. This gives everyone the flexibility they need to get their best work done.

Asynchronous collaboration

Asynchronous collaboration is the pinnacle of remote-first working. It puts “trust and autonomy” into practice, and allows everyone to be creative and get their best work done. Rather than scheduling work around meetings, we organize around Confluence. This way of working is essential considering we have distributed teams: we hire people internationally on different time zones so there are no “core hours” of working.

Asynchronous Definition

Asynchronous means,

“not occurring at the same time.”

Synchronous work is when everyone is working at the same time, 9-5. You have your slack active green light on to prove that you are doing work.

Asynchronous work is when it doesn’t matter if this content was developed at 12 pm eastern time in Canada, or 3 am in Bosnia. You can read slide decks 6 hours after it was shared instead of “ASAP”. We focus on the amount of content we outputted, knowledge we gained, insights we developed, or code that changed the product.

To become effective at working “async” you need to retrain your workstyle around documentation.

Documentation-first

The prerequisite to achieving asynchronous collaboration is accessible information; our vision is for everyone to have the ability to get relevant information immediately when needed. Our strategy is to default all work to Confluence. Here are the main reasons we chose Confluence:

Transparency. By default, documentation is available to everyone in public folders.
Structure. There are only a handful of spaces to familiarize with and they all have thoughtful folder structures.
Collaboration. Commenting, sharing, and co-editing are simple.

Writing etiquette

We have to ‘micromanage’ the small stuff so we can leave space for the important things. A standard of etiquette is critical for a seamless flow of information, so we have a detailed guide on how and when to use all Communication Tool Guidelines. Within these tools, you should follow our Writing Principles.

Meetings

We have to radically rethink Meeting Principles, but simply put,

Meetings assume everyone is in the same time zone… 🗺
Meetings are incredibly time inefficient.
Own your schedule. Decide independently if joining a meeting, or staying in a meeting, is the best use of your time.

In order to facilitate this transition, we have cultural “no-meeting-Wednesdays” to show the value of a clear schedule for productivity and creativity. Note this does not apply to external meetings!

Still have the reaction to “jump on a call”? Try https://slack.com/help/articles/4406235165587-Record-audio-and-video-clips-in-Slack

Value compass

We take our Values seriously. They are not a poster on the wall, they are the compass we use to evaluate performance, evaluate fit for new hires, and evolve the way we work. We believe that these values will lead to greater performance, learning rate, creativity, and ultimately, profitability. All principles in this guide were developed to make it easier to follow our values in day-to-day working. Whenever you are faced with a decision that is not explicitly covered in this guide or linked guides, turn to our values to help guide you.

To highlight how values affect the way we work, let’s explore two examples:

First, our trust & autonomy value may feel like the biggest culture shock when joining GlobalVision compared to past employment experiences. We give everyone a lot of space and flexibility to get their best work done. Instead of hand-holding and micro-managing, we treat everyone as professionals with expectations focused on output, results, and collaboration. But, don't worry! We are here to support each other and collaborate 💪.

“We believe that our people want to be productive for themselves, their teams, and their customers. We need to trust and empower them to decide how best to make that happen. Many of our approaches are grounded in the idea that employee autonomy is a key ingredient to engagement and innovation.“
Peter Gassner, CEO Veeva

Second, continuous feedback is critical, but sometimes uncomfortable. To help navigate this value, read the full guide on Continuous Feedback.

We recommend reviewing the “in practice…” expands on the values page, which dives into explanations on how to apply all of them in practice, before continuing with the rest of this guide.

If you are ever overwhelmed in managing work and the rest of your life, reread our Wellbeing Manifesto
If you have feedback on the current way we work, mention it in the quarterly satisfaction survey!