Background

Accurx has grown rapidly to an organisation of over 200 people, primarily working (and communicating) remotely through digital tools such as: Slack, Notion and Google Apps.

Whilst enabling us to work effectively without needing to be in the same physical room, a combination of these tools and our flexible working culture has made it hard at times to switch off from work. This feeling from the Q4 2019 retrospective was that this was one of the factors wearing us down and having a negative effect on our mental health.

Slack, due to its nature and being the most frequently used of these tools, can in particular be hard to get right.

Purpose

This document aims to address two of the key questions:

1. What are the expectations of how my colleagues will communicate with me?
2. How can we get the best out of Slack?

General Expectations

Accurx has a flexible working culture. Core working hours are 10am-4pm but everyone is flexible to do work when it makes sense for them.  We know this can lead to communication being sent at all hours. That doesn't mean you are expected to be responsive at all hours. Below are the minimum expectations we have regarding communication - teams can of course agree their own ways of working that differ from these.

At a minimum we expect

• You to be “Online” 10am - 4pm each weekday, unless you’re on annual leave. We define “Online” as being able to respond to internal messages (such as Slack and Email) within a few hours; this of course might be longer on occasions (eg. If you have a particularly meeting heavy day).**
  • If you have something outside of work you need to do during these hours, please aim to reduce impact on colleagues by letting them know, marking it clearly in your calendar and rescheduling affected events.
• You to read and respond (if required) to direct or “important group messages” within 24 hours (unless on leave or the weekend). “Important group messages” = the ‘general’ and ‘Townhall’ channel on slack, company wide emails or other channels that you have agreed with your teams are important.
• For you to share your mobile number (in HiBob, our HR System), so if we need to contact you outside of working hours, we can try your phone. You can properly switch off knowing that we can contact you if needed. This should be the exception, not the norm. This is what the ‘Out of Hours’ Whatsapp group is for, and we want to keep it quiet.

We do not expect

• You to have notifications (that take your attention away from what you’re doing) turned on for your personal devices - that’s a personal choice
• You to check on internal communication channels outside of core working hours or when you are on holiday - i.e. if you are sent a message at 4.30pm we do not expect you to respond until the next day, although you may choose to.
  • In some circumstances you might be working in a team that is working longer hours. The team should agree together whether the expectation to check communication channels should differ from the norm.

We will

• Only contact you using WhatsApp (to discuss work) in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary to get a response immediately. Discuss this with your manager if you feel you are being bothered unnecessarily out of hours.

Making our tools work for you