How does the buddy system setup work?
Everyone has a buddy assigned to them at the start of the onboarding process. We want to ensure new contributors don’t get lost in the remote work environment and always have an ally. The buddy is someone who has been around the organization a minimum of 6 months, but preferably 1 year, before assigning new contributors to them. It’s important that the buddy have a wealth of organizational knowledge and experience relevant to their role to guide the new contributor through the galaxy.
Buddies responsibilities during onboarding?
One main goal of the buddy is to help with onboarding new contributors. The buddy will ultimately provide support, valuable feedback, support, and guidance. We suggest buddies schedule weekly or bi-weekly syncs with the new contributor, to ensure the best and smoothest onboarding experience. Onboarding can include reviewing Giveth docs, code, Github issues, kanban boards, and general navigation around the Giveth channels.
Quarterly responsibilities of buddies?
A buddy review call is different from the regular calls that you have with your buddy. It should not be confused with the weekly/bi-weekly calls that you have with your buddy. The buddy call is more comprehensive and it covers the following topics:
- Buddy Review Call Details
- Self-review focused on reviewee’s:
- Responsibilities
- Experience of work culture
- Feedback for Giveth
- Areas of improvement in Giveth’s processes, projects, communication, etc.
- Peer Review
- Areas of strengths and growth
- Measure contributor progress by using the Role Description
- Progress, tasks completion, and milestones
- Professional development goals and future trajectory
Overall, the buddy call is a self-assessment of your contributions and skills, it also is an avenue to talk about support for professional development goals, review and revisit your Role Description. The dialogue with you and your buddy is solution-focused. The buddy call is the best opportunity to receive structured feedback from fellow contributors, so you’ll know more about how they feel working with you. Furthermore, this is an opportunity to give feedback for Giveth as an organization through the self-review form.
*The buddy call doesn’t necessarily have to be based on calendar quarters as long as the interval of your buddy review calls is every 3 months.
What FORMS do I need to fill out?
- These are the forms that you need to fill out.
- For each contributor, SELF REVIEW FORM (Feedback for yourself & for Giveth)
- For the buddies, or the reviewer, CONTRIBUTOR FEEDBACK FORM
- For the leaders, LEADERS FEEDBACK FORM
What are the steps for a buddy review call?
- Schedule a call between you and your buddy.
- The HR team posts in the Governance channel by tagging the Unicorns informing them about the upcoming buddy call. It is best practice to do this A WEEK BEFORE the scheduled buddy call to gather enough responses.
- Fill out your peer review form for your buddy. We usually ask the top 3 people the buddy has worked with to give feedback.
- Remind the buddy to fill out their Self Review form.
- The HR should be informed of the scheduled time for them to gather all feedback (HR keeps track in a spreadsheet).
- Ask for the buddy call document with all the peer reviews to prepare for the buddy call.
- Communicate to HR/Nico that the buddy call has been completed
What’s the best way to facilitate an effective buddy review call?
- Build Rapport with your buddy. Get to know each other personally.
- Discuss the Self Review and Contributor Feedback response, while focusing on the long-answer questions; professional growth, responsibilities, workload, etc.
- Review the contributor’s Role Description for any updates on the commitment hours and updates on the job description. Discuss discrepancies on tasks that are listed in the role description.
- Make sure to take notes and add important notes to the buddy call document.
- Let the HR team know if there are updates on Role Description and commitment hours.
What’s outside the scope of a Buddy Call?
- The buddy cannot discuss payments, it’s up to HR to do pay negotiation.
- The buddy cannot discuss whether the contributor can transition from part-time to full-time, although the buddy’s input will be heavily considered when evaluating this decision.
Can I change my buddy?
You can change your buddies anytime, if you feel like you’d benefit from a new direction of professional growth, you can change your buddy. Based on previous instances, contributors change their buddies when their role has evolved and they closely work with different team members. We highly encourage you to change your buddies to someone who you closely work with so that you will get the proper support and guidance. Don’t forget to inform the support group (Nico) when you change your buddies
Thanks for all of the editing help and collaboration @NikolaCreatrix @Nicbals @freshelle @mitch