Policies and Practices for Hybrid Org Arrangements (EP.51)
Recorded
April 27, 2021
Last Updated
December 13, 2021
This conversation was recorded as part of Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit that took place on April 27, 2021.
How do you create and maintain equitable policies and practices when your team works across differing onsite and remote arrangements?
Resources mentioned during session:
Team Dynamics’s Behave podcast
Guests: Addam Garrett, Michelle Ramos, Laura Zabel
Hosts: Tim Cynova
Guests
ADDAM GARRETT serves as Operations Manager for the National Performance Network. Addam joined NPN in the summer of 2016 and has over 15 years of experience in education, program planning, and communications. He manages day-to-day organizational activities, which includes assisting all departments to meet the needs of our constituents. He holds a B.A. in Public Relations and Art History from the University of Alabama. Addam is a big tennis fan and sports enthusiasts and brings that passion to work everyday. “There is nothing a smile, humor and kind words can’t accomplish!” Can I get a big Roll Tide?!
MICHELLE RAMOS Dr. Michelle Ramos brings a deep and incredibly robust diversity of experience to role as Executive Director of Alternate Roots. Her background includes most recently working in criminal justice reform as Project Director of the Vera Institute of Justice, philanthropic work as a Program Officer at Women’s Foundation of California, and service organization leadership as Board Chair of Dance/USA, Dancing Grounds and Junebug Productions. In addition to being a licensed attorney, and holding a PhD in Cultural Psychology, she has significant organizing experience and has committed her career to serving communities and individuals adversely impacted by issues of race, gender, disability, class, socio-economics, inequitable laws and systemic oppression. Ramos, a retired professional ballet dancer has worked as an executive director for multiple non-profit arts organizations in many cities across the US. She has consulted for over 20 years nationally and internationally. She is the proud mother Broadway choreographer, Ellenore Scott, and since retiring from her own dance career, Ramos has continued teach dance, has competed as an Ironman triathlete and now enjoys her southern New Orleans lifestyle.
LAURA ZABEL is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, which operates Creative Exchange, a platform for sharing free toolkits, resources, and profiles to help artists and citizens collaborate on replicating successful and engaging community projects. An economic and community development agency run by and for artists, Springboard provides programs that help artists make a living and a life, and programs that help communities connect to the creative power of artists. Based in Minnesota, Springboard’s projects include: Community Supported Art (CSA), which is based on the Community Supported Agriculture model and connects artists directly with patrons; the Artists Access to Healthcare program; artist entrepreneurial development; and Irrigate artist-led creative placemaking, a national model for how cities can engage artists to help reframe and address big community challenges. An expert on the relationship between the arts and community development, Zabel has spoken at leading conferences and events including the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Urban Land Institute, and Americans for the Arts. A 2014 Bush Foundation Fellow, Zabel’s insights on industry trends have also been featured in outlets from The Guardian to The New York Times. Zabel serves on the board of directors of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers.
Host
TIM CYNOVA (SPHR) is Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., a management consulting firm specializing in HR and human-centered organizational design. Whether it's through shared leadership explorations or alternative workplace arrangements, re-imagining recruitment and hiring processes to center equity and inclusion or decolonizing workplaces policies, practices, and programs, WSS is focused on helping companies co-create places where everyone can thrive.
Tim is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator. He serves on the faculty of Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In August 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the COO and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made this commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.
Transcript
Laura Zabel:
Just really quickly, Tim, to your question of what hasn't worked, I feel like the lesson I learn over and over again is that it doesn't work when we try and say, "Here's our hunch about how people are going to want to respond, so here's what we're offering you." Every time we can make a choice to push something towards people's individual choice, their own autonomy, their own capacity to respond, those are the things that work the best, rather than trying to come up with a single policy that works for everyone, or a single mechanism that works for everyone.
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I’m Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that.
Earlier this year, podcasting's favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin and I produced Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit. The event took place online on Tuesday, April 27, and featured eight sessions, 25 amazing speakers, and covered a whole host of topics related to the ethical re-opening of workplaces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
We raced to produce the Summit from start to finish in just three weeks as we felt the urgency and stress mounting as workplaces were in the midst of re-opening decisions. Several months on, we still feel the content is as necessary as ever, so we decided to release each of the sessions in podcast form.
In each of the eight sessions, you'll hear the conversations just as the Summit attendees did. As a reminder, in late April 2021, COVID vaccine distribution was just gaining speed and we had yet to begin hearing about the Delta variant. From that vantage point in time, it very much looked like by Fall 2021 things might be settling back into somewhat of a quote unquote normal routine. As I record this preamble in Fall 2021, that's not the case. We're now talking about break-through infections, booster shots, schools opening and closing again, hospital ICUs are packed in states across the U.S., and still how to safety gathering in indoors as the temperature again begins to drop with the change in seasons.
In this session: Policies & Practices for Hybrid Org Arrangements, I'm joined by Addam Garrett, Michelle Ramos, and Laura Zabel as we discuss how you can create and maintain equitable policies and practices when your team works across differing onsite and remote arrangements. So, let's jump over to the conversation...
Oh! A quick note about the audio quality in a few sections of this episode. You’ll notice in a place or two that the audio quality and clarity is, let's just say, less than ideal.
The source file that came from the summit platform included these glitches. So, while we did our best to clean them up in post-production, we couldn't fix them all. That said, this is a terrific conversation -- audio glitches and all. Apologies for the added adventures in audio quality and we hope you enjoy the episode.
Tim Cynova:
Welcome to the Workplace Policies and Practices for Hybrid Organizational Arrangement Session, where we'll be diving into and discussing how to create and maintain equitable policies and practices when your team works across differing onsite and remote arrangements. A reminder about the Q&A section and the chat section, if the chat gets too lively put your questions in the Q&A, but I'll keep scrolling back and forth through both to try and pick up the questions and comments for the group here.
I'm Tim Cynova, a white man with short-to-medium messy brown hair. I'm wearing blue rectangular glasses. I have salt-and-pepper unshaven look right now. I'm wearing a black zipped up sweater that has a blue dress shirt and blue tie underneath. And I'm sitting in front of a wood paneled wall.
I'm so excited for this session. Truly some of my favorite people from some of my favorite organizations. Lauren Ruffin and I were talking about this before, we were saying, it feels like everyone's our favorite, but it's no, we just happen to know some really cool people who all said yes to this. So this is really exciting, for me to be in community with Addam Garrett, who's the Operations Manager for National Performance Network, Michelle Ramos, the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, and Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard For The Arts. Addam, Michelle, and Laura, welcome to the summit.
Laura Zabel:
Thanks, Tim.
Addam Garrett:
Yes.
Tim Cynova:
To kick things off, why don't we go in that order: Addam, Michelle, and Laura. How do you typically introduce yourself? And as you think about creating workplaces where people can thrive, equitable policies and practices, hybrid organization working arrangements, what does all of that mean and look like to you?
Addam Garrett:
Good afternoon everybody, I'm Addam Garrett. Black male, buzzed head, beard, salt and pepper, more salt now these days. Brass-rimmed glasses. Wearing basically a purple sweater with a blue jean jacket over it, with a little pendant on it. I'm speaking in front of basically a bedroom wall and a little lamp around to the side.
How we envision, or how I envision, I'll speak on us, in the processes that we're beginning here at the National Performance Network, is, we have an open environment, so we're transitioning, which the pandemic has pushed it forward, to more of a truly hybrid form. So how does that look is, we can work remotely from either at home or, since we have a lot of artists on staff so they can do the work too, so that can be anywhere in the country, the world eventually.
And what we do for contemporary art is, we [inaudible 00:03:05] space is transitioning that to more conducive to hybrid work, so there's more areas where they can confer. We have our little meetings, come in, get away from the assigned desk, or a specific desk. There will be work stations, but it's more of one of those hop-in, hop-out, lounge setup, which is kind of the environment that we have amongst the staff. It's carefree, and it's more us. So that's how we envision it. [inaudible 00:03:41] process, and that comes with its ups and downs, but so far we've made it work through the pandemic. And we're building on that, I'll say that.
Michelle Ramos:
I think I'm next. It's good to see everyone, or at least see you in the chat, so I can actually visually see you. My name is Michelle Ramos, I use pronouns she/her/hers. I'm calling in from ancestral lands of Bulbancha, now known as New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm wearing a black and white striped dress. I have brown skin, I am Afro-Latina, and I have a curly mop of salt and pepper hair on my head. I'm the executive director of Alternate ROOTS. Alternate ROOTS is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year.
As part of our work environment, we actually were, and have been, a remote office pre-pandemic, basically since I came onboard as Executive Director in 2018. We have always had folks that were remote, but when I came in we made a decision to go 100% remote, because for the work that we do, we need to be on the front lines. We need to be where our members are in our communities. We are across 14 states in the south. So for us there's intention around that. There is intention around wanting to have close access, and be in regular communication and in community with our members.
So for us, the pandemic wasn't necessarily a shift in how we work, but definitely, as a predominantly BIPOC run organization and staffed organization, we really had to take a little bit closer look at some of the things that we were offering in the way of support. Support working from home benefits, health and wellness, things like that, during this time, because our folks were the most impacted across our states with respect to things like the racial uprising, and other events that happened both during the pandemic and post-pandemic, and even now with the freezes across the south.
So we really pride ourselves on being a people-centered organization and not a process-centered organization, and so that is sort of our guiding principle. We're not perfect. We do make mistakes and we do learn. But by centering people and by centering the staff, we have found that that has provided an equitable and a healthy environment for everyone. I'll stop there.
Laura Zabel:
Hi, everyone. My name is Laura Zabel. I use she/her pronouns. I'm the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, and Springboard is based in Minnesota, which is the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. Springboard is bad both in the twin cities, in Minneapolis and in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. I am here in my home in Minneapolis on the second floor under the gable, and I am a white woman with brownish blonde hair, and wearing a gray shirt with little white flowers on it, and sitting in front of my bookcase and some of my needlecraft that I've done over the last year to keep my hands off my phone.
I come to this conversation, and I think Springboard comes to this conversation, certainly with the recognition that this is always a learning process. I think certainly the last year for everyone has brought into relief that context always matters, and that the conditions that our staff and our constituents and our community is in are changing all the time, and that means that we have to think about and change the way that we support people, and the way that we work together, all the time, based on the context we're working in, and the pressures and opportunities and needs of our communities.
I think specifically, from a practical perspective, there are several pieces of how Springboard is structured that influence how we think about workplace policies and practices, especially as it relates to remoteness and in-person-ness, and togetherness and diffuseness. The first is that Springboard is run by and for artists. We have a staff of 17 folks, and everyone on the staff has their own artistic practice, and so that has meant that the organization has always been rooted in trying to create policies that make space for people to continue that artistic practice. Because it's a huge part of who we are, and it's a huge additional value to the organization.
The other piece that's been really influential in this area is that now, for 10 years, Springboard has had these two locations in both urban and rural settings, and so that's demanded a whole different set of tools of working across those geographies, from the big-picture understanding of each other's contexts, all the way to facility with online Zoom sort of situations. So in [inaudible 00:09:15] going into last spring, we had a little bit of a head start, our staff already was pretty comfortable using Zoom, for example, to talk to each other and communicate across the locations.
We also, for about a decade, have had what some people call a results-oriented work environment which means that we don't track time off, we don't track hours. People have those jobs, and they're free to do those jobs wherever it suits them and whenever it suits them. And I would say as a counterbalance to some of those things, both of our locations, the one in St. Paul and the one in Fergus Falls, are both community spaces. So they aren't only office spaces, they're spaces that the community uses and needs.
A big part of our mission is local place-based holding of space for our communities, and so that is an in person endeavor for the most part. Although we've found ways to do that over the last year, they're still an important piece of our work that is about people coming together and being in shared space.
All of those things are kind of these counterbalancing forces and ideas that are the foundation for how we think about this work, and how we try and always be learning and trying to figure out what else we can do to better support the people who work at Springboard.
Tim Cynova:
You all have similar and different ways in which you're approaching this work, and one of the things I love about all of you and your organizations is, this didn't start last March, as we've heard. You've been experimenting, iterating, making mistakes, backing up and going a different direction, and putting a lot of intentionality and purpose into this, just to set our people, and not just policies, as Michelle said.
As we start to think about this reopening, how are you all thinking about it? What are you trying to hold with the new and different things that are present in the workplace and the world? Or maybe if they're not new, they're weighted maybe differently. So what's going through your mind, and how are you personally, and then maybe as an organization, starting to talk about and plan for this next stage?
Addam Garrett:
Am I going first again? Or does it matter? Well since I unmuted, I'll go. That's one thing that I'm spearheading currently, is how do we open, and what does that look like. Then piggybacking on what Michelle said, we center what we do, especially in-office, around the staff. We began that in our staff quarterly last week, when we discussed, how do you envision working in the future. Because we're pushing for remote working, but also one thing that's special about our group is, we enjoy working with each other. So when I think about us opening, it's [inaudible 00:12:30] putting anyone else in harm's way, and then respectful of their wish or how they feel.
So we began that conversation, and that's playing a big role, because I think we would gradually open, or in this new space that we're creating, but since, too, we will respect and take in everyone's opinion or feeling on how they want to do this reopening, also incorporating the right protocols, what's available, and all those things. And reinforcing that, when we begin again, remote is okay, and it's okay not to come in if you don't want to come in, and there's no animosity, or you're put in any position just because. That's where our conversations lead, or where we have started, and that's affected me a lot. It's just a big thing.
And further thing, when we do open, [inaudible 00:13:35] something like spring, not spring, I'm sorry, fall, but when we [inaudible 00:13:40] you want to be intentionally like, "We're going to do this month," or whatever in the conversation, you realize no, you can't just be a specific time. It's about procuring a safe space. And that's a challenge in itself, but we're always up for it here at NPN.
Laura Zabel:
Yeah, I feel like, probably I will be a broken record, I feel like all of these questions have to start with, well I mean we don't really know. Things change all the time. We are sort of planning for our best guess at what the reality is of the next six months, but I think so much of what's needed and necessary right now is to be, like Addam's saying, be in communication with your staff, with your constituents, with your stakeholders, with your community, and be clear and transparent that we don't know everything, and that we're going to have to walk through this together.
In terms of actually reopening our spaces, what we're planning on right now is that we're going to use the summer time to pilot some things, and kind of learn particularly public facing things that we can do outside. We have outdoor space, soak we're really lucky in that regard. And that also, for the staff, I think, gives us an opportunity to try out some things without needing a huge, "This is how it's going to be." We can pull back on those things, we can increase them if they feel good, if the context changes.
So that's our plan. Then, similar it sounds like to NPN, looking towards the fall, of trying to kind of anticipate and think about what might be possible in terms of us working in the office together some of the time in the fall.
I think an important factor, certainly for our staff, a factor that touches a lot of our staff in addition to all of the things around safety, which of course are the first priority, are other issues. This isn't happening in a vacuum, so with staff who have a lot of childcare challenges, for example, when school is not in session, or when summer camps are not happening. So I think thinking about, not just are we in our little bubble safe in this space, are we vaccinated, does everybody have a hand washing protocol, all of those things which are also important, but what are the other community issues that touch us and touch the staff? And that's different for everyone. People don't have the same circumstances or the same responsibilities in their lives, so being able to set policy that takes into account the other responsibilities for caretaking, for community, and for taking care of yourself also, I think, is another important piece.
Michelle Ramos:
I'd love to push back on that really quickly. I just agree with everything everyone has said. For us, there is no reopening because we don't have an office, but there is this sort of reopening of conferences. And for us, our ROOTS week, which is our annual convening, which is the thing everybody wants to be a rooter for, is to come to this annual convening, we had to have some serious conversations and discussions around, what's the right move here.
It started with the staff. What did the staff feel comfortable with, what's the first consideration, and then to your point, Laura, what are our members going through? Because sure, maybe as a staff we feel safe, and maybe we're able to pull off our ROOTS week, but what hardship is that putting on our members who have been financially just destroyed by the pandemic and loss of jobs, to say, "We're going to throw a big ROOTS week in person, and come on down! Oh right, none of you all have money. Sorry." It was about this broader context of, what are our members, our constituents, are they even healed financially, to be able to come to North Carolina to a ROOTS week? That was a real consideration for us.
That said, we also know we have rooters who are dying to meet in person, and are really frustrated because we are not doing any in person meetings till 2022, period. But what we've offered is, we are allowing them, or I shouldn't say allowing them, but actually encouraging them, and willing to financially support them, to do self-organized spaces in the places where they are. So if y'all are absolutely dying to get together in Atlanta, we won't stop it from happening. We will even financially help support to make that happen. But we're not going to demand folks come to ROOTS week.
It was a hard call this year. Last year was no-brainer, this year is hard, because this is what makes ROOTS ROOTS. So it's like taking the soul of the organization out of it when you're not able to meet in person. And although we did a great job doing virtual ROOTS week last year, it's just not the same, y'all. It's just not the same.
Tim Cynova:
I've been [inaudible 00:19:13] to know all of you in the organizations, and certainly benefit every time we talk. And we've talked multiple times over this past year like, "What are you doing? What's your policy for this? How are you approaching the leadership to the field election in the United States on November 3rd? What are you doing on November 4th? What are you doing in the period between the election and the inauguration? How are you taking care of staff?"
Can you talk about what you feel has been maybe the most meaningful policy or practice during this time, that the organization has offered and provided? Then flipside it with, maybe not even just from this time, but what if you try to be like, "This is going to be awesome," and people are like, "That is horrible"? So you can talk pros and cons here, what sort of tangible things have you been doing that relate to the topic?
It's whoever unmutes first.
Laura Zabel:
I'll take a run at it. I mean oof. I said I'm talking to you from my home in Minneapolis, about a mile from where Mr. George Floyd was murdered, amongst the other intersecting crises that came before and continue. It has been, I don't know, the only word I have for it is intense, to be in this community this year, and our staff are connected to their own communities in all kinds of different ways, and hold a lot of different identities and roles in their communities. And figuring out how to support people to take care of themselves and their families and their communities. And recognizing that for some of the staff, their work is also a part of how they do that, and Springboard's role in our community, the expectations that people have for support from us, also make it so that there's, I think for us, as I'm sure for a lot of organizations, there's always this tension between feeling like ... You can't always just shut it down. Even though that maybe feels like the moment we're in. And feeling like there are times, absolutely, when we got to just shut it down, whether it feels like we can or should or not.
I don't know if any of this is helpful tips. I'll just say maybe it's helpful to acknowledge, for folks to have some shared experience that trying to do this work of taking care of our staff, supporting them, making sure they have what they need, inside an organization that is operating, we're all still operating inside capitalism, inside white supremacy, that's a real mess with your mind, I'll just say. Walk a long way around to not say the F-word there. I think that's been the challenge, that's been the work. It was the work before, but it's definitely been the work of the last year.
Maybe I'll try and leave you with a few practical things. We have closed the office more than we ever have, and even though we're working remotely, I use "close the office" to mean clear the schedule, publicly say, "We're not doing anything right now, don't expect a reply." And we started doing that more because, it's a practice that Springboard had in the past actually. We've always taken a week in the summer and a week in the winter and closed the office, because it gives us some shared time away. So it was a thing that we looked to because we knew we were already good at that. We had that practice, so it was a good practice for us to pick up and say, "We could do that actually more often." We just did it last week after the verdict. We closed office for three days so people could focus on other things. So we've used that practice.
We've also tried to financially resource the staff, especially last summer, to be able to be in their community and contribute to things, or be part of things, or help folks out, outside of their work at Springboard, so people had some financial resources to put towards things. Just really quickly, Tim, to your question of what hasn't worked, I feel like the lesson I learn over and over again is that it doesn't work when we try and say, "Here's our hunch about how people are going to want to respond, so here's what we're offering you." Every time we can make a choice to push something towards people's individual choice, their own autonomy, their own capacity to respond, those are the things that work the best, rather than trying to come up with a single policy that works for everyone, or a single mechanism that works for everyone.
Michelle Ramos:
[inaudible 00:24:33] anything that I was going to say. [inaudible 00:24:38] health and wellness day [inaudible 00:24:44] 12 in 2020, where [inaudible 00:24:47] were just intense and folks needed time away from the office. We've always given two weeks off at the end of every year, but now we've added a total week off [inaudible 00:24:57] like you're saying, it's not a one size fits all thing, so it requires a lot of listening and hearing, and maybe being nuanced in what you're offering. This kind of speaks a little bit to Matt's question in the chat.
I've got staff members who were on maternity leave in [inaudible 00:25:18] how does that balance, when you have folks that don't have that benefit [inaudible 00:25:23] benefits to try to [inaudible 00:25:27] we can. Like we have [inaudible 00:25:31] full-time staff, but the remainder of our staff, [inaudible 00:25:35] to nine now, are all part-time staff working artists. So [inaudible 00:25:40] they all lost their gig work, because at the top of the pandemic we [inaudible 00:25:45] try to lift those hours up, thinking that [inaudible 00:25:49] would be enough.
But what they really found out later on, the hard way, was they were like, "We need mental healthcare, and I don't have benefits, so" [inaudible 00:26:00] healthcare stipend [inaudible 00:26:03] can use, either to sign up for a plan, or [inaudible 00:26:08] as they need for healthcare benefits. But [inaudible 00:26:12] was a need [inaudible 00:26:14] be transparent and vulnerable about that, to say that, I'm like, we have to do something. And that, I think, is a benefit that we will continue moving forward, permanently.
So I think the lesson is, it's not one size fits all, and if we are going to be committed to a people-centered environment, [inaudible 00:26:36] all your people may not need [inaudible 00:26:38], and need to be responsive and pivot based on what their needs are. If you're truly committed to it.
Addam Garrett:
[inaudible 00:26:53] now. But no, it's the truth. [inaudible 00:26:57] response, but that is the essence of where we are today, is where we started a few years ago. Just like you said, you give a break in the summer, in the spring, we do the same thing. Especially the summer break. And you don't realize how important those things are until you [inaudible 00:27:15] and actually live it. Because we were always, back in, like I said, a year or so ago, we were all about, work remotely, how do you want to work. And it's one thing when you tell somebody that, and then for somebody to actually be able to do it, or feel comfortable enough to do it.
That's one thing I give with the leadership here at NPN now, what we're doing is, we're being really, other than intentional, we're being like, "Yes, yes, yes, you can do this, you can work however you want." And they're promoting, which is [inaudible 00:27:49], if you need to break away, do whatever, do it, and it's okay. There's no getting in trouble or anything about that, and that's big.
And I will tag on, or add on, to that, one thing as an organization, what I mentioned earlier about setting up a specific time or month to say, "We're going to try to open this time," that's not good the best thing to do is to ask, to get that feedback, to see where people are, and be like, "This space is available to you, whatever you need," and this, X, Y, and Z. But we're not specifically saying when stage you've got to show up or something like that, because that's not what we're about. That's not what we're wanting to do. Especially for how we've been working and how we want to work, this is the natural evolution of our organization.
I don't know, just thinking about in the [inaudible 00:28:55], not everyone gets that opportunity to work like that, working in an environment where you can do meaningful work and love where you work at the same time. I don't know, that's just my thing.
Tim Cynova:
The concept of autonomy, [inaudible 00:29:12] taking a course, like a people analytics course, a couple of years ago, and I came across this research study, and I'm going to get the exact numbers wrong, but it was really eye-opening to me. They studied a group of people and gave them like 20% autonomy. So in a decision they had 20% autonomy, and people were happy with that decision if they had 20%. They were happy with it 70% of the time. Then they said all right, so the next group is, they get 10% autonomy. You get 10% agency or autonomy in this decision. People were roughly 70% happy with it. Then it's like all right, you get 2%. You just get to say yes or no, essentially, to it. And people were like 60% happy with it.
So we should talk about trying to make policies that are inclusive, and fit different people's way of wanting to work and live. Where's the 2% that we can ... Because to Laura, to your point of, here's this great thing, here's the four-day work week. "We didn't ask for the four-day work week." "You're going to love it." Then it's like, okay well, they had to kind of walk this one back. But where's the 2% here? Maybe not the 2%, but just a little bit can go a long way to helping people craft that workplace, and the policies.
Especially as we hold values like equity, which we know is not the same as equality, and from an employment law standpoint we have at least one person who has their juris doctorate on this call, Michelle. To speak to, employment law at best is striving for equality, where everyone gets exactly the same thing, which, that is certainly not equity. As Lauren Ruffin was saying in the first session, often times what employment law is, is the floor. It's not, what can we do, how can we invent new things. So I'm curious ... I've just totally lost the thread on this one. I'm curious, who wants to unmute and save me?
Michelle Ramos:
I'll jump in and save you since you named me in it. I do think it's the baseline. Let's be clear, employment law and the legal field is grounded in white supremacy, so here we go again. So the idea that one size fits all in the way of employment, for different people coming from different walks of life with different life experiences, is just ludicrous. That's not a thing, that's not real. It's real if you aren't interested in a people-centered practice, and you're all about product and performance, and getting things out and turning the thing, then yeah, maybe. But if you really are interested in wanting to put your folks first, then that's just simply a baseline. That's kind of where I land on it.
And let me just be clear. We have an employee handbook, we have all the things, but we totally decolonized our handbook, and put different language in, and took the legalese out. Luckily I was able to still make sure legally it was okay, but we definitely changed the language, we definitely changed the narratives, and how things were written. And the staff weighed in on that, and got to help draft that. They got to help draft their employee handbook. So just kind of finding these different ways of being able [inaudible 00:32:59] staff to feel like [inaudible 00:33:03] they are a part of this [inaudible 00:33:05]
Laura Zabel:
Just really quickly, what Michelle is saying, I think, is so important, and I think if there's something I can reinforce for folks who are listening, it is that process of just really asking the questions about all of the policies. So many of us who came up in our careers in all kinds of different environments have internalized all of these things that are norms, or that are the way things just have to be, or that we sort of have some hidden assumption is the law. But if you do that if you pull those things apart, I think often you will find, that's just a thing people have been doing for a really long time, and you don't have to do it that way. You could actually do it a different way.
And I would really advocate for starting with that process of decolonizing, and engaging staff, and talking through what you want, and then have a lawyer review it for you. Instead of, I feel like a lot of organizations, because of their boards or whatever, get pushed into, "You should have a lawyer write the policies for you." I think we can take that power back in our organizations and say, "We're going to start with what we want, and then my job, in my role at this organization, is to go to a lawyer, go to our insurance agent, and advocate for things the way we want them to be, and their job is to help me make the policy that support the way we want to work. Not the other way around."
Addam Garrett:
Right, because that's how we're approaching it too, is we have a handbook, we have all of these, but what matters now is how our current staff, how do you want to work, how does that look. And [inaudible 00:34:54] little bit like, try to understand that balance. And the only way to get to that, to her question, that sense of, is you have to start with [inaudible 00:35:04] ask them, and then as an organization, or the powers that be [inaudible 00:35:08] managers in each department that we have, have to listen to that, and be open to whatever challenges that arise, whatever questions that come in, because that's the only way that you can balance all that out. [inaudible 00:35:23] we are now is, we are putting ... It's really people-first organizational-wise, and what that looks like, and that's just not how you're ... I can speak for how I was [inaudible 00:35:35] working, or even when I began on it being how it was, and it has evolved us as an organization in such a short time, to levels of which, why I came in the first place.
It's just like Laura said earlier, you're not going to know all the answers. It's just a matter of, I don't want to say trial by error, but it's just a matter of, on both ends you have to be comfortable enough to say what you want, what's wrong with [inaudible 00:36:07], and then on the other end, to address it, and have open lines of communication to handle that situation and grow, both individually and as an organization.
Tim Cynova:
Cool, thanks. Thank you all. I'm keeping an eye on the chat here, and the time. We have like seven more minutes left. There's this question around about, let's see, Katherine has about unequal treatment of employees. Like how do you balance? If some people are in the office and some people are remote, just by being in the office and seeing each other, there might be unequal treatment or unequal benefits to that. How do you handle that kind of difference when you're managing hybrid work cultures?
Laura Zabel:
Yeah, that's really real. One of the things that's been sort of silver-lining of the last year, of everyone being remote, between Springboard's urban and rural locations, it's felt much more ... We all are communicating in the same way, and before that, we have more staff in the urban office than we do in the rural office, and that has been a source of tension and ongoing work that we've had to do around communication across the two offices. Because in both places, you have those kind of hallway conversations, and then all of a sudden you're three months into a project and someone's like, "Why did no one ever tell me about this?" When it felt like you had talked it out. So I think in some ways we've really benefited over the last year, of everybody knows who's been in the loop and who hasn't, because we've all had to communicate in the same way.
I think from a practical perspective, as we think about what it might look like to be in a more hybrid, where there is an option for some in person, I think we will probably have some times during the week where we ask folks to be in the office. We have a practice right now of an every-other-week all staff meeting, and then on the off weeks we hold two hours on Tuesdays that we call study hall, that is essentially time when we all hold so that it's easy for us to schedule meetings with each other, and we don't have to spend a bunch of our own time and energy scheduling internal meetings. We can just say, "We'll do that during study hall." So I think it's pretty likely that those will be times that we ask folks to be in person in the office, so that nobody kind of drifts away and never has any contact in person, while we retain the ability to be flexible with the majority of people's time.
Michelle Ramos:
I'll jump in here. I forgot to mention this at the top, but we, pre-COVID, even though we were in 100% remote office, we did meet three times a year in person. We would pick different locations so we could engage with members of our communities in the different regions that we were in, and then of course that went to all-virtual. So that'll probably remain virtual for most of 2021, but we hope to get back to those in person convenings, both for our staff and for our board, which has been part of our regular practice. So that face-to-face time matters. And then every week we have a two-hour staff meeting time that is held, so that we're having virtual face-to-face time anyway. But yeah, that in person piece, we've missed it a lot. It was really meaningful. So we're eager and anxious and hungry to get back to those in person convenings when we're able.
Addam Garrett:
[inaudible 00:39:46] that we do our staff meeting weekly. Virtual now of course. But what we do too, since most of ... I think everyone except for one person, [inaudible 00:39:57] staff, is in New Orleans, so we intentionally meet in a park once a month. We have a [inaudible 00:40:04] friendly safe park thing. Because that's important, that's also been important for us, is our interaction and our camaraderie. That's why when we think about, when we come back into the office, that's why we will have something where there's a day [inaudible 00:40:18] that is like the in person day. When it is, I don't know, but that's something that's, I think, vital for us, and what we do on staff and for the organization's overall health too.
Then convenings, that's a whole other big game. We didn't have [inaudible 00:40:36] last year, most likely not this year as well, maybe a virtual version of that. This process will help with [inaudible 00:40:43] too in the very near future here, because that will come up quicker than you think. But it's always just a balance of figuring out that it just goes back to [inaudible 00:40:54] organization is the people within the staff, is just to open lines of communication and just say what it is that you need. Even if you don't know, sometimes you don't know what you need, just have that access to say, "I need time," or whatever. And that's what I hope, and I know we will, provide for everyone there.
Tim Cynova:
As we're starting to land the plane here with two minutes left, a quick question that I think goes into thoughts from each of you about, what are your recommendations and resources that folks might want to explore? This is a broad topic, and there's a lot of different places where people can turn. Where do you turn when you're thinking about different ways of working? The specific question is, for people interested in decolonizing their employee handbook, did you go to any resources to help start that process? Or was it just, you did it all of yourself? So each of you, resources and recommendations for folks? And if you want to pick up the decolonized employee handbook question, and I know Laura, you dropped something in about results-oriented work environment, about ROW. So let's go in the Addam-Laura-Michelle order, if that works for everyone, the way we started.
Addam Garrett:
As ours kicked up, I guess what I most [inaudible 00:42:26] did like PTAP training. When we started doing those kind of outside training, that's when we really started transitioning. So that's a good resource, any of those organizations, is where we started. Aside from Googling in some stuff here or there, that's pretty much where we started. Then of course the last couple years, we've taken a break just because COVID and other things, but we made it [inaudible 00:42:59] ourselves. So a good resource is the staff itself, just asking that question sometimes of, just what do you need, honestly speaking. Sometimes, I'll just say this, especially when we do our staff retreats or anything quarterly, it's amazing the information we get from in house, and we don't even have to go out of house to get it, just because of the knowledge that's there you realize that's a great way to start. I'll just say that.
Laura Zabel:
Is it me next? Okay. Echoing Addam, I think starting with your staff, and like I was saying earlier, really giving, I think the biggest thing is giving yourself permission to ask those questions, and to sort of interrogate those practices. And I think permission and sort of a mandate and some urgency around the work, particularly work to make our organizations more equitable, more sustainable for the people who work there, can't only be the external program-facing work.
I say this all the time, the easiest way I can say it is that Springboard's mission is about helping artists make a living and a life, so if this organization doesn't take care of the 17 artists who work here, then what are we even doing? Then we might as well just pack it up. It has to star there, otherwise we don't have any foundation to build that work on. So I think a lot of it is really committing the time and energy to have those conversations about some of those policies that have been probably sitting on the shelf for decades maybe, that have never been questioned or asked.
And I think the other really good resource is other folks in the field, other people, both in nonprofits, but also people who work in movement organizations, and organizers, and I have learned quite a lot from folks on my board. I think sometimes, for folks who work in social justice or in nonprofits, we have this sort of impression that big companies are not good at this work, and that's certainly true in some cases. But I've also had board members who have brought really innovative and interesting ideas in terms of how their companies are supporting their employees through their board role.
Then I'm also going to put in the chat, there's a really great podcast that's produced here locally in Minnesota called Behave, that's all about equitable workplaces and policies, and touches on some of the things we talked about today, but also gets into how you think about holidays, and time off related to those kinds of things. So I'll just put the link here.
Michelle Ramos:
I’ll make it short, because I know we're close on time. I think everybody on this call is a resource, quite frankly, and I think really reaching out to colleagues in the field, folks that are doing this work. Alternate ROOTS has a deep bench of consultants who do just this kind of work, and so we definitely can make referrals make recommendations, and we are a total transparent organization, so if you're interested in what a decolonized employee handbook looks like, reach out, let us know. We're happy to share that. We're an open book, no pun intended, when it comes to sharing resources and the way we're doing things. We also decolonized our staffing structure this year, so if you go to the Alternate ROOTS website, we totally took the hierarchical practice out of it. We took the titles away, which we thought were very colonized, and created our own radical creative titles, and now we're tackling the bylaws. So yeah, we're in the process as well. But I think colleagues in the field often times are the best resources that you have.
Tim Cynova:
I have pages in my notebook, as expected, for things to follow up, thoughts. So Addam, Laura, Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight during this session. Thank you so much for being part of the summit.
Laura Zabel:
Thank you.
Michelle Ramos:
Thanks for inviting me, Tim. It's great to be here.
Addam Garrett:
Thank you. Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Find more about the Ethnical Re-Opening Summit, including speaker bios and session recaps at work shouldn’t suck dot c-o backslash ethical hyphen reopening hyphen summit hyphen 2021.
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