This list shall serve as inspiration for your own house rules. Why? Research shows that teams who clarify joint behavioral principles perform better. And while a physical office gives you cues on how to behave, moving into an online office can be confusing. Happy co-working!
Our Work Context (tools - what to use how)
- We use Teemyco for internal oral communication (Slack for writing & files; Google Meet for external calls; emails for external written communication)
- We all use an avatar picture so we easily find each other in the virtual office
Rooms & Behaviors
- Room layout: We may all add rooms & amend all rooms except for the ones below. Never-used rooms can be erased.
- Rooms that may not be changed or erased without checking with the team: Lounge, Focus Area, Open Workspace, Dev Room, Team Room, Founders Corner, Gone Fishing.
- The person adding a new room explains the purpose & behavior in the room description field
- For important or sensitive discussions we lock the virtual room (signaling do not disturb)
- “Crashing” into social areas such as the Kitchen or Afterwork bar is always allowed
- Being in the Kitchen does not mean one is lazy, it means the person is open for a quick break. We encourage social breaks.
- For Thursday Lunch roulettes we meet up in the Kitchen and split into smaller groups & rooms. We encourage participation in Thursday lunch roulette but it isn't mandatory.
- All other rooms may change names temporary (by anyone!) as long as the description field explains the expected behavior or purpose (nonsense welcome!).
- We synch group remote Gym or Meditation sessions on Slack beforehand & pre-schedule them.
- We do not have so many rooms that one must scroll in the main view, as orientation of who is who then becomes too hard.
- Anyone may pin a link into a room. Pins that shall not be removed are marked with "keep!" in the link title. E.g. our House rules and/or the Games.
- We encourage nonsense rooms & experimentation.