🧑‍🚀 People

This page details processes specific to working with and within this department.

Team

Contact us

• To make a request of this department, create an issue and a team member will get back to you within one business day (If urgent, mention a team member in the #help-people Slack channel.
  • Any Fleet team member can view the kanban board for this department, including pending tasks and the status of new requests.
  • Please use issue comments and GitHub mentions to communicate follow-ups or answer questions related to your request.

Responsibilities

The People department is directly responsible for Fleet's culture, human resources, benefits, opening positions, compensation planning, onboarding, and offboarding.

Commission planning, taxes, state unemployment insurance filings, business insurance, Delaware registered agent and franchise taxes, virtual mailbox, company phone number, and other adjacent areas of responsibility are run by the Finance department._

Approve a new position

When review is requested on a proposal to open a new position, the Interim Head of People will complete the following steps when reviewing the pull request:

1. Confirm the new row in "Fleeties" has a manager, job title, and department, that it doesn't have any corrupted spreadsheet formulas or formatting, and that the start date is set to the first Monday of the next month.
2. Confirm the job description consists only of changes to "Responsibilities" and "Experience," with an appropriate filename, and that the content looks accurate, is grammatically correct, and is otherwise ready to post in a public job description on fleetdm.com.
3. Ballpark and document compensation research for the role based on
   • Add screenshot: Scroll to the very bottom of "¶¶ 💌 Compensation decisions (offer math)" and add a new heading for the role, pattern-matching off of the names of other nearby role headings. Then create written documentation of your research for future reference. The easiest way to do this is to take screenshots of the relevant benchmarks in Pave and paste those screenshots under the new heading.
4. Decide whether to approve this role or to consider it a different time. If approving, then:
   • Update financial model: Update "¶ Financial model"
   • Update team database: Update the row in "¶¶ 🥧 Equity plan" using the benchmarked compensation and share count.
     • Salary: Enter the salary: If the role has variable compensation, use the role's OTE (on-target earning estimate) as the budgeted salary amount, and leave a note in the "Notes (¶¶)" cell clarifying the role's bonus or commission structure.
     • Equity: Enter the equity as a number of shares, watching the percentage that is automatically calculated in the next cell. Keep guessing different numbers of shares until you get the derived percentage looking like what you want to see.
   • Create Slack channel: Create a private "#YYYY-hiring-xxxxxx" Slack channel (where "xxxxxx" is the job title and YYYY is the current year) for discussion and invite the hiring manager and Interim Head of People.
   • Publish opening: Approve and merge the pull request. The job posting will go live within ≤10 minutes.
   • Track as approved in "Fleeties": In the "Fleeties" spreadsheet, find the row for the new position and update the "Job description" column and replace the URL of the pull request that originally proposed this new position with the URL of the GitHub merge commit when that PR was merged.
   • Reply to requestor: Post a comment on the pull request, being sure to include a direct link to their live job description on fleetdm.com. (This is the URL where candidates can go to read about the job and apply. For example: fleetdm.com/handbook/company/product-designer):

     The new opening is now live!  Candidates can apply at fleetdm.com/handbook/company/railway-conductor.

Most columns of the "Equity plan" are updated automatically when "Fleeties" is, based on the unique identifier of each row, like 🧑‍🚀890. (Advisors have their own flavor of unique IDs, such as 🦉755, which are defined in "Advisors and investors".)

Inform managers about hours worked

Every Friday, we collect hours worked for all hourly employees at Fleet, including core team members and consultants, regardless of their location. Consultants submit their hours through Gusto (US consultants) or Plane.com (international consultants) for DRI (generally their manager) review. Here's how:

1. Find the DRI using the Digital Experience KPIs.
2. Copy the template in the consultants column of the KPIs and send the teammate's DRI a direct message in Slack hours with an FYI including the total hours logged since last Saturday at midnight. For international teammates, they cannot enter hours weekly in Plane.com, so you will need to request the hours worked from them in order to have the DRI approve them.
3. The following Monday, check for updates to logged hours and ensure the KPI sheet aligns with HRIS records. If there are discrepancies between what was previously reported, reconfirm logged hours with the teammate's DRI and update the KPI sheet to reflect the correct amount.

Prepare for the All hands

• Every month the Executive Assistant will do the prep work for the monthly "✌️ All hands 🖐👋🤲👏🙌🤘" call.

  • In the "👋 All hands" folder, create a new folder using "yyyy-mm - All hands".
  • Update "End of the quarter" slides to reflect the current countdown.
  • Download a copy of the previous month's keynote file and rename the copy pattern matching existing files.
  • Update the slides to reflect the current "All hands" date (e.g. cover slides month and the "You are here" slide)'
  • Update slides that contain metrics to reflect current information using the 📈 KPIs doc.
  • Update the "Spotlight slide" for guest speakers.
  • Add new customer logos from Mike's bookmarks "Customers list" and Google "Company name" to find the current logo.

• First "All hands" of the quarter

  • Audit the "Strategy" slide.
  • Audit the "Goals" slide

The day before the All hands, Mike will prepare slides that reflect the CEO vision and focus.

Share recording of all hands meeting

The Executive Assistant will post a link to the All hands Gong recording and slide deck in Slack. Template to use:

Thanks to everyone who contributed to today's "All hands" call.

:tv: If you weren't able to attend, please *[watch the recording](Current-link-to-Gong-recording)* _(1.5x playback supported)_.

You can also grab a copy of the [original slides](https://fleetdm.com/handbook/company/communications#all-hands) for use in your own confidential presentations.

1. Copy and paste the template to the "# general" Slack channel.
2. Open Gong recording and click Share call, then click Share with customers, then Copy link.
3. Paste the url *[Watch the recording](here-in-your-template-message)*.

4. Schedule the Slack message to go out at 6pm CT (18:00).

Update personnel details

When a Fleetie, consultant or advisor requests an update to their personnel details (name, location, phone, etc), follow these steps to ensure accurate representation across systems.

1. Team member submits a 💼 Teammate relocation to update their personnel details (or Digital Experience team creates if the request comes via email or is sensitive and needs a classified issue).
   • If change is for a primary identification or contact method, ask for evidence of change and capture in employee's personnel file.
2. Digital Experience makes change to HRIS (Gusto or Plane) to reflect change.
   • Note: if making the change requires follow-up steps, resolve those steps to action the change.
3. Once change is effected in HRIS, Digital Experience makes changes to "🧑‍🚀 Fleeties" spreadsheet.
4. If required, Digital Experience makes any relevant changes to Fleet's equity plan.
5. If required, Digital Experience makes any relevant changes to the "🗺️ Geographical factors" spreadsheet and follows through on any action items involving tax implications (i.e. registering with a new state for employer taxes).
6. If required, Digital Experience also makes changes to other core systems (e.g., creating a new email alias in Google Workspace, updating details in Carta, etc.).
7. The change is now actioned, notify the team member and close the issue.

Note: if the Fleetie is US based and has a qualifying life event that impacts benefit coverage, they can follow the Gusto steps to update their coverage elections.

Change a Fleetie's role

When Digital Experience receives notification of a Fleetie's role changing, The Interim Head of People will bring the proposed title change to the next Roundup meeting with the CEO for approval. If the proposed change is rejected, the Interim Head of People will inform the requesting manager as to why. If approved, use the following steps to change a Fleetie's role:

1. Update "🧑‍🚀 Fleeties":
   • Search the spreadsheet for the Fleetie in need of a job title change.
   • Input the new job title in the Fleetie's row in the "Job title" cell.
   • Navigate to the "Org chart" tab of the spreadsheet, and verify that the Fleetie's title appears correctly in the org chart.
2. Update the departmental handbook page with the change of job title
3. Prepare salary benchmarking information to determine whether the teammate's current compensation aligns with the benchmarks of the new role.
   • If the benchmark is significantly different, take the steps to update a team member's compensation.
4. Update the relevant payroll/HRIS system.
   • For updating Gusto (US-based Fleeties):
     • Login to Gusto and navigate to "People > Team members".
     • Find the Fleetie and select them to see their profile page.
     • Under the "Compensation" heading, select edit and update the "Job title" and input the specific date the change happened. Save the changes.
   • For updating Plane (non-US Fleeties):
     • Login to Plane and navigate to "People > Team".
     • Find the Fleetie and select them to see their profile page.
     • Use the "Help" function, or email support@plane.com to notify Plane of the need to change the job title for the Fleetie. Include the Fleetie's name, current title, new title, and effective date.
     • Take any relevant steps as directed by Plane in order to make the required changes to the Fleetie's profile.

Change a Fleetie's manager

When Digital Experience receives notification of a Fleetie's manager changing, follow these steps to ensure correct recording in our systems.

1. Update 🧑‍🚀 Fleeties:
   • Search for the Fleetie's new manager, and copy the new manager's unique ID from the far left "Unique ID" column.
   • Search for the Fleetie whose manager is changing, and paste (without formatting) their new manager's unique ID in the "Reports to: (manager unique ID)" cell in the Fleetie's row.
   • Verify that the "Reports to (auto: manager name and job title)" cell in the Fleetie's row reflects the new manager's details.
   • Verify that in the new manager's row, the "# direct reports" cell reflect the correct number.
   • Navigate to the "Org chart" tab in the spreadsheet, and verify that the Fleetie now appears in the correct place in the org chart.
2. If the person's department is changing, then update both departmental handbook pages to move the person to their new department:
   • Remove the person from the "Team" section of the old department and add them to the "Team" section of the new department.
3. If the person's level of confidential access will change along with the change to their manager, then update that level of access:
   • Update Google Workspace to make sure this person lives in the correct Google Group, removing them from the old and/or adding them to the new.
   • Update 1password to remove this person from old vaults and/or add them to new vaults.
   • For a team member moving from "classified" to "confidential" access, check Gusto, Plane, and other systems to remove their access.

Note: The Fleeties spreadsheet is the source of truth for who everyone's manager is and their job titles.

Run payroll

Many of these processes are automated, but it's vital to check Gusto and Plane manually for accuracy.

• Salaried fleeties are automated in Gusto and Plane.
• Hourly fleeties and consultants are a manual process each month in Gusto and Plane.

To complete payroll for a salaried US employee, use the following steps:

1. Log in to your admin Gusto account.
2. Navigate to Pay > Run payroll > Run payroll.
3. Navigate to the Digital Experience board, and search for "welcoming" issues or "offboarding" issues.
4. Ensure that new hires during the payroll period have accurate hours and salary rates reflected (compare with the equity plan), and that offboarded employees' final hours are correctly recorded and their final payroll processed.
5. Check for any workiversary compensation changes for the month and ensure they're correctly reflected in both Gusto and the equity plan.
6. Once the above is verified correct, ensure payment is via direct deposit and select "Review summary".
7. Ensure the payroll date is the last business day of the month, and hit submit.

To complete payroll for a salaried international employee, use the following steps:

1. Log in to your admin Plane account.
   • While Fleet considers all Fleeties employees, Plane differentiates between employees (that Fleet employs directly) and International contractors (that Fleet employs via a contracted company).
2. Verify the number of employees in each country by checking the "Stats" tab in the Fleeties doc. If the numbers seem incorrect, cross-reference with the main Fleeties tab to ensure all employees are accounted for in Plane.
3. Verify that all teammates have a planned (or already processed) payroll.
   • To check payroll for those Plane considers "employees", go to Payroll > History.
     • Verify that any employees getting paid more frequently than monthly have had their payments processed throughout the month (Canada only currently).
     • Navigate to the Digital Experience board, and search for "welcoming" issues or "offboarding" issues.
     • Ensure that new hires during the payroll period have accurate hours and salary rates reflected (compare with the equity plan), and that offboarded employees' final hours are correctly recorded and their final payroll processed.
     • Check for any workiversary compensation changes for the month and ensure they're correctly reflected in both Plane and the equity plan.
     • If anything is incorrect, open a "help" ticket using the purple help button and schedule a change/correction for the following pay cycle (note Plane takes more time to process so it is not possible to make instantaneous changes to rectify issues)
   • To check payroll for those Plane considers "contractors", go to "Payments" > "Pay contractors".
     • Navigate to the "scheduled" tab in the top right of screen to look at what is currently scheduled to be paid.
     • Ensure all teammates have a pending payment (except those that invoice for payment).
     • Navigate to the Digital Experience board, and search for "welcoming" issues or "offboarding" issues
     • Ensure that new hires during the payroll period have accurate hours and salary rates reflected (compare with the equity plan), and that offboarded employees' final hours are correctly recorded and their final payroll processed.
     • Check for any workiversary compensation changes for the month and ensure they're correctly reflected in both Plane and the equity plan.
     • If anything is incorrect, open a "help" ticket using the purple help button and schedule a change/correction for the following pay cycle (note Plane takes more time to process so it is not possible to make instantaneous changes to rectify issues)
     • If all payments are scheduled or processing and are correct, no action needed. This payroll will process successfully without intervention.

To complete payroll for a US contractor, use the following steps:

1. Log in to your admin Gusto account.
2. Navigate to Time & Attendance > Time tracking > Review & Sync.
3. Click "Sync hours to payments" and confirm that the dates reflect the period from the 27th of the previous month to the 26th of the current month.
4. Cross-check total hours for contractors in Gusto to the total hours in the KPI spreadsheet to ensure they're correct. Since the KPI spreadsheet tracks hours weekly, ensure any discrepancies are validated.
5. Once all entries have been validated, click Sync and lock timesheets > Continue.
6. Validate payment amounts are correct, then submit payments.

To complete payroll for an international contractor, use the following steps:

1. Contractors in Plane will submit invoices for payment at the end of the month.
2. When the contractor submits the invoice for payment, log in to Plane and validate that the amount of hours is in line with time worked, by having their manager review.
3. If their manager verifies that the hours are as expected, process the invoice.
   • Note: Approving the invoice for payment does not automatically schedule the payment. You will then need to navigate to "Pay contractors" and schedule the payment.

Prepare salary benchmarking information

1. Use the relevant template text in the README section of the ¶¶ 💌 Compensation decisions document for a current Fleetie, a new role, a prospective hire, or other benchmarking use case.
2. Copy the template text and paste at the end of the document.
3. Fill in details as required, pulling from 🧑‍🚀 Fleeties spreadsheet and equity spreadsheet as required.
4. Use the teammate's information to benchmark in Pave (login details in 1Password). You can pattern match from previous benchmarking entries and include all company assumptions. Add the direct link to the Pave benchmark.

Recognize employee workiversaries

At Fleet, everyone is recognized on their workiversary. To ensure this happens, take the following steps:

1. On the 1st of every month, use Fleeties (private google doc) to determine who is celebrating their workiversary in the next month.

2. List all team members in the "✌️ All hands 🖐👋🤲👏🙌🤘" section of the e-group doc (confidential Google Doc) using the following format: [workiversary date (DD-MMM)] - [teammate name] - [number of years at Fleet].

3. On the day prior to a workiversary, send the teammate’s manager a DM on Slack:

   Hey! Just a heads up, tomorrow is [teammate’s name] [number of years at Fleet] workiversary at Fleet.
   Digital Experience can post something in the #random channel to recognize them, would you like to make that post instead?

   

   If a manager elects to post and hasn't done so by 2pm ET on the day of the workiversary, send them a friendly reminder and offer to post instead.

4. If the manager has deferred to Digital Experience, schedule a Slack post for the following day to recognize the teammate's contributions at Fleet. If you’re unsure about what to post, take a look at what’s been posted previously.

Update a team member's compensation

To change a teammate's compensation, follow these steps:

1. Create a copy of the "Values assessment" template and move it to the teammate's personnel folder in Google Drive.
2. Share the values assessment document with the manager via Slack DM (include the Interim Head of People) and ask the manager to fill out the values assessment.
3. Once the values assessment is complete, prepare salary benchmarking information and at-mention the Interim Head of People in the workiversary issue. Add a "DISCUSS" item to the roundup doc so the compensation change can be reviewed with the CEO.
4. Once compensation decisions have been finalized, the Interim Head of People will send the teammate's manager a Slack DM to communicate the compensation decision and asking them to inform the teammate.
5. Update the respective payroll platform (Gusto or Plane) by navigating to the personnel page, selecting salary field, and updating with an effective date that makes the next payroll.
6. Update the equity spreadsheet (internal doc) by copying Adding to the "Notes" cell,

• Update the "¶¶ Annual OTE ($)" column with the new compensation information.
• Update the "Last compensation change" column with the effective date from payroll platform.
• Update the "¶¶ Notes" column. ⚠️ MAKE SURE NOT TO DELETE ANY EXISTING NOTES ⚠️ Add the note to the top of the cell using the following format: As of YYYY-MM-DD OTE +15k (pattern match off of other 2024 notes). Link your note to the relevant title in the "¶¶ 💌 Compensation decisions (offer math)" (classified Google Doc).
• If the company decides on an additional equity grant as part of a compensation change, note the previous equity and new situation in detail in the "Notes" column of the equity plan. Update the "Grant started?" column to "todo" which adds it to the queue for the next time grants are processed (quarterly).

7. Calculate the monthly burn rate increase percentage and notify the CEO via a Slack DM.

Change the DRI of a consultant

1. In the KPIs sheet, find the consultant's column.
2. Change the DRI documented there to the new DRI who will receive information about the consultant's hours.

Add an advisor

First: Advisor agreements are sent through DocuSign, using the "Advisor Agreement" template.

• Update the "Advisors" sheet

  

  Be sure to mark any columns that haven't been completed yet as "TODO"

• Update the "Equity plan" sheet (which should have been automatically updated after updating "Advisors" thanks to the global unique IDs next to each row which are used to connect the spreadsheets) to reflect the default number of shares for advisor equity grants.
• Send the advisor agreement through Docusign using the CEO's account, pulling the advisor's email address from a recent calendar event on the CEO's calendar.
• Complete the first step of signing, which involves filling in the number of shares.
• Then wait for the advisor to sign. (Fleet's CEO will sign after that.)

Then, to finalize a new advisor after signing is complete:

• Schedule quarterly recurring 1h meeting between the CEO and the advisor, with 30m of recurring prep scheduled back to back ahead of the meeting.
• Update the status columns in the "Advisors" sheet to show that the agreement has been signed, and ask the new advisor to add us on LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Angellist.
• Update "Equity plan" status columns to reflect updated status for this advisor, and to ensure the advisor's equity is queued up for the next quarterly equity grant ritual.

Convert a Fleetie to a consultant

If a Fleetie decides they want to move to being a consultant, either the Fleetie or their manager need to create a custom issue for the Digital Experience team to notify them of the change. Once notified, Digital Experience takes the following steps:

1. Confirm the following details with the Fleetie:
   • Date of change
   • Term of consultancy (time period)
   • Hours/capacity expected (hours per week or month)
   • Confirm hourly rate
2. Once details are confirmed, use the information given to create the consulting agreement for the Fleetie (either in docusign (US-based) or via Plane (international)), and send to their personal email for signature. Once signed, save in Fleetie's employee file.
3. Schedule the Fleetie's final day in HRIS (Gusto or Plane).
4. Update final day in "🧑‍🚀 Fleeties" spreadsheet.
5. Create an offboarding issue for the Fleetie converting to a consultant, and confirm with their manager if there is a need to retain any tools or access while they are a consultant (default to removing all access from Fleet email, and migrating to personal email for Slack and other tools unless there is a business case to retain the Fleet email and associated tool access).
6. Follow the offboarding issue for next steps, including communicating to teammates and updating equity plan.

Review Fleet's US company benefits

Annually, around mid-year, Fleet will be prompted by Gusto to review company benefits. The goal is to keep changes minimal. Follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Gusto admin account.
2. Navigate to "Benefits" and select "Renewal survey".
3. Complete the survey questions, aiming for minimal changes.
4. Approximately 2-3 months after survery completion, Gusto will suggest plans based on Fleet's responses. Choose plans with minimal changes.
5. Gusto will offer these plans to employees during open enrollment, with new coverage starting 3-4 weeks afterward.

Rituals

Stubs

The following stubs are included only to make links backward compatible.