Creating the Colere Handbook

今回は、ColereのメンバーSusie（UXリサーチャー）が書いた記事を紹介します。

Hi there! My name is Susie, and I’m a UX researcher supporting Colere’s people experience team. We recently launched our company’s handbook and wanted to share how we created this resource. We will end this page with my personal reflection.

How We Started:

Colere is built on the foundation of our vision: work to live happier. We want to flip the modern perception of work being too difficult, sacrificing life, and turn it into something more enjoyable, meaningful, interesting, healthy, and life-enriching overall. We apply this vision to everyone we work with, whether our members, clients, or partners. In order to fulfill this vision, we use our values - excite myself, less is more, and one step ahead - as guidelines.

Many people from different walks of life join us. In the spirit of these values, we wanted to create and maintain an environment where all can make the most out of the limited time they work with us. It was critical for Colere to remove any signs of inefficiency to maximize our efficiency.

As a remote-based company, we cannot rely on unwritten rules so there was also a need to add clarity to our guidelines and workstyles no matter who reads them - whether they are current members or new members interested in joining Colere. Up until recently, what is working well and not working well was communicated implicitly. Colere is a quickly growing company, so we needed a common language to understand, communicate, and follow our best practices and policies.

The Process

The entire process of developing the handbook was agile - from choosing the topics to building out each topic. The team came together with a clear purpose for creating the handbook but the output image was loose - we didn’t know what our final handbook version looked like, but we knew that we had to start documenting basic practices and policies.

1. We brainstormed topics.

Topics were chosen based on what we wanted to communicate to the world about Colere: our unique culture and practices as fundamentals. This included not only our mission, vision, and value statements, but also what makes us unique as a remote-based organization, and our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

2. We built out each section.

As we discussed what to include in each section, there were times when we noticed some areas that needed clarity: how people can stay involved and what defines their involvement options. Whenever we encountered any fuzzy topics like this, we sought our “answer” through discussions. Conversations sparked questions about why we do things the way we do currently. When we didn’t have a clear answer, we would discuss where we wanted Colere to be. It’s important to note that our values helped us stay grounded. We had ongoing discussions that took us time to align on answers, but we always referred to our values and made decisions.

For example, we had hotly debated topics like how people can stay involved with Colere. There were no precedents to this topic so we had to create our own strong point of view and set a good example. If you take, off-boarding as an example, not many companies think through how their ideal relationship is with their employees. Offboarding as a topic may be something that a company may hesitate to actively discuss. Without a good role model to reference, we discussed what the relationship between Colere and individuals should be like as a north star.
Another hotly debated topic was performance reviews. Not all Colere members are working full-time with us, and our compensation model was atypical. So we couldn’t follow a typical performance review system and process. Since we wanted to make the reviews more bi-directional, we changed the name of the reviews from “performance reviews” to “reflection opportunities”. Colere also treats them as professional experts contributing knowledge part-time, we encourage them to have monthly reflections on whether they meet their responsibilities and how Colere can improve its work environment to meet their needs.

3. We learned by writing and clarifying.

Throughout the entire process, the team discussed and reflected on the unexplored territory of topics including the above. Nobody had the answers, so everyone on the team had to get out of their comfort zone to bring in new ideas rather than relying on existing solutions. Asking each other targeted questions helped surface our tacit knowledge of the topic, too. Writing out our ideas as we discussed helped the process as it clarified our intentions behind our ideas better with words. By the time we wrote and built out each section, we had a deeper understanding of why we believe our guidelines are working or why we assume certain policies don’t work. Although we didn’t have a clear understanding of what was working when we first began this project, by the end of the process, we were confident enough to start sharing this with the world.

Reflection

Personally, as I reflect on this project, I noticed similarities between my day-to-day practices as a UX researcher and how I worked on this handbook. Particularly, I applied user-centered design as we created this handbook and acted as a researcher interviewing customers during discussions. For example, as we were defining our best practices as we go, one of the members shared real-life examples of what was working well and not working well. Most examples were happening in real-time, so it was easier for me to leverage that and dive deeper. For example, there were a few people that were onboarding with Colere, so we talked about how we might set expectations for those interested in Colere. I asked many questions as I would normally do in research interview sessions. Some questions were intended to discover the details of what was working well, why one of the members thought it was working well, and what was attributed to a successful onboarding experience. My plan was to ask targeted questions so that I can find generalizable insights to write in the handbook. It was unexpected to discover that I was wearing a UX researcher hat during the process, but I was happy to know that my skills are more versatile than I thought it was.

Another perk of being a UX researcher on the team was that I was in a position to have a bird’s-eye view of the company. Other members are part of different projects, so they are heavily invested and involved in the day-to-day of Colere. However, I was able to hold an objective perspective of what Colere may look like from the outside, especially in the eye of newcomers. When we were working on our DEI statements, we had multiple opportunities to step back and look at ourselves with a fresh set of eyes. We were grounded with the mission to provide a workplace that is welcoming for whoever joins us. I asked the team about what newcomers may feel when they join Colere and what languages or communication styles we should adopt to maintain and build a more inclusive environment.