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With a few exceptions (such as specific on-call hours in Engineering, or inbox coverage hours in Advocacy), each of us manages our own tasks, time, and calendar.

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As part of working flexibly and transparently, we manage our calendars and availability with care. (This includes maintaining a transparent calendar of our availability in Google Calendar, Timetastic, and Slack/Campsite.)

Here’s what that looks like:

HOW to share plans with your teammates:

For shorter absences such as 3 days or less:

  1. Let your manager and relevant teammates know about the upcoming absence and the days you’ll be away from work.
  2. Organize work, re-schedule or decline meetings, and coordinate collaboration and deadlines as needed.
  3. Enter your leave into Timetastic.
  4. Mark your leave on your Google calendar as an ‘out of office event’.
    1. 💡 There is an integration if you’d like to connect your Google calendar to Timetastic. Find out how to here! Note it will show as an All Day Event at the top of your calendar (not fully blocking the day) so please take the extra step to book ‘out of office’ for the calendar event.
    2. When you book your “out of office,” set it to automatically decline both scheduled & new meetings, so your calendar is fully up to date for meeting responses.
  5. Set a status in Slack to indicate your leave and return date.
    1. Adding your return date is key here, as “back Wednesday” could be confusing. 🙂 To avoid confusion about date format, spell out or abbreviate the month. For example, March 4th instead of 3/4 or 4/3.

If you’ll be out for 4-5 consecutive work days (a full week), please do the above and these steps as well:

  1. Add a post to the Time Off Space in Campsite. This can be as detailed (or not) as you’d like; feel free to share specific plans and details, or just list the days you’ll be away. We suggest listing the exact date range of the dates you will be out of office, including weekends. (For example, if your official leave date starts on Monday the 13th, but you’ll be offline starting Friday the 10th, list the first day in your time off post as the 10th). It’s helpful to include “I’m returning to work on X date” in your post!
  2. Edit your first name in Slack to indicate what day you’ll return (e.g.: “Caro - returning Mar 8”). This helps teammates who @-mention you set their expectations for a reply.

For longer absences, such as 2 weeks, consider adding this final step:

  1. Document any acute or ongoing work obligations, and ask your manager or someone on your team to cover specific items as needed.

👀 Step-by-step screen share tutorial here!

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