GitLab Learning & Development, 15 Jun 2021

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From YouTube: Sid + L&D - Biggest Risks (Handbook Second)

Description

Biggest Risks Handbook Page: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/#handbook-second

A

um Hi, I'm jc on the learning and development team at get lab and I'm joined here by sid, get lab ceo and co-founder today during this handbook learning session, we're going to be talking about biggest risks and in particular handbook. Second, so sid, can you talk to us a little bit about why it's important that we maintain handbook? First.

B

Yeah, I think in any other company I've seen it's not that they don't have kind of a knowledge management system. It's that the knowledge management system doesn't contain the stuff you want to know. It doesn't contain everything and, most importantly, it's out of date. So as soon as your handbook becomes out of date, people are gonna.

B

Ask something else in the handbook: they're gonna ask people they're, gonna, call and then the consequence of that is, it gets further out of date because things don't get updated anymore. So I think after you pass a certain threshold, it's almost impossible to get to a company-wide knowledge management system.

B

It took us a lot of effort to come where we are today and I think it's easy to lose and I think there's big big advantages of having an up-to-date handbook in onboarding people in change, management and changing stuff in the company, and then people kind of learning how the company works.

A

Definitely yeah, I think when I joined the handbook was under 1000 pages. Maybe so it's been interesting to like watch it grow and kind of see what how it's evolved and how much information has been added. I think people have really emphasized using the handbook, so leaders model the behavior and culture of gitlab team members, look to leaders to live our values and be examples of them. How does leadership model handbook first and if they aren't, what should we do.

B

Yeah, I think leadership is responsible for working handbook first themselves. So if you have a change, communicate it through a handbook change not through an email or a presentation or another way, so the leader should be making handbook changes or directing people to make handbook changes, and people should speak up if a change is communicated in a non-handbook way, if there's an email without a link to a diff, but we're doing this this way from now on, it should be like hey. Should this be handbook? First.

A

Instead, so how do we maintain our handbook first values as we're growing rapidly, not just leadership, but also team members.

B

I think the most essential thing is when you miss something, add it. So if something is not in the handbook- and you ask someone kind of you learn something find the best location to put that and then also link it from the location. You were looking in first, so that it's easily discoverable.

A

Yeah awesome great point um and then with a growing team, how do we ensure that new team members really see the importance of being handbook? First.

B

Yeah, I think it's sometimes easy to forget, like what the benefits are.

B

um If you've been at gitlab for a while, if you're new you're like wow, it's pretty awesome, I can find everything I need to do my job, so we we should kind of keep stressing that that that is kind of unnatural, but that we greatly benefit from it and then also kind of acknowledge that, yes, the handbook takes more time to change than it would be just firing off an email to someone, but the benefits of it compound because we change the process once, but we implement it many times we train many people in it, etc, and the next change can kind of build on the change you had or if you would have sent the email with the process.

B

Change like it doesn't reach new team members, it's forgotten. After a year an exchange is made and it doesn't take account the email you send half a year ago, so it gets changing. The handbook is harder than sending out the email or the presentation, and we have to acknowledge that but say hey, it's worth it because over time, the benefits compound.

A

Yeah, definitely being on teams that have grown, I can totally attest to having stuff in the handbook making things it is time consuming to add to the handbook, but it definitely makes things easier as more team members come on board, so awesome. Well. Those are the questions that I had on this topic. So thank you so much for taking the time to record this video on handbook. Second sid. I really appreciate.