Communication Guidelines

General

• Avoid email for anything that requires a quick action or response.
• Use email to communicate about work that doesn’t need an immediate response, or for a record or paper trail.
• Use Slack for quick conversations.
• If a Slack dialogue reaches more than six messages, consider a web call (Zoom), phone call or in-person conversation. This is often the clearest and quickest way to make a decision and reach an agreement.

Communicating About Difficulty

Each individual has different skills, and what is simple for one person may be challenging for another. This could be due to a lack of context, familiarity, experience, or many other factors.

Radial encourages employees to refrain from describing tasks as "easy" or "simple," even if this is meant in an encouraging way.

Rather, characterize the task by detailing the steps it will take to complete it, instead of with your feelings about its level of difficulty.

Meetings

To schedule a meeting with a fellow staff person, we recommend using Google Calendar's Find a Time feature.

• Add a Zoom conference call if it is a remote meeting.
• Use Fellow to record meeting notes and action items. It has a web version or you can download the app.

Slack

Slack is an internal communication channel used at Radial. Employees and some clients and friends are invited to join Radial’s Slack.

In addition to chatting, Slack has a variety of uses, from running a poll, to doing a quick call, to uploading and sharing files.

Conversations are organized in channels.

There are many Slack channels at Radial, from #pets to #lunch, and of course more business-specific ones. Each channel has a description of its purpose. Please keep conversations in the channel that is most relevant to them.

To browse available channels:

• Move your cursor over the Channels heading on the left.
• Select Browse. Scroll through the channels.
• Choose the channel you'd like to join.
• Click join Channel or Enter.

Radial generally has two channels for each project, an internal (#vetmeasure-internal) and a client-facing (#vetmeasure) channel.

Channels you may want to join:

#2-minutes-love is devoted to compliments and shout-outs.

Make plans on #lunch.

Slack also contains a channel to post pithy #quotes. And another, tagged #watercolor, to act as a virtual watercooler while we are working remotely.

Other channels:

• #books
• #2-minutes-hate to write about pet peeves.


When possible, please thread channel responses.

#help

The #help channel is specifically designed for interrupting. Any team member can post in #help if they have a problem. Use #help instead of direct messaging for help or going to someone’s desk.

The channel has two rules:

1. All team members must subscribe to notifications.
2. If you’re free, please help. The first team member to help with the problem adds an eye emoji to the post to indicate he/she/they are helping. Once the problem is resolved, the original poster tags it with a .

Please thread comments in #help, explain what you need help with, and mention people’s names only when necessary. The next available person will help you.

Introductions

Whether you are introducing someone in person or by email, the older or higher-ranking person should be first. In a business situation, the client is introduced first. All things being equal, first introduce the person you know best.

Give each person an idea of who they are meeting, and say something complimentary about each individual.

If you are one of the people being introduced, in the first email reply, include the introduction’s author and thank him/her/them.

If you Google introduction etiquette, you’ll find layers of rules that apply to business settings, personal relationships, and friends or significant others.

Email Etiquette

• Write a clear subject line.
• Minimize the use of Reply All.
• Leave the To line blank.
• Include a signature block with at least, and not much more than your:
• Title
• Company
• Email address
• Work phone
• Be aware: Humor translates poorly in text.
• Proofread your emails, or have someone else do it.
• Enable the Undo feature in GMail to save yourself from typos.
• Fill out the To field last.
• Use standard fonts.
• Please avoid Comic Sans, custom "fun" fonts, and colors in professional communication.

Email Groups

• We use Google Groups to set up team email lists for projects.
• The email name pattern is team.[project_name]@radialdevgroup.com. Example: team.vetmeasure@radialdevgroup.com is the group name for the VetMeasure project.
• Project updates should always go to this email address as well as the client. We discourage emails that are between only a client and one other staff member, preferring that the entire team be included on email chains.

Letters of Recommendation

We hire and train great employees! As such, we are always happy to recommend them to others. Here is how to request a letter of recommendation.

Email your supervisor with this request. This email should include:

• Deadline this is needed, if applicable.
• To whom to address the letter, if applicable.
• The format the letter is needed in (signed PDF, email, .docx, printed out on letterhead, etc)
• A list of at least three qualities about yourself that you would like the supervisor to highlight in the letter.
• A specific example that exhibits the quality work you did at Radial.