During the pandemic there are a few changes to how Squaretree completes its work for you.

These are adaptations to help make work more sustainable, effective and adaptive. The goal is to support wellness and sustainability for Squaretree and clients, so that we can serve you better. These also support the health of the Squaretree team.

We’re ready to know your work norms and preferences too. Please share when we begin our work together.

Half-hour meetings

We use half-hour time limits for live meetings, whether phone or video. If more time is required, this can be arranged over multiple half-hour meetings. A half-hour buffer (at least) will be placed between each meeting if they take place on the same day. Additional work will not be performed by Squaretree during the buffer. Please share a Calendly link or ask for ours.

For ongoing work, a standard meeting time works well.

We please ask that the most important, “thinky” information is frontloaded at the start of the meeting. We are eager to catch up with you. However, with a cut-off after 30 minutes, we do not want to lose the time to cover our work tasks.

When possible, please provide the agenda and materials in advance.

AUDio first

Over the course of the pandemic we’ve found most meetings can be conducted over audio.

We welcome you to join a call with video, but we don’t expect or require it from you. Squaretree team members may not turn on their camera during calls. If face-to-face presence over a call is important to you, please contact us so we can make a plan.

We still use video programs like Zoom, Skype or Meet, since it is often helpful to screenshare.

Documentation and knowledge-sharing

We love using Loom and other screencast solutions that allow for us to share information with you, and let you access that info on your own schedule. Likewise, we love your video tours and annotated images.

Please work within the limits of these platforms. Loom limits videos to 5 minutes. We have found this inspires very helpful efficiency. If the content doesn’t fit within 5 minutes, please find a different way to share it.

Late-stage shifts

While we will make every effort to accommodate late changes, we are not often able to add a new meeting on the same day, or change the time of a meeting to a new time on the same day. Please feel free to get in touch to find out whether a last-minute change is an option. Just expect that, while we will do what we can, it may not be possible.

What about just cancelling? That’s fine with us. Most meetings can be cancelled or moved to a later day.

It’s also possible that Squaretree would need to cancel or move to another day on the day of. We will keep these to a minimum and give you as much advance notice as possible.

Longer-term shifts

We can’t predict what may change in our lives or yours. Please let us know if your situation has changed, and we’ll do the same. We will prioritize your health and ours, and the health of our communities, in revising our project plan.

Meeting times

We are happy to set up meetings nearly anytime. Meeting time is not available before 9 am.

Prioritzation

Always important. Now even more so! Anything you can do to help us understand the most important task or goal will help us, in turn, help you check off that task or achieve that goal. There can only be one most important goal.

predictability

In an unpredictable world, we strive to find routine wherever possible. Replicable, predictable processes and timelines are helpful (even if the work itself will be creative and generative). Checklists help us stay organized and be sure we cover everything.

Live communication

Unless we’ve agreed to it, live communication or immediate responses may not be possible at all times. Please discuss this with us if you think this kind of communication will be helpful for our project. We will need to plan for it in advance.

Texting and Slack are available for some projects. Let’s talk about what’s right for our work together.

Accommodation Resource

The Job Accommodation Network offers resource guides for workplace accommodations. For more context on the principles that inform our work currently, see Accommodating Employees with Covid-19-Related Symptoms. JAN’s other guides may be of interest for teams designing flexible, remote work processes.

Thank you.

Wishing you well.