Balean Culture

• 1: Balean Values
• 2:

1 - Balean Values

The values we believe in

Balean is a purpose organisation that wants to make a positive impact. Everything we do to make this positive impact, should be guided by our 5 core values: Sustainability - Collaboration - Open mind - Honesty & Transparency - Trust.

What each of these values means to us is explained below.

Sustainability

In our organization, sustainability is our guidance and moral compass in everything we do and decisions we make. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 13 (climate action), 14 (life below water) and 17 (partnerships for the goals) are central for Balean, where we help partners achieve their own sustainability ambition.

Collaboration

In our global vision, collaboration outperforms competition for a positive impact. We search actively for mutually beneficial collaboration across disciplines. We continuously improve and embrace long term partnerships.

Honesty and transparency

We are transparent and honest about what we do and how we do it, in everything we do. Collaborative learning is central in public discussions both within Balean as towards 3rd parties.

Open mind

To make impact we need new ideas and perspectives. For our mission, anyone can contribute from their perspective, where we respect each others views and opinions. Diversity in background, culture, gender, or other any other factor enhances creativity and solutions.

Trust

Authenticity, empathy, and reliability is the basis for Balean. Everyone can make mistakes and we assume positive intent in our mission to a positive impact. Help each other in fixing things and learn collaboratively to improve together.

2 -

Guide to effectively work remotely

The Balean Foundation has people all over the world working together to make impact on ocean sustainability. This requires to put in place procedures and policies to effectively work together.

This page is a draft document on how we aim to work in an all-remote environment. It is still pending internal review before being published and changes may be made to the document before publication.

Since we are a young and dynamic team, we also still need to learn. But why not take the lessons from the established? Many of our remote policy is based on GitLab’s All Remote handbook. This is an iterative process where learn and make changes as necessary.

Important in an all-remote, asynchronous organisation is to have all information available online. Our single source of truth is our online handbook which holds information on how we work and decisions we make. Everyone is allowed and encouraged to make changes to the handbook.

Working from home

Working completely from home is not always easy. During the intake procedure, we always check with individuals if they are able to work from home comfortably. People get the flexibility to work at the times that fits their rhythm best in non-linear work days but we also encourage them to clearly separate work from life.

When you completely work at times that are out-of-sync with your colleagues, it will be a lot harder to collaborate and have meetings together. We strongly encourage people to stay connected with your team through regular meetings and synchronous collaboration via e.g. Slack. If timezones or other situations make it hard or impossible to sync work times within your team, then be very careful to log progress and outcomes for everyone to review.

Since working from home can be lonely sometimes we find it important to have regular check-ins to see and hear how somebody is doing. The goal is to have at least one weekly check-in with the direct manager or company representative and add more check-in meetings when necessary. People are encouraged to read this All remote starter guide.

Communication

Working remotely also brings with it that a lot of communication is asynchronously. We use Slack as the main channel for direct communication. People can at all times send a Slack message. We try to keep Slack and Slack channels as open as possible so everybody is aware of what is going on and everyone can respond to questions. We do ask people to check for and respond to Slack messages on every workday but we never expect people to respond outside working hours.

To keep your colleagues informed on your working schedule, we encourage you to complete your Slack profile. Especially your time zone and regular working hours would be great to see in Slack. You can also set regular working hours in Google Calendars so that when people book a meeting with you, they can see if the meeting is within working hours.

Meetings are a great way to synchronously discuss certain topics are make a decision. If the purpose of a meeting is not clear or a meeting is not really effective, everyone can always ask to clarify the purpose, provide an agenda or ask to cancel the meeting if ineffective. The outcome of a meeting should always be written down. This can be either in a Google Docs document to track meeting minutes or the transcription, or in an online source like the handbook or the documentation site.

Time off

Since there is no office where you can see if people are present, it is important to communicate about your whereabouts. When people take a day off or are away from their keyboard for a longer time (more than an hour), we ask them to set the correct status in Slack so everyone can see this.

Progress tracking

When you work from home, it is a lot harder to share or show what you are working on. Also is it more difficult to sit together and ask questions. We therefore expect people to work in openness and transparency. Work is tracked (mostly) in GitLab through tasks and merge requests. If people work on code, we expect them to commit frequently in order to trigger feedback loops and also to encourage collaboration.

Documents, memos and other office related content is always written directly in our Google Docs workspace, again for visibility, transparency and to encourage collaboration.

To keep it easy and transparent to book meetings and know what people are doing, we strongly ask people to also share there calendars with everyone in the organization. We understand the privacy implications and aren’t making this mandatory but ask you to work fully transparent nonetheless. You can ofcourse set meetings as private to prevent others from seeing the topic.

Well-being

To beat loneliness, we allow people to have informal meetings among each other.

Long hours are not encouraged, neither is working in the weekends. But people can plan their workweek is they see fit, as long as progress is being made.

Working remotely can be a challenge for people. The regular check-in meetings are to detect early signs of remote work burnout.

Although not mandatory, we do offer to schedule regular in-person co-working days, for deeper connection, different topics of conversation and spontaneous discussions. This can help overcome the feeling of loneliness and being excluded.