Group agreements and mutual expectations

Introduction

This document sets out our accountabilities to one another, and our collective responsibility to the mission and work of PIRC.

These expectations are intentional and reasonable. When things are hard — because of wellbeing, sickness, caring commitments, or an organisational crisis — they still stand. They are what allows us to be a people-centred organisation and to deliver on our mission. Support is available when meeting them is difficult but the agreements themselves do not lapse. We recognise that people may need time to adjust to this way of working, or support along the way for all sorts of reasons, and that for this agreement to function well we must keep cultivating a culture of care and consideration.

We will use it to guide our line management, our maintenance meetings, and our all-staff meetings — to check that we are living our values and each contributing what is ours to do.

Teamwork and Responsibility

We each have a part to play in the mission and goals of PIRC, and we expect everyone to play theirs. Our work is interdependent, and the expectation is that we work collectively, as a team. Within that, people work in different ways. We aim to make space for how our different ways of working, thinking and being interact with one another, and we are committed to making adaptations to how we work together — so long as those adaptations are reasonable and supportive of our mission, our values, and our ongoing anti-oppression practice. There is scope in how we each work, but what the work is for and who we are accountable to remains non-negotiable. We apply an anti-oppression lens to how we adapt, so that flexibility for some doesn’t create disproportionate work or emotional labour for others.

We respect mutually agreed boundaries — the things people have told us about their ways of working, whether or not they are formal adjustments — and acknowledge life circumstances that affect what support someone needs. We are open to people bringing new information to the team which changes how we work together.

Taking your part seriously means taking responsibility for our agreed work commitments. To help us meet agreed deadlines, we commit to:

• Actively participating in setting realistic deadlines for agreed internal work and projects with other team members.
• Tracking deadlines for external work, and communicating regularly with partners, clients and funders about their timelines and expectations.
• Communicating in plenty of time if any agreed deadline becomes unrealistic.

Support

We want to create and foster a culture where we can be open, with regular check-ins about how we are doing. We actively work on a ‘bring your whole self to work’ culture that sits alongside our responsibility and commitment to our mission. We also recognise that there can be barriers to bringing your whole self, such as comfort levels, consent, safety and access needs. We assume positive intent, recognise that people communicate differently, and aim for an environment where we feel safe enough to be ourselves.

There are many avenues of support, including your line manager (the Head of Programmes for the Delivery team, the Head of Operations for the Core team; peer supervision and Board support for the Heads of roles), People Subgroup (PSG), board buddies and mentor.

In most cases, you will reach out to your manager in the first instance unless you do not feel comfortable doing so or they are not available. If that is the case, you can contact one of the others listed above — staying within the team if it is about operational matters (for ease of actioning and support day-to-day).

Reasonable adjustments

Where you are Disabled, within the meaning outlined in the Equality Act of 2010, PIRC has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments to remove or reduce disadvantage related to your disability. You do not need a diagnosis, and you do not have to tell us more than you want to. If you need adjustments that look different to the expectations in this document, please contact the Head of Operations in the first instance. We will discuss any reasonable adjustments and confirm anything agreed in writing. Where an adjustment is not reasonable for us as an organisation, we will tell you why and consider alternatives.

For more information, ACAS explains what reasonable adjustments are and how they work.

Day-to-day working

As a remote team whose work is interdependent, clear and consistent communication is essential. Your line manager or peer supervisor is the first point of support for anything in this section.

Core hours

You are expected to work our organisational core hours of 10:00–12:00 and 14:00–16:00. Our Flexible Working Policy allows for organising your hours outside of this. If you need to temporarily make a change that affects core working hours, please put this to the team on the #team-hours-and-leave channel on Slack. If it is a reasonable adjustment request, please contact the Head of Operations.

Communication

• Use Slack in the first instance. Move to other mediums (Signal, phone) when something is time-sensitive and needed to keep organisational work on track.
• Adhere to our Slack Usage Guidelines.
• Communicate when you’re working, when you’re taking a break of 30+ minutes (including lunch), and when you’re finishing for the day in the #general Slack channel.
• Communicate any changes to your normal working hours and flag when you’ll be unreachable within them (e.g. travel)
• Respond to DMs during core hours or update your calendar and/ or on Slack to say when you expect to be available.
• Respect one another’s time: arrive at the agreed time for meetings, and communicate any delay in advance.
• Update the workplanning doc/ board weekly, so we can stay transparent about what we are working on, where things have been left, and any interdependencies.
• Do a handover with your line manager or peer supervisor before time off or training, so that interdependent work has a clear home, a clear owner, and oversight.
• Take the time to engage with information shared by others in the team, and to respond to requests for help where you are able to do so.

All staff spaces

All-staff spaces are a priority. They are how we stay connected, aligned, and able to work across our dependencies. This includes:

Mandatory meetings such as Residentials and All Staff Meetings (ASM) and other meetings such as maintenance meetings and team check-ins. The expectation is that people attend the mandatory meetings. Because the regular meetings are frequent, occasional absence is okay. If you can’t attend, either post an update via Slack or share it within your smaller team (delivery or core) to be brought to the full team.

Leave and changing your hours

Requests for leave are governed by our Annual Leave, Sickness and Absence Leave and Other Leave policies. Day-to-day, please give as much notice as you can, so that the team can work around your absence.

If you are requesting leave or rearranging your hours, it is your responsibility to look at the calendar and suggest alternatives where there are interdependencies. For example: you want to take leave during a busy project period, or a childcare conundrum comes up. The expectation is that you contact your line manager or the Head of Operations, and come with a proposal — rearranged hours, a handover, or another way of covering the dependency. If you can’t work out how to do this straight away, that’s okay. Contact your support person (line manager or Head of Operations) and you can figure it out together.

When agreements are not kept

If these agreements are not kept, this will be brought to line management, peer supervision or a maintenance meeting. This is part of our ongoing anti-oppressive practice, our feedback culture, and our collective responsibility for the work. The purpose is support, so that we can pick up on issues and course correct early where possible, before smaller issues become patterns or affect the team and our work more broadly.

Where support has been offered and difficulties continue, we will need to draw on other policies, for example the Sickness and Absence Policy, our leave policies, or the Capability and Flourishing Policy.