How we celebrate teammates

At Sourcegraph, we love celebrating and recognizing the events happening in our teammates’ lives! We celebrate on a day-to-day basis via our ‘#thanks’ channel, quarterly via our impact awards program, and on a rolling basis when people experience exciting work or life events.

This page talks about celebrating

Regular thanks and recognition via our #thanks channel

Giving recognition to other teammates is critical for maintaining a positive, innovative company culture. At Sourcegraph, we encourage regular, public recognition via our #thanks Slack channel.

When to use the #thanks channel

The #thanks channel can be used any time you want to recognize and thank a teammate. Some common examples include:

  • Thanking a teammate for significant contributions on a project
  • Thanking a teammate who helped you solve a problem
  • Recognizing a teammate who displayed Sourcegraph’s values
  • Congratulating a teammate on a recent accomplishment

You can also scroll through the #thanks Slack channel history to see recent examples.

How do we use this channel?

Anyone at Sourcegraph can send a message in the #thanks channel. Both managers and teammates are encouraged to use the channel regularly. Managers are reminded to recognize one or more of their teammates at least on a monthly basis.

Best practices for using the #thanks channel

  • Be direct. Tag the teammates you’re recognizing in your slack message
  • Focus on the positive. Praise in public, criticize in private.
  • Be specific with your praise. What is the specific behavior you are praising? Praise genuine behaviors. You don’t have to wait for significant events to reinforce good work.
  • Be Timely. The sooner the praise is delivered, the more powerful.
  • Be Sincere. Mean what you say and deliver the praise in a genuine manner. People want sincere, meaningful praise.
  • Be consistent. Consistently recognizing good work will help create a positive work culture and encourage others to do their best. It’s important to recognize people regularly, not just once in a while.

Why is recognition important

Employee recognition is important because it:

  • Boosts morale and motivation: Recognition shows when hard work is valued and appreciated, which can help boost morale and motivation.
  • Increases job satisfaction: Teammates who feel appreciated and valued are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.
  • Builds a positive work culture: Recognition helps to create a positive work culture by fostering a sense of teamwork and collaboration among teammates.
  • Increases loyalty and commitment: Teammates who feel valued and appreciated are more likely to be loyal and committed to their organization, which can help to improve retention rates.
  • Improves performance: Recognition can help to improve teammate performance by providing positive reinforcement and encouraging employees to continue working hard.

Impact awards

We are proud of the innovative and impactful work our teammates do every day. Our Impact awards recognize these teammates who go above and beyond their day-to-day responsibilities to make an outstanding impact and contribution to help our organization achieve its mission.

Impact awards details:

  • Impact awards are awarded quarterly at our quarterly kick off meeting.
  • Any teammate, regardless of tenure, is eligible for an award.
  • All teammates can submit nominations, and nominations can be submitted for more than 1 teammate.
  • All award recipients will receive a unique gift to celebrate their accomplishments.
  • People Team Internal Process doc

Impact award considerations:

Nominations will be considered based on but not limited to the criteria below:

  • Quality and impact of nominee’s work: significance of results achieved, originality and innovation of their work, degree to which it advances our company mission
  • Nominee’s contribution to the organization: involvement in cross-functional teams or initiatives, ability to build relationships and foster collaboration within and outside of Sourcegraph
  • Overall performance: nominee’s ability to consistently exceed expectations for their roles and take on new responsibilities and challenges
  • Number of submissions for the same person will be considered
  • Team member is in good standing with the company (e.g. not on a PIP)

How to nominate a teammate:

  • To nominate a peer, please submit this form. It should take approximately 5-10 mins to fill out this form for each submission.
  • Nomination period opens and remains open for about ~2-3 weeks. The people team will announce the open and close dates for nominations each quarter.

How teammates are selected:

  • The executive team reviews all nominations async and selects award winners.
  • Managers are notified privately via Slack if a member of their team is selected in advance of being announced to the company.
  • Award winners are announced at our quarterly kick off meeting.

New hires

The People Team is responsible for sending new hire gifts and uses a vendor named Telescope. The People team purchases inventory in bulk based on the anticipated hiring rate and Telescope monitors/reorders the inventory as needed.

What is in a new hire gift:

  • Hoodie
  • Socks
  • Stickers
  • Tumbler
  • T-Shirt

How to order a new hire kit

After a new hire signs their contract with us, the People team sends an email that includes a link to order their new hire gift. The new hire is responsible for submitting their order, which will then be fulfilled using inventory that we have in stock with our vendor, Telescope.

Once an order is placed, the new hire will get an email confirmation with delivery details. Sourcegraph covers the shipping cost, which varies depending on the shipping destination. We can view the shipping costs associated with recent orders in the invoices Telescope emails to PeopleOps/Finance.

Please reach out in the #swag channel with any questions.

Birthdays

The People team is responsible for sending a birthday gift that is in line with the birthday budget listed below. Our standard practice is to send a $50 Loop & Tie gift.

Managers will receive a Slack reminder and an email from BambooHR when one of their direct reports has an upcoming birthday and it is the manager’s responsibility to post about the occasion in team Slack channel or 1:1

  • Team post suggestions:
    • Announce the occasion: “Wishing a happy birthday to [name]!…”
    • Personalize the message based on the particular individual
    • TIP: You can pre-schedule your Slack messages to send on the correct dates

Be considerate of all teammates and acknowledge that not everybody likes to be in the spotlight on their birthdays. Managers should ask the teammate personally if they’d like their birthday to be celebrated.

Sourcegraph encourages teammates to take a day of vacation on their special day in alignment with our Paid Time Off Policy. If a Teammate’s celebration happens to fall over a weekend, please be sure to take an alternate day such as the Friday prior or the Monday after.

To view and add the BambooHR “Birthdays” calendar to your Google Calendar, please use this link and perform the following steps:

  • Open your Google Calendar Settings
  • Click Add calendar
  • Click From URL
  • Paste link in URL of calendar box
  • Click Add calendar

Birthday gift budget

The gift will be coming from the individual’s team budget and should not exceed $50 USD per teammate and per year. It is also advisable to spend the same amount for each person on the team to create fairness within the group.

Work anniversaries

The People team is responsible for sending an anniversary gift that is in line with the anniversary budgets listed below. Standard pracice is to send a Loop & Tie gift.

Managers will receive a Slack reminder and email from BambooHR when one of their direct reports has an upcoming work anniversary and it is the manager’s responsibility to post a written or video message in the #thanks channel.

  • Post suggestions:
    • Announce the occasion: “A huge #thanks and congrats to [name] on their [#] year anniversary at Sourcegraph!”
    • Highlight the teammates’ key contributions and impact they’ve made
    • TIP: You can pre-schedule your Slack messages to send on the correct dates!

Anniversary gift budget

Anniversary gifts will be coming from the individual’s team budget and should not exceed the following amounts per teammate and per year:

  • Year 1: $50 USD
  • Year 2: $100 USD
  • Year 3: $150 USD
  • Year 4: $200 USD
  • Year 5+: $250 USD
  • Year 8+: $1,000 USD

Promotions

At Sourcegraph, promotions are a big deal - and communicating promotions is one of the single biggest opportunities to widely celebrate teammate contributions! The People Team is responsible for sending a custom promotion gift to promoted teammates, and managers are responsible for recognizing promoted teammates by:

  • Sending a Slack in #announce-teammate-hires and cross-post in #thanks after the impact review cycle has been completed and promotions have been announced. At minimum, these posts should cover:
    • recognizing the hard work of the individual being promoted
    • providing insight into the individual’s new responsibilities
    • how the teammate’s performance and actions embody our values
    • serving as aspirational to others who strive to be promoted in the future
  • Sample Slack message:
    • Hi Team! I am thrilled to announce that [TEAMMATE NAME] has been promoted to [NEW TITLE/LEVEL]! For the past {PERIOD OF TIME], [TEAMMATE NAME] has been responsible for [PREVIOUS ROLE/RESPONSIBILITIES/ACCOMPLISHMENTS] that have resulted in [BUSINESS IMPACT/OUTCOME]. Going forward, [TEAMMATE NAME] will bring (their/his/her) knowledge, skills and experience into their new role as [NEWLY PROMOTED TITLE/LEVEL] doing [NEWLY ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES IF ANY]. Please join me in congratulating [TEAMMATE NAME] on their well-deserved promotion and wish them best of luck in their new role!

Growing family

The People Team is responsible for sending gifts for the growth of a family and uses a vendor named Telescope. The People Team purchases inventory in bulk and Telescope monitors/reorders the inventory as needed.

What is included in the gift:

Please reach out in the #swag channel with any questions.

Other life events

Managers are welcome to acknowledge or celebrate teammate life events at each teammate’s discretion. Examples could be a marriage or a death of a loved one. Sourcegraph does not have a budget for life events as they are not experienced by every person on a regular cadence. However, Managers are encouraged to use their discretion and send a gift when appropriate.

Gift ideas

Loop & Tie

Our recommended gifting platform is Loop & Tie. Loop & Tie offers curated collections of gifts organized by price and shipping location (US and International). Then our teammates get to select the gift they truly want from whichever collection they were gifted. Loop & Tie also offers sustainability and social impact options that allow teammates who don’t want to redeem a gift to donate their gift amount ($) toward a charity or environmental support organization.

Managers must have a Loop & Tie account to send a gift. To create a Loop & Tie account, please reach out to the People team in the #swag slack channel and a current Loop & Tie admin (Kemper or Fabiana) will invite you to create an account.

Once you have an account, here is how to send a Loop & Tie gift.

Budget: All birthday and anniversary gifting will be coming from the individual’s team budget. When you’re sending a Loop & Tie gift, you will use credits already in the company Loop & Tie account. Then the People + Finance team will reclass the charges into the correct team budgets on a monthly cadence.

  • If Loop & Tie’s current collections do not align with our outlined work anniversary budgets, please send a gift outside of Loop & Tie. Here are some other gift ideas.

Loop & Tie FAQS:

Q: Will the recipient see the gift price?

  • A: Your Loop & Tie recipient never sees the gift budget you selected. They just see the items available to them in the collection you selected!

Q: Can I change or add products to the collections?

  • A: We are not able to facilitate changes/additions at this time.

Other gift ideas

If you don’t want to use Loop & Tie, here are some other gift ideas!

Sending gifts via mail

If you require a teammate’s address to send a gift, please ask the teammate directly if they are comfortable sharing their address for gift purposes. (While People Ops and managers do have access to address information, it is considered confidential and just as with other information of sensitive nature, we are unable to share it with others).

Additional Gifting/Swag

Custom internal requests:

There are times that teammates will want to order custom Sourcegraph swag for other occasions, such as a team trip or team accomplishment. Below are things to consider and steps to take to begin the ordering process. If you have any questions, please reach out in #swag in Slack.

Budget

The budget for additional swag (any swag besides the new hire kit) will be the responsibility of the team requesting the swag order. For example, if the Talent team is requesting custom hats for a team trip, this order will be paid for using the Talent team’s budget.

Individual teams will not be responsible for finding budget for company-wide swag shipments such as product release swag (for example, the 2022 Code Insights T-shirts).

Who to reach out to

When you’re ready to begin an order, please fill out this google form to provide the following information:

  • What is the occasion you’re ordering swag for?
  • What type of swag do you want to order (ex: hats, backpacks, etc.)
  • When do you need the swag in-hand? (We recommend starting the ordering process at least 6-8 prior to the delivery date)
  • What quantity will you need?
  • What countries will you need the swag shipped to?
  • Have you confirmed your team has the budget for this order?

Once you’ve completed the google form, someone from the People team will connect you via email with our custom swag vendor, Telescope, who will facilitate the ordering process.

Brand Guidelines

When designing custom swag, please follow our brand guidelines and run any mock-ups/questions past the #creative-ops Slack channel prior to ordering.

External requests:

  • See how to send swag to people outside of Sourcegraph.

Happy celebrating!

For any additional questions, feel free to reach out to people-ops@sourcegraph.com or the #swag channel in Slack.