Last updated · 24 July 2024
Onboarding
Welcome to Significa! We're eggcited to have you join us!
Getting started in a new role can be stressful and overwhelming, but fear you shall not have! We've got your back.
30, 60, 90-day roadmap
As context for you, we use a 30, 60, and 90-day roadmap to onboard new team members. This way, we can ease you in slowly and with clarity, avoiding throwing you into the despair of uncertainty. Facts showed us that doesn't work out well for anybody.
Here's how it goes:
Day 3-30 — Learning: This stage is all about… you guessed it, learning. It's very intensive and hands-on. You'll learn the ropes by getting to grips with all we do, shadowing team members and getting clued up across each department's goals, projects and integrating with your new surroundings.
Day 31-60 — Training: With a solid knowledge of Significa and our processes, you’ll be ready to move on to your role-specific training. You'll begin to take on bigger responsibilities and collaborate closely with your team.
Day 61-90 — Accountability: as you enter your third month here, you'll gain more independence at tackling your role and responsibilities. You'll be held accountable for your work and encouraged to accomplish projects with limited guidance from others.
What about days 1 and 2?
No worries, we haven't forgotten those. Actually, those two days will be covered on this very same page, contrary to your department-specific onboarding, which starts from day three and is covered at separate pages (one for each department). They will be linked below.
Ok, let's go!
Welcome aboard. Your first day is here
It starts with a warm welcome. Think of it as the first day of school but with less awkwardness and more coffee. It's all about introductions, learning names you might forget five minutes later, and getting your shiny new work tools. More about those below.
You should start on a Thursday, around 11 am.
You can start on any other day if you wish to do so, but Thursday is great because it gives you two days with us to be snowballed with information, then two days to rest, digest, and let all sink in before coming back for your first full week, where things will really start to happen.
As to why 11 AM instead of any other time, it allows you to have a chill morning, take your time to wake up, have breakfast in peace and figure out your commute instead of rushing all things to be in the office at 9 AM sharp.
How does that first day look?
Here's a breakdown:
You'll arrive around 11 AM and be greeted by your Onboarding buddy, who will show you straight to the coffee machine to get to know each other. There’s also tea if you prefer.
With or without caffeine bursting through your veins, you'll be given an office tour, and you can expect to meet some of our friendly faces at this point.
Around 11:30, you'll have your Entry Interview with your manager and buddy. It'll last around 30 minutes and it is very informal.
We'll ask some questions about how you like to learn, how we can best support that style, and what kind of support you'd like from your manager in your role.
Maybe you won't know the answers to that all now, and that's fine. We'll work through it together.
It's also a great opportunity to share expectations. Both yours and ours.
We'll dive into our Mission and values and take on any questions you may have.
It's then time to run through your tailored onboarding document, which has been prepared in advance. Our team will walk you through it.
Team lunch! Hopefully, all that's come before has meant you've worked up an appetite! We'll now have a long lunch of mingling with the whole team. Don't worry. We don't expect you to know everybody's names just yet.
Once the pizza (or the burger, the burrito, or something else equally delicious) has been demolished, it'll be time to get you to your desk and set you up with your laptop. You'll notice an exciting bag of goodies on your desk at this point. That's your Welcome Pack, your very first encounter with our Perks and benefits.
You've got your laptop. What now?
Fear not, dear new starter, fear not… It's time to set up and get you introduced to our tools. Go further in-depth at Methodologies, but again, don't hurry off just yet. We've got more to get through here.
We hope you're finding your desk and your chair comfortable (let us know if not!) and settling in because now it's #tooltime (hmm, that's so bad, we kinda like it, can't touch that). You won't be able to go far without these essentials to get you started:
Set up your email
Your Significa email address has been created beforehand. Access it with the credentials you were given, activate two-factor authentication (2FA), and change your password immediately. This is mandatory.
At that point, please check all the invitations you received in your new Significa inbox. Things like Slack and 1Password, amongst potential others, should already be there. Accept the ones you have.
Get to know our Notion workspace
Go to Notion.so and join using your Significa email through the Google option. You'll be automatically allowed in. Feel free to explore around.
Notion is the cornerstone of everything. Everything is on Notion. Notion is life.
Bingo, the Dog, 2023.
Spend some time exploring Home. Even if you just skim through, it has plenty of details; it allows you to know where to find all the info for later.
In Home, you'll find out how to set up your Mail Signature. We value consistency. Hence, we value unified mail signatures as well. Please make sure yours is correctly inserted.
We also have a very cool way of opening the office door Yep, so cool we wrote a blog post about it even: We built the coolest office door and doorbell setup.
Set up Google Drive
Go to Google Drive's website, which we paste here for your convenience — https://www.google.com/drive/download/ — and install it on your Mac. Sign in using your Significa Google account.
Setup Figma
Figma is not just important for designers and developers. It is also used for diagrams, some forms of documentation, and presentations that are very useful across varied departments.
Setup Slack
Announce your arrival to our team, say hello in #1-general, and drop a random fact about yourself. In return, you can expect many welcoming emojis and plenty of “Bem-vindo (insert your name here)” messages.
You can read much more about how to use Slack effectively in Communication.
Join Linear
Linear is where project planning is done. It sure has more tickets than your local cinema. It's busy but adds structure and clarity to our lives. Use your Significa Google credentials to log in and get started.
Join Calamari
We guess you'll want some time off at some point. Even if you don't, we'll make sure you do take some.
To get that sorted, Calamari is your go-to place. You can log in here. Oh, also, there's a Slack extension that will allow you to book time off, check your entitlement, and get quick access to their website.
Make sure you check out Holidays and time-off to figure out how things should work.
Security and 1Password.
If you've had a good dig around Notion, you should have come across our Security policy. Please make sure you take the time to go through it, including Francisco's excellent, non-boring, totally exciting and very important prezzzzzzz…. presentation, sorry. No jokes. It’s essential you comply with it at all times.
All passwords should be managed within 1Password, both personal and shared credentials. Francisco can get you set up with this. Francisco is our CTO, by the way, go say Hi to him.
At this point, it's definitely time to stretch those legs, grab a quick break and see who might be in the kitchen (the snacks are next to the coffee machine) before heading home.
Your second day
Friday
Did you come back? Great!
Day 2 will be more straightforward. It'll consist mostly of reading this Handbook. We really want you to understand the ins and outs of Significa, and there's no better place than reading the Handbook, being curious, asking lots of questions and getting to know your teammates. There is a lot to read, so we've got a reading list ready for you below.
It's also a great opportunity to meet with Ana and Tomás to have your team photo taken. They'll ask you a few questions in an interview-like fashion for our upcoming internal Newsleggter. Oh, you can also take the time to read our previous one. They will give you some context about what's been happening around the house.
We want you to be able to digest as much as possible of your new surroundings, so we mostly leave this day open for 1-on-1 chats with your new peers and having a good nose around every corner of our office.
At this point, you'll be feeling well in need of a weekend, and it'll be slowly dawning on you that you'll never be able to look at eggs the same way ever again. A weekend break will be needed before getting ready to ramp up your onboarding in your first full week.
Your reading list
As mentioned above, once you've been set up with a desk and a laptop, you'll need to do some reading. It can be hard to figure out where to start, so we've compiled a checklist for you.
Knowing Significa is the first stop.
Once you've gone through those, you should understand the team you've joined and how we expect each other to conduct ourselves. It's now time to go a little deeper with the “Working at Significa” chapter.
Leaves and all within
Support hub and all within
Now, a big part of Significa is our clients. Understanding how we work with them and how we expect their experience with Significa to be will give you a kind of reverse-engineered view of our Ethos.
Read our “Working with Significa” chapter to learn more about Client experience and How we collaborate. Client selection criteria and Billing and invoicing are also important, but we leave those as optional to you.
And that's it!
Even though we've tried to make sure this Handbook is clear as water, you'll undoubtedly have some questions from all that reading. Note those down, and feel free to ask a peer, your manager or one of the partners.
Probation period
We take a straightforward approach to probation. After having regular check-ins throughout your first six months with Significa, it should be pretty clear to everybody where we are at.
After five months of working with you, we revisit our Hiring criteria and just ask ourselves the very simple question: “Would we hire this person again?” If the answer is yes, we carry on, and your permanent contract kicks in.
If we can't unanimously answer that question confidently after five months, we end the relationship with one month's notice. If there is any doubt, it also means we got the hire wrong, and you probably have gotten into the wrong company, too.
But that's unlikely, had we followed the roadmap correctly. Either way, it should never come as a surprise as we strive to be transparent and clear with you about it.
Your first week
Back to it, it'll now be time to look ahead to your first full week. With all that reading digested, depending on your role, you should head to one of the chapters below.
These will be specific to the department you'll fit in and will dive deeper into your 30, 60, and 90-day roadmap.
Now, go home and wind the week down with a nice cold beer. Or two. Or three. Or as many as you want. No judgment here.
Again, fellow Segg, welcome to Significa. Let's build incredible things together!