📓 open calendars & language hacks

📅 calendars & culture

✍🏽 What do you and your community think of transparent/open calendars for building a culture of transparency?

Context: I’m a leadership coach who worked for 15 years at a large company that had a closed calendar culture. (Eg. You can see availability but not the topic of each time block). I served as an internal coach for the last five years and espoused the notion of transparency for building collaboration and efficiency. Despite this, I hadn’t considered the benefits of open calendaring until now!  I’m getting ready to do a post on this and it occurred to me that I’d be interested in having you and your community weigh in on the benefits and drawbacks of this approach.

📣 Susan Shirley, Consultant @ Global View LLC:

It’s useful if colleagues know about work-related meetings and events in each other’s calendars. However, some people block quiet time for writing and other activities that require focus. Sometimes colleagues may view these types of activities as “flexible” and interrupt although they are blocked. Also, personal blocks, depending on the organizational culture, may be frowned upon if you have “too many.” As long as people have a way to keep personal things private and keep protected quiet time without interruptions, open calendars may be a good idea.

📣 Cassy Krueger, Senior Manager, Employee Experience @ Tides:

My previous org had open calendars which seemed so “normal” to me that I was kind of shocked when I moved to a new org where calendars are private by default. It makes it difficult to schedule with people thoughtfully, since I can’t see any info about the block on their calendar – e.g. is that a 90 min meeting or is it a work block? If it’s the former, I’d avoid scheduling immediately after in case they need a screen break, but if it’s the latter that might not be necessary. I agree wholeheartedly that it helps with efficiency and collaboration.

The cultural dynamic between the two orgs in question are quite different though. I think it’s tough when you have a low-trust culture because people worry that someone’s going to be policing their time, whether or not that’s actually true. The previous org had open calendars from the beginning, so they never needed to deliberate on whether or not to switch and there was no change management needed. It was normalized. In my current org, switching as an across-the-board policy would be more difficult. Some people have changed their settings to “public” for everyone, or at least certain colleagues, but I think most have kept the default.

Personally, I changed my settings so that my calendar is “public” for everyone (not the details of every event, but the title) and linked it to my personal calendar so that those events show up on my work calendar as “Busy.” Most of my close team members have shared their work calendar info with me as well.

📣 Melissa Stough, HR Coordinator @ Project Genesis:

Personally, I’m a private person, so I don’t like people being able to see everything I’m doing. As an HR professional, I think it’s also important that some of the things on my calendar are not visible to others in order to maintain privacy. I also use my calendar as a “to-do” list sometimes, so the times aren’t set in stone, need to be done at that time. They’re just a reminder that I need to do something time-sensitive.

That being said, my company is all about open calendars and sharing, so it’s a bit awkward for me. It’s helpful when I’m trying to reach someone and see they’re in a meeting or have something on their calendar at the same time. I generally respect what others have on their calendar, whatever it may be. It’s not my place to decide how important or flexible each appointment is. There are definitely positives to open calendars, but I have to say that with caution. I can absolutely say that it has been problematic because I found out a manager was pregnant because I was checking something on my boss’s calendar.

If you’re going to have open calendars, I think you need to make sure everyone is trained in order to make sure things like that don’t happen and that there is a system in place (like respecting focused time).

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✍🏽 We have a fairly large Spanish speaking population in our restaurant, which is common. I have received feedback that some managers who speak both English and Spanish are fatigued with being pulled in as translators for other managers speaking to their team. I am an HR team of 1 and do not speak Spanish well enough to translate or have these conversations without the help of a translator. We use the Google Translate app often but that isn’t the most professional when it comes to sensitive topics or discipline. Is it unreasonable to rely on these bilingual managers to help with translation? Or is there a better solution, besides me going to school and learning Spanish (I would love to, really, but I am only 1 person sadly)

Context: Restaurant group of about 260 employees over 4 locations in New England. We are a small business with limited financial resources. We offer all of our paperwork/internal communications/group emails in Spanish as well as English. It’s the in-the-moment coaching/investigation/discipline that needs some help.

📣 Lesli Smith, Complex HR Director @ Monarch Family of Hotels/Remington Hospitality:

Our company has started offering free Learn to Speak Spanish classes through a company called Cell Ed. Maybe you could see about getting some other managers trained. 

Also, would you be able to offer a pay differential for those that assist with translation or even see about a position in HR that you could require fluency in Spanish?

📣 Ayanna Kelly, Deputy Director Human Capital @ National Security Council:

As a bilingual Latina who frequently gets asked to translate – I highly recommend hiring someone on your team who is bilingual, offer the differential, and have them focused on the disciplinary, employee relations, and feedback sessions that you clearly have a need for. 

That would be a long term solution rather than taxing your managers who are not trained or paid to be in those conversations with you.

📣 Sondra Norris, OD/OE Consulting:

I agree with Ayanna. The problem here has less to do with teaching people languages and more to do with the signal being sent to those managers and also to the employees, “Do we care enough to make this a workplace that cares about our employees’ experience?”

Asking people to learn other languages is putting the solution on them – if they’re already interested, great, provide the resources to do so… but don’t make them solve the problem that “the company created.”

Hiring that resource, or (dare I suggest) promoting someone who is interested and has the raw ability (you can train the technical stuff) would be an infinitely stronger signal.

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