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Onboarding new TTSC staff

Onboarding is how a new employee gets the tools, access, and information they need to be effective team members.

In addition to the TTSC portions of the handbook, refer to:

Who onboards new staff?

During the onboarding process, a new staff member will interact with different people and organizations at the GSA, TTS, and TTSC level.

Who What they do
GSA’s Office of Human Resource Management (OHRM) Handles initial enrollment in benefits and systems, provides access to HRLinks and answers the new employee’s questions about benefits.

See the list of HR support contacts.
TTS People Ops Onboarding Leads Provide access to TTS applications, tools, calendars, and accounts. Invite the new employee to TTS onboarding classes.

Check the Slack channel , external,TTS-only, #onboarding for names of current leads.
Supervisor Facilitates onboarding to the individual’s chapter or center. Opens discussion of the new employee’s interests and growth plan.
Onboarding buddy Serves as the new employee’s first point of contact for day-to-day questions about their team culture and getting set up to work. Helps direct the new employee to the right resources for learning more.

Guidance for supervisors

Tasks to complete

Refer to , external,TTS-only, TTS Supervisors Guide to Onboarding a New Hire for instructions on what to do in the leadup to a new employee’s start date, and their first few days. See the , external,TTS-only, slides from November 2022 for more context if needed.

The list below has additional tasks that supervisors should complete in their new employee’s following few weeks.

Within the first week

Within the first two weeks

  • Check that they submitted their timecard correctly.
  • Make sure the new employee has a 1:1 meeting with their chapter or center director.
  • (For 18F) reach out in , external,TTS-only, #18f-team-coffee-ideas to find a time to welcome the new employee at Team Coffee. Prepare them to unmute and introduce themselves.

Within the first month

  • Add a performance plan to HR Links and review with the new employee. If you’re a first-time supervisor, you won’t be able to do this by cloning a plan from a previous report, so contact PeopleOps for help.
  • Monitor the new employee’s progress through their onboarding checklist. Make sure they have completed all their TTS onboarding classes.
  • Coordinate shadowing opportunities for the new employee, such as sitting in on a project team’s ceremonies, observing presentations or research sessions, or following a colleague through a day’s meetings.

In addition, confirm that the new employee has attended:

  • Their first TTS All Hands and TTS Consulting All Hands meetings
  • Their first 18F Team Coffee or CoE All Hands meeting
  • Introductory meetings with their staffing representative
  • Virtual coffees — suggest specific people for the new employee to meet

In the first year

  • TTS will remind you to do a check-in with the new employee six months after their start date.
  • You’ll be asked if the new employee should continue past their probationary period. If you don't answer, they will continue past the , external,probationary period.
  • You’ll also get an email about their , external,Within-Grade Increase (WGI) after their first year, which increases their pay through a step increase. If you do not respond, the WGI will proceed.

Topics to discuss in the first two weeks

The outline below suggests topics to cover with new employees in their first two weeks—but you will need to tailor this content to individual employees. Be mindful of the stress of starting a new role and avoid overwhelming new employees with too much information all at once.

Who you are

  • Share your personal README if you have one
  • Explain your role as a supervisor, which is to:
    • Help complete administrative tasks
    • Provide context on our organization and ways of working
    • Be a thought partner and reviewer for project work
    • Collect peer feedback and conduct performance reviews
    • Support personal development

Who they are

  • Get to know the new employee and what might help them succeed in their first project Consider:
    • Their work experience and roles they feel comfortable with
    • Their interest in certain types of projects or policy areas
  • Coordinate with staffing to match these preferences to incoming work

TTSC structure and roles

  • Explain the different layers of the organization: GSA > FAS > TTS > TTSC > 18F or CoE.
    • Suggest correspondence codes as a way to place individuals within the reporting structure.
  • Review the org charts and project roles. Explain:
    • What different chapters or centers do
    • What teams can look like at 18F or CoE
    • That we are a matrixed organization (“You’ll report to me, your functional manager. You’ll also have a project or engagement lead who will oversee day to day work.”)
    • How staffing works
      • Make sure the new employee connects with staffing. If 18F, discuss TLC; if CoE, discuss shadow engagements.

Schedules and hours

  • Emphasize that the new employee should not work more than 40 hours per week.
  • Discuss TTSC norms around scheduling.

Payroll and tracking time in Tock

  • Review Tock guidance, especially what is billable vs non-billable work.
  • Offer to demonstrate how to use Tock, what Tock entries can look like with time off or multiple projects, and how to submit a change request.
  • Link them to the GSA payroll calendars so they know when they will get their first paycheck.

Taking leave

Emergency contacts

  • Get the person’s emergency contact information and add it to your work phone. Per the , external,TTS-only, 18F Crisis and emergency support guide, we want everyone to provide emergency contact information to their supervisor and keep it up to date.
  • Encourage the new employee to share your or another staff member’s contact information with a loved one in case of emergency.

FOIA and what it means for us

  • Explain that Slack records, emails, and items in Drive are subject to FOIA, and that this is a part of working in government.
  • Note that there are things people only say in 1:1s, which are not recorded, and that certain things won’t be written down.
  • Note that Google Chat is not subject to FOIA.

Project expectations

  • Review the project delivery section of this handbook.

Organizational context

Performance and personal development

  • Review performance plans, the rating scale, and evaluation timelines.
  • Emphasize that performance plans are generalized across TTS, while personal development plans are something to discuss with your supervisor.
  • Share additional resources.
    • Point out that TTS-only, GSA offers free coaching services
    • Discuss training budget for books, classes, etc.
    • Suggest that the new employee maintains a “brag doc”: a running list of accomplishments to refer to in performance evaluations.

Additional topics by chapter or center

Conversations with your new employee should also cover topics specific to their area of work. The list below provides suggestions for where to start, but it is not exhaustive: lean on your subject-matter expertise to guide their onboarding according to current context and the new employee’s individual needs.

CoE (all centers)
18F
Account management
  • Agreements management
  • Budgets, Tock, and burn
  • Managing the pipeline process, kickoff, and the entire project delivery cycle
  • Partner Satisfaction Surveys: why we get feedback from our customers
  • Impact storytelling
  • Agreements management
  • How to show up as an empowered account manager
Design
Product
  • , external,TTS-only, 18F product practices
  • Introduce the , external,Product Chapter Background Survey and ask them to fill it in.
  • Product management in government
  • Product consulting and coaching vs. product ownership
  • Work with the product staffing lead to discuss the Product Chapter Background Survey.
  • Product management role responsibilities vis-a-vis account managers and project leads (who may or may not be product managers)
  • The history and evolution of the role at 18F
  • The need to clarify with the specific people on each project
Engineering

Refer to , external,the engineering guide

Acquisition

TK

Guidance for onboarding buddies

Onboarding buddies are one of the first points of contact for a new employee at TTS. Here are some resources to help you in the role of onboarding buddy:

How to be a great onboarding buddy

Beyond completing the tasks outlined in the TTS overview and checklist, your goal as an onboarding buddy is to be an approachable and trusted person for a new employee to ask questions, learn about culture and practices, and get help navigating their new workplace.

Keep these principles in mind:

Be available and responsive

  • Proactively schedule check-ins with the new employee. Make time throughout the first month to chat, listen, and answer questions (when you can).
  • Try to respond promptly to Slack messages. If you’re busy, let them know.
  • Keep an eye on their onboarding checklist (you should receive a copy from TTS Onboarding) to check in on their progress. Offer to review items with them.
  • Offer to pair with them on administrative tasks, like doing Tock or submitting their first timesheet, and on reviewing key documents, like the org chart.

Help the new employee find answers and solve problems

  • Invite the new employee to come to you as a starting point for questions. If you don’t know the answer to a question, it’s OK to redirect them to their supervisor, especially for personnel-related issues like benefits and HR.
  • Help them find answers by putting them in touch with the appropriate person or Slack channel.
    • Model how to search for information (for example, in Slack).
    • Model how to ask questions in the appropriate channels.
    • Encourage them to refer to the TTSC Handbook.

Introduce them to TTSC people, culture, and practices

  • Offer a personal spin on culture and practices by talking about your favorite TTS, 18F, and CoE stories, folklore, and customs.
  • Contextualize information they’re getting in the first couple weeks. If a meeting includes a lot of acronyms or topics that require a lot of background, message them to help explain.
  • Help reinforce information in the moment. (For example, during the TTSC All Hands, remind them that #townhall typically has backchannel conversation).
  • Encourage the new employee to build their support network from the start.
    • Explain the practice of scheduling virtual coffees/teas. Emphasize that people happily accept coffee invites. Give recommendations of people you think they should meet or offer to make connections. Introduce them to , external,TTS-only, coffee bingo!
    • Acknowledge that people have different levels of energy for social interactions.
  • Give them a tour of the Slack channels you belong to and that they might want to join.
  • Based on their interests, point them to specific guilds to attend or working groups and initiatives to get involved in. Talk about how you built your own network.

Be personal and candid

  • Get to know them! (As far as you’re both comfortable, ask about their personal lives and interests.)
  • Keep your camera on during video calls to give them more connection
  • Share your experiences:
    • Offer suggestions and reflections from your own onboarding experience.
    • Tell them about the projects you’ve been on, how you’ve worked with other disciplines, and what you’ve learned .
    • Offer opportunities to shadow your current project, or look for opportunities for them to shadow other team members.
  • Talk about imposter syndrome, and model that it’s OK to discuss this openly.
  • Ask questions that make space for candid feedback. (“What is overwhelming or confusing? Are you busy? Are you looking for something to do?”)
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