How can a small People team administer payroll, benefits, and HR compliance when team members are scattered across 11 U.S. states and 6 countries? This was a key question we wrestled with before it was even possible for us to consider becoming an entirely virtual organization. Fortunately, we found an answer to that question in a service that’s been on the market since the 1980s.

Challenge How does a Board of Directors (re)craft its annual assessment of the CEO when that role is filled by a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team? This was precisely the challenge the Fractured Atlas Board faced in early 2019. Below, in detail, we describe the process we crafted to answer this question.

[Heads up: While I am a certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR), I’m not an employment attorney. If you have questions about whether and how these laws below apply to you and your organization you should connect with legal counsel.] In 2018, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, state and local governments took action and enacted a number of laws to address sexual harassment in the workplace. Places like California, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maine introduced new and updated provisions and laws to increase employee protections. You might remember hearing about these laws when they were first proposed and signed. This is a reminder that specific, mandatory employer provisions are now going into effect, with one deadline in New York State on October 9, 2019.

Virtual Realities and a Fully Distributed Workplace Fractured Atlas “Fun” Fact Of the eight staff members currently at the Senior Director and C-level tiers, none live and work in the same state (Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Vermont). And more than half of our Fractured Atlas team now live in 11 U.S. states and 6 countries, with fewer than half spending any time in our sole physical office on 35th Street in New York City. Long exposure image I captured after a productive day of writing in this former one-room school house.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas This is part of a series. If you read part one, two, or three, skip the intro and head straight to the interview. At Fractured Atlas, we really love sharing many of the inner workings around how our organization works. By sharing the things that work (or don’t) for us, we hope to help out in making the sector, as a whole, stronger. A few years ago, we shared our How We Work site so that anyone could see how we work at Fractured Atlas. We’ve also shared how our use of OKRs increases transparency, alignment, and accountability (that post even included a free template). We’ve shared updates on our Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression journey, why we have race-based caucusing, and so many other things.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas This is part of a series. If you read part one or part two, skip the intro and head straight to the interview. At Fractured Atlas, we really love sharing many of the inner workings around how our organization works. By sharing the things that work (or don’t) for us, we hope to help out in making the sector, as a whole, stronger. A few years ago, we shared our How We Work site so that anyone could see how we work at Fractured Atlas. We’ve also shared how our use of OKRs increases transparency, alignment, and accountability (that post even included a free template). We’ve shared updates on our Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression journey, why we have race-based caucusing, and so many other things.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas This is part two of a series. If you read part one, skip the intro and head straight to the interview.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas At Fractured Atlas, we really love sharing many of the inner workings around how our organization works. By sharing the things that work (or don’t) for us, we hope to help out in making the sector, as a whole, stronger. A few years ago, we shared our How We Work site so that anyone could see how we work at Fractured Atlas. We’ve also shared how our use of OKRs increases transparency, alignment, and accountability (that post even included a free template). We’ve shared updates on our Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression journey, why we have race-based caucusing, and so many other things.

Note: The librarian’s last name is Reading. How awesome is that?! (Also note, my mom saved everything.) Around Memorial Day each year when my sister and I were kids, our parents would take us to the McCollough Branch of the Evansville Public Library. It was that annual rite of passage — the summer reading challenge! We’d select a hefty stack of books, and then hope to God come Labor Day we’d have read enough of them to earn that sweet certificate for a free scoop of Baskin Robbins ice cream.

Earlier this year I wrote a post explaining why I think Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are great ways to track goals. As a quick refresher, OKRs allow teams and organizations to align goals for a set period of time in a transparent and connected way. Since then, I’ve gotten questions about the logistics of implementing the OKR framework in an organization and the process that Fractured Atlas uses. I decided to compile this information into a toolkit that you can use and iterate on. I hope that it helps in your process of deciding whether to use them in your organization and how to implement them.