People Group

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Role of the People Group

In general, the People Group teams and processes are here to provide support to our team members; helping make your life easier so that you can focus on your work and contributions to GitLab. On that note, please do not hesitate to reach out with questions!

Departments and Teams within the People Group

The overall People Group is a combination of the People Success and Recruiting Departments.

Department Name	Encompassed Teams
People Success	Total Rewards; People Operations (Specialists, Experience, Engineering, Compliance, Team Member Relations); People Business Partners; Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging; Learning & Development
Recruiting	Candidate Experience; Recruiting; Recruiting Operations and Insights; Sourcing; Talent Brand

Need Help?

In Case of Emergency

Please email: [e-mail] with "Urgent" in the subject line (we aim to reply within 24 hours, however usually sooner). The Senior Manager, People Operations and Senior Manager, Total Rewards are also both contactable 24/7 via their mobile numbers that appears in slack. In the event a team member is in an unsafe situation due to natural disaster, please see the Disaster Recovery Plan section on this page.

Welcome

Welcome to the People Group handbook! You should be able to find answers to most of your questions here. You can also check out pages related to People Group in the next section below. If you can not find what you are looking for please do the following:

• The People Group holds several subprojects to organize the people group; please create an issue in the appropriate subproject or general if you're not sure. Please use confidential issues for topics that should only be visible to GitLab team-members. Similarly, if your question can be shared please use a public issue. Tag @gl-peopleops or @gl-hiring so the appropriate team members can follow up.

  • Please note that not all People Group projects can be shared in an issue due to confidentiality. When we cannot be completely transparent, we will share what we can in the issue description, and explain why.

  • Employment Issue Tracker: Only Onboarding, Offboarding and Transition Issue Templates are held in this subproject, and they are created by the People Experience Team only. Interview Training Issues, are held in the Training project and created by the Recruiting team. Please see the interviewing page for more info.

• Chat channel; Please use the #peopleops Slack chat channel for questions that do not seem appropriate for the issue tracker. For access requests regarding Google or Slack groups, please create an issue here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/team-member-epics/access-requests. For questions that relate to Payroll and contractor invoices please direct your question to the #payroll, #expense-reporting-inquiries and #finance channel for Carta. Regarding questions for our recruiting team, including questions relating to access, or anything to do with Greenhouse, referrals, interviewing, or interview training please use the #recruiting channel. For more urgent general People Group questions, please mention @peoplegeneral to get our attention faster.

• If you need to discuss something that is confidential/private (including sensitive matters surrounding your team), you can send an email to the People Group: [e-mail].

• If you only feel comfortable speaking with one team member, you can ping an individual member of the People Group, as listed on our Team page.

• If you wonder who's available and/or in what time zone specific team members of the People Group are, you can easily check via Google Calendar or the GitLab Team Page

• If you need help with any technical items, for example, 2FA, please ask in #it_help. The channel topic explains how to create an issue. For urgent matters you can mention @it-ops-team.

How to reach the right member of the People Group

This table lists the aliases to use, when you are looking to reach a specific group in the People Group. It will also ensure you get the right attention, from the right team member, faster.

Subgroup	GitLab handle	Email	Slack Group handle/channel	Greenhouse	Issue tracker
People Business Partners	@gl-peoplepartners, Please add the pbp-attention label to any issue or MR that requires PBP review, collaboration, or feedback	peoplepartners@ gitlab.com	@peoplepartners	n/a	People Group issue tracker
Total Rewards	@gl-total-rewards	total-rewards@ gitlab.com	#total-rewards	n/a	Total Rewards issue tracker
People Operations Specialists	@gl-peopleops	peopleops@ gitlab.com	@peopleops_spec	n/a	People Group issue tracker
People Compliance Specialist	TBA	TBA	TBA	n/a	People Group issue tracker
People Experience Associates	@gl-people-exp	people-exp@ gitlab.com	@people_exp	n/a	Compliance issue tracker
People Group Engineering	No alias, @mention the People Group Fullstack Engineer	TBA	TBA	n/a	People Operations Engineering issue tracker
Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging	No alias yet, @mention the
Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Partner	diversityinclusion@ gitlab.com	n/a	n/a	Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging issue tracker
Learning and Development	No alias yet, @mention the Learning and Development Generalist	learning@ gitlab.com	n/a	n/a	Learning and Development issue tracker
Recruiting Leadership	@gl-recruitingleads	n/a	@recruitingleads	n/a	Recruiting issue tracker
Recruiting	@gl-recruiting	recruiting@ gitlab.com	@recruitingteam	n/a	Recruiting issue tracker
Employer Branding	No alias yet, @mention the Senior Talent Brand Manager	employmentbranding@ gitlab.com	n/a	n/a	People Group issue tracker
Candidate Experience Specialist	@gitlab-com/gl-ces	ces@ gitlab.com	@ces	@ces*	Candidate Experience issue tracker
Recruiting Operations and Insights	@gl-recruitingops	recruitingops@ gitlab.com	@recruitingops	@recruitingops	Recruiting issue tracker
Sourcing	@gl-sourcingteam	n/a	@sourcingteam	n/a	Recruiting issue tracker

Team Calendars

Here's an overview of all the People group's team events.

To add your event to this table please follow the below insturctions:

• Click here to be directed to the .yml file

• Using at Total Reward as a sample please update events that you foresee over the coming months. If you would also like to add past events please do: Eg.

• team: Total Rewards events:

  • start_date: 2020-02 name: Audit FY 2021 Annual Compensation Review

• Once you have included your events please assign to your manager for merging

Calendar for Total Rewards

Month	Events
2020-02	Audit FY 2021 Annual Compensation Review
2020-02	Canada Benefits Implementation
2020-03	Job Family Alignment
2020-03	Exchange Rate Fluctuations effective 2020-03-01
2020-04	Compensation Philosophy Training
2020-06	Benefits Survey Released FY21
2020-07	Benefits Survey Results FY21 Analyzed and added to Handbook
2020-07	Catch-up Compensation Review Compa Group Reviews
2020-08	Catch-up Compensation Review Manager Review (Compaas)
2020-09	Catch-up Compensation Review Effective 2020-09-01
2020-10	Compensation Training on Performance Factors
2020-11	Performance Factor Reviews
2020-12	Annual Comp Review Inputs Evaluated/Proposed to Compensation Group for FY22
2020-12	Division and Department Impact Analysis shared with People Business Partner Team
2021-01	Annual Comp Review changes finalized for 2021-02-01 effective date
2021-01	Manager Review (Compaas)

Calendar for People Operations

Calendar for People Business Partners

Calendar for Learning & Development

Calendar for Talent Brand

Calendar for Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

Month	Events
2020-06	MIT - Minorities in Tech Mentoring Pilot Kick Off
2020-06	Women in Sales Mentoring Pilot Kick Off
Monthly	Monthly Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Call
2021-02	Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Survey Released
2021-03	Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Survey Results Released
2021-02	Working Mother Media Survey

People Business Partner Alignment to Division

Please reach out to your aligned people business partner to engage in the following areas:

• Career development/Promotions

• Succession planning

• New organizational structures or re-alignment of team members

• Employee relations issues (i.e. performance or behavioral issues)

• Performance issues (before starting a PDPs/PIPs)

• Coaching guidance

• Employee engagement

• Hiring challenges (candidate pipeline, compensation, all other hiring concerns)

• Team member absence or sick leave

• Team member relocations

• An unbiased third party to discuss issues or problems and possible ideas for next steps

Contact	Division - Department
Carol Teskey	G&A: People Success, Recruiting, and Legal
Julie Armendariz	G&A: Accounting, Business Operations, and Finance; Marketing: Stategic Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Ops, Digital Marketing, Sales Development, Corporate Events
Carolyn Bednarz	Sales: Commercial Sales, Consulting Delivery, Enterprise Sales, Field Operations and Practice Management
Lorna Webster	Sales: Business Development, Customer Success, Channel and Public Sector
Roos Takken	Engineering: Customer Support, Infrastructure, Quality, Security and UX
Giuliana Lucchesi	Engineering: Development; Product: Product Management and Product Strategy

People Business Partner (PBP) Holiday Coverage

In order to ensure the PBP team is able to take time off during the holidays, while simultaneously ensuring we are available for support should urgent items arise, we have put together a PBP holiday coverage on-call plan. While many of us will be on vacation, we will be on an emergency on-call rotation should something urgent arise and reachable via Whatsapp or a text message on our personal cell phones (which can be found in Slack).

If you have something urgent that has arisen and your aligned PBP is out of the office, please refer to Holiday Coverage Calendar table below.

Before proceeding with contacting PBPs in line with the holiday coverage schedule, please consider:

1. Is this urgent?

   • Examples of urgent/time-sensitive requests: gross misconduct, a medical emergency, an immediate resignation

   • Examples of non-urgent requests: a dip in performance, approval for a discretionary bonus

2. Is your aligned PBP available?

   • If your aligned PBP is not on vacation, please reach out to them first.

Holiday Coverage Calendar

If your aligned PBP is not on vacation, please reach out to them first. If they are not available, please contact any one of the other available PBPs.

Please be mindful of timezone when determining which PBP to reach out to.

Week	Available PBPs	PBP Timezone
December 21 - 25	Julie Armendariz	CST - GMT-6 (Dallas, TX)
December 21 - 25	Carolyn Bednarz	EST - GMT-5 (Boston, MA)
December 21 - 25	Giuliana Lucchesi	CST - GMT-6 (Chicago, IL)
December 28 - January 1	Lorna Webster	EST - GMT-5 (Atlanta, GA)
December 28 - January 1	Roos Takken	CET - GMT+1 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

As many of the PBPs will also be on vacation and not actively checking email and Slack, please send us a Whatsapp or text message to contact us as opposed to reaching out via Slack or email for timely responses. Our mobile numbers can be found in our Slack profiles.

If you would like People Business Partners' input, collaboration, or feedback on an issue or MR, please add the pbp-attention label, which will flag the issue for triaging on our People Business Partner issue board. See the People Business Partner Issue Board section below for more information on our triaging and lableing process.

People Business Partner Issue Board

The People Business Partners (PBPs) have an issue board to track collaboration on issues across GitLab.com to keep us efficient and collaborative with other teams.

We utilize labels for triaging amongst the PBPs, and to indicate to other teams the level of priority for the PBPs and the status (doing, done, etc.)

Triaging and Labeling Flow

1. pbp-attention label is added by team member/group seeking input, collaboration, or feedback on an issue or MR. This will flag the issue for triaging on our People Business Partner issue board. Note: While MRs will not appear on our board, we ask that the pbp-attention label is added regardless for analytics purposes.

2. The PBP team will triage the issue in accordance of PBP priority. Each scoped label will have one PBP DRI, plus the additional number of PBP reviewers indicated depending on the level of priority.

3. The PBP who is the DRI will indicate they are the DRI by tagging themselves in the issue.

• pbp::low 1 PBP DRI with 1 additional reviewer

• pbp::medium 1 PBP DRI with 2 additional PBP reviewers

• pbp::high 1 PBP DRI with 3 additional PBP reviewers (at least one should be at the Director level)

1. If the issue is coming from another team seeking PBP collaboration, the PBP team will add the label of the other team for analytics purposes.

• pbp-DIB (Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging)

• pbp-LD (Learning & Development)

• pbp-TR (Total Rewards)

• pbp-legal

• pbp-peopleops

• pbp-recruiting

• pbp-other

1. The PBP team will add the pbp-done label when PBP action is complete.

You may reference the GitLab.com labels for an overview of all labels included in the PBP issue board triaging and labeling process.

Support provided by Director of Legal, Employment, to the People Group.

The Director of Legal, Employment, collaborates with and provides support to the People Business Partner team in many functional areas.

Email approval from the Director of Legal, Employment is required prior to engagement with external counsel to allow for accurate tracking of costs.

Invoices will be sent to Director of Legal, Employment, for approval with the relevant People Business Partner copied for visibility.

Support provided by the People Operations Specialist team to the People Business Partner team

All tasks will be assigned via slack in the #pbp-peopleops slack channel. This is a private channel. The People Operations Specialist team, will self-assign a task, within 24 hours and comment in slack on the request to confirm.

People Experience vs. People Operations Core Responsibilities & Response Timeline

Please note that the source of truth for role responsibilites are the job families for People Operations Specialist and People Experience Associate. The table below is meant to provide a quick overview of some of the core responsibilities for each team.

People Experience Team

Responsibility	Response Timeline
Onboarding	4 days prior to start date
Offboarding	Immediate action for involuntary & 24 hours for voluntary
Career Mobility	Within 24 hours
Letters of Employment	Within 12 - 24 hours
Employment Verification	Within 12 - 24 hours
Anniversary Emails	Last day of the month
Slack and Email Queries	Within 12 - 24 hours
Probation Period Notifications	Daily (when applicable)
Group Conversations scheduling	As requested
Hosting of company calls	Daily on a weekly rotation
Evaluate onboarding surveys	As responses are submitted
Flowers and gift ordering	Within 24 hours
Determining quarterly winners of the onboarding buddy program	Last week of each quarter
People Experience Shadow Program	As requested by other team members

Other listed processes for the People Experience Team can be found here

People Specialist Team

Responsibility	Response Timeline
Country Conversions	As soon as approval is given by CFO. Conversion turnaround time can take from 4-12 weeks depending on a variety of factors.
Risk Matrix Data Update	Monthly
Relocations	As requested, usually completed 30 days or more prior to team member's relocation date
Contract Renewals	30 days or more prior to team member's renewal date
Exit Interviews	During voluntary offboarding team member's last week
Hosting of Company Calls	Daily on a weekly rotation
Administration of the signing of our Code of Conduct	Annually in Feb/March

Celebrations

How the GitLab team celebrates work anniversaries and further information about anniversary gifts and birthdays can be found on this page

Frequently Requested

Please review the frequently requested section of the People Handbook before reaching out to the team. The page includes information on accessing a team directory, requesting a letter of employment, mortgage forms, the companies reference request policy, ordering business cards, and changing your name in GitLab systems.

Other pages related to the People Group

• Benefits

• Code of Conduct

• Promotions and Transfers

• Global Compensation

• Contracts & International Expansion

• Incentives

• Hiring process

• Group Conversations

• Leadership

• Learning & Development

• Onboarding

• Offboarding

• OKRs

• People Group Vision

• 360 Feedback

• Guidance on Feedback

• Collaboration & Effective Listening

• Gender and Sexual-orientation Identity Definitions and FAQ

• Travel

• Underperformance

• Visas

• People Group READMEs

• Women in Sales Mentorship Pilot Program

• People Key Performance Indicators

• People Performance Indicators

Our leadership toolkit has tools and information for managers here at GitLab.

Boardroom addresses

• For the SF boardroom, see our visiting page.

• For the NL office, we use a postbox address listed in the "GitLab BV address" note in the Shared vault on 1Password. We use addpost to scan our mail and send it to a physical address upon request.

• For the UK office, there is a Ltd registered address located in the "GitLab Ltd (UK) Address" note in the Shared vault on 1Password

• For the Germany office, there is a GmbH address located in the "GitLab GmbH Address" note in the Shared vault on 1Password

Guidelines for Vendor meetings

These guidelines are for all Vendor meetings (e.g. People Group/Recruiting IT system providers, 3rd party suppliers, benefits providers) to enable us to get the best out of them and make the most of the time allotted:

Guidelines:

1. We request external vendor meetings to use our video conferencing tool so we can quickly join the call and record the session if we need to. Confirm with vendor that they agree we can record the call. The DRI for the vendor meeting will generate the zoom link and share with the vendor.

2. Decide ahead of the meeting who should be invited, i.e. those likely to get the most out of it.

3. Ahead of the meeting, we should agree internal agenda items/requirements/priorities and provide to the external provider.

4. In order to make the best use of time, we wish to avoid team introductions on the call, particularly where there are a number of us attending. We can include a list of attendees with the agenda and give it to the vendor before or after the meeting.

5. When a question or issue is raised on the agenda, if the person who raised it is present they will verbalize it live on the call; or if they are not present, then someone will raise it for them. This is a common GitLab practice.

6. Where possible, we request that the vendor provides their slides / presentation materials and any other related information after the meeting.

7. Do not demo your tool live, create a pre-recorded walk-through of the tool and make it available to GitLab before the meeting so we can ask questions if needed.

8. Be cognizant of using inclusive language.

9. We respectfully request that everyone is mindful of the time available, to help manage the call objectives effectively.

Sending an E-Card

Another nice way to celebrate someone, express your appreciation or show support to a team member is by creating an e-card and having team members sign the card via HelloSign. Have have fun with this, get creative when making the card using google docs, google slides or a program of your choice. An example can be found here. Once you have your card created:

1. Upload the document to either HelloSign or Docusign

2. Once uploaded, assign signatures to those individuals that you would like to sign and then send the request to those individuals

3. When an individual has signed you will get an email notification

4. After you have all of your signatures then download the document from HelloSign

5. Slack or email the card to the recipient

Using BambooHR

We use BambooHR to keep all team member information in one place. All team members (all contract types) are in BambooHR. We don't have one contact person but can email BambooHR if we want any changes made in the platform. The contact info lives in the Secretarial Vault in 1Password.

Some changes or additions we make to BambooHR require action from our team members. Before calling the whole team to action, prepare a communication to the team that is approved by the Chief People Officer.

Team Members have access to their profile in BambooHR and should update any data that is outdated or incorrect. If there is a field that cannot be updated, please reach out to the People Ops Analyst with the change.

The mobile app has less functionality than the full website, and the current version has security issues, so use of the BambooHR mobile app is discouraged. If access to BambooHR is required from a mobile device (such as requests that need to be approved), this should be done through the desktop version of the website or through the mobile device's web browser.

Using Google Drive

We are a handbook first organziation and google drive should only be utilized when necessary.

When using google drive, always save team documents to the appropriate [Shared_Drive].

Using RingCentral

Our company and office phone lines are handled via RingCentral. The login credentials are in the Secretarial vault on 1Password. To add a number to the call handling & forwarding rules:

• From the Admin Portal, click on the Users button (menu on left), select the user for which you want to make changes (for door handling, pick extension 101).

• A menu appears to the right of the selected user; pick "Call Handling & Forwarding" and review the current settings which show all the people and numbers that are alerted when the listed User's number is dialed.

• Add the new forwarding number, along with a name for the number, and click Save.

WBSO (R&D tax credit) in the Netherlands

For roles directly relating to Research and Development in the Netherlands, GitLab may be eligible for the WBSO (R&D Tax Credit).

Organizing WBSO

Applications

As of 2019 GitLab must submit three applications each year and the deadlines for those are as follows:

1. 31 March 2019, for the May - August 2019 period (Product Manager for Create Features)

2. 31 August 2019, for the September - December 2019 period (Product Manager for Gitaly)

3. 30 November 2019, for the January - April 2020 period (Product Manager for Geo Features)

There is a translated English version of the application template located in the WBSO folder on the Google Drive. The applications should be completed by a Product Manager, responsible for features or a service within GitLab, who can detail the technical issues that a particular feature will solve. Assistance on completing the application can also be sought from the WBSO consultant (based in the Netherlands). The contact details for the consultant can be found in a secure note in the People Ops 1Password vault called WBSO Consultant. The People Operations Specialist team will assist with co-ordinating this process. It is currently owned by Finance.

Hour Tracker

Each year a spreadsheet with the project details and hours logged against the work done on the project(s) will need to be created. This is for the entire year. The current hour tracker is located in the WBSO folder on the Google Drive, and shared only with the developers that need to log their hours (located in the Netherlands), Total Rewards Analysts, Finance and the WBSO consultant. Once the projects have been completed for the year, the WBSO consultant will submit the hours and project details to claim the R&D grant from the RVO. The WBSO consultant will contact Total Rewards Analysts should they have any queries.

Disaster Recovery Plan

When a natural disaster or weather event occurs in a location that is near the home of a team member, the People Specialist and People Experience Teams (known as the People Operations Team) will send a notification email to all relevant team members, using the template found in the People Group project.

GitLab provides free transport to all team members to get out of the location they are in, via a vendor of choice e.g.: Uber/ Taxify/ Lyft/ Via etc. to a safe location. This section outlines what action will be taken during a natural disaster:

• This is a shared task amongst the overall People Operations Team, a member on this team will reach out in the timezone of the team members affected by a natural disaster/ etc. via email by using this template. Please review the template before sending and add country/ location specific links and information.

• To protect team member's privacy, send one email to all affected team members' Bcc'd.

• All managers of the affected team members, as well as peoplepartners @gitlab.com will also be bcc'd and peopleops @gitlab.com will be cc'd.

• A Slack message will also be posted on the location Slack channel and if unavailable in the #team-member-updates channel or direct message.

• The People Operations Team will make a post in the #Disaster-Recovery-Plan slack channel with the number of team members notified. This channel will include leaders of legal, security and the people team. The People operations or People Experience team will update the channel on their course of action and whether all team members have been reached during this process.

• If there is no response from the team member/s within 24 hours, the People Operations Specialist and People Experience teams will send an email to the team member/s personal email address. Due to the vast number of time zones we operate in, and for transparency, please cc peopleops@ gitlab.com in all communications.

• If there is still no response after 48 hours, a People Operations Specialist or People Experience Associate will reach out to next-of-kin (this info can also be found in BambooHR) via email, and if no response, followed by a phone call.

People Operations Team procedures for Disaster Recovery Plan Identifying a disaster Helpful tools for identifying a diaster - [Google Public Alerts](https://google.org/publicalerts/map) Identifying those affected by a disaster 1. Pull a report from BambooHR utilizing cities, states, countries or locality. 1. Compare this report to the team page, identify if anyone is missing.

Women in Sales Mentorship Pilot Program

GitLab launched a Women in Sales Mentorship Pilot for the start Q2 of FY21. If the pilot is considered successful, we will consider expanding the program to other cohorts. For more information on the program and how to apply, visit the Women In Sales Mentorship Pilot Program handbook page!

People Policy Directoy

Follow this link to our People Policy Directory