How we work
With a team made up entirely of volunteers (yep! even our National (Co)Directors and Chief Financial Officer are volunteers!), and team members across Australia and internationally, we spend a lot of time working remotely, and communicating online.
Our key online communications platforms are:
Office 365 (Outlook) for emailing;
Sharepoint for storing documents;
Zoom for video conferencing; and
Slack for instant messaging / team updates.
We have monthly team meetings on Wednesdays from 6.00PM (AEST). You will hear more about these upcoming meetings from your team.
Office 365 and Outlook
In your in induction documentation, you will have received a One Woman Project email address and password.
We send all of our major updates and a weekly organisational newsletter (known as the NDU - National Director’s Update) to your email inbox, so please set this up and link it to your laptop/phone. If you want to set up email forwarding to an email account you check more regularly, you are more than welcome to do this.
If you need assistance setting up your emails, check this out!
It is recommended that you check your emails at least once per week. Please note you do not need to respond to every email, nor do you need to read every email if it’s not directly relevant to you (ie; NDU - National Director’s Updates can be skipped if you have a busy week ahead). You do need to read and respond to emails that are addressed to you, that action you with a task or that seek your response.
Sharepoint
As part of the management of all of our documents, we use Sharepoint! Sharepoint is basically like Google Drive or Dropbox (but the Microsoft version).
If you create a document, or develop a powerpoint presentation, or want to run a survey whilst you’re volunteering with OWP, please save it in Sharepoint. This means that if your computer crashes, or you leave the organisation, or you go overseas on a holiday without internet access, that we don’t lose all of the incredible work you have done!
You can learn more about using Sharepoint here ->
Every volunteer needs to have access to the below Sharepoint sites:
OWP Portal (also known as the OWP Community Hub).
Make sure you also have access to the site relevant to your State / National team:
And make sure you have access to the site relevant to your Portfolio:
You won’t be able to access Sharepoint until you set up your OWP email address, so make sure you do that first!
Zoom
For our video conferencing, calls and meetings, we use Zoom!
Please sign up for a free account with Zoom with your OWP email address here.
Slack
The final platform we use is Slack!
It is an expectation for all OWP team members to be a part of the Slack team. You can make an account by following this link. Please remember to add a profile photo and your position title!
Once you create an account, the Slack dashboard should look something like this:
There are various channels set up for different teams and events, so make sure you add yourself to the relevant ones. The core Slack channels you should definitely be a part of include:
#continuous-learning
#leave
#wins
#self-care
#social
#whole-team
#advice
There’s a bunch more channels to be a part of, so make sure you check them all out and add yourself to the relevant ones!
You can take a tour and understand more about Slack here.
It is expected that you check Slack at least twice per week. Please note you do not need to respond/read every Slack post. You do need to respond/react to messages that explicitly mention you (when you’re @ ) or that are direct messaged (DM) to you.
Some top tips for Slack:
You can choose to ‘mute’ channels that aren’t relevant to you (like #social or #continous-learning) and just check them when you have time. Read more about how to ‘mute’ channels here.
You can ‘pause notifications’ over weekends, when you are on leave or when you need to take a couple of days off. Read more about how to pause notifications here.
You can also choose to ‘set a reminder’ on Slack, and it will remind you about tasks you need to do, messages you need to respond to and more! Read more about that here.
SECURITY
When you set up your accounts on the above platforms, make sure you follow our OWP Security Plan located here!
Some top tips:
Use a password manager to generate, store and share all OWP-related passwords;
Ensure all OWP documents are only saved on the OWP Sharepoint (not on Google Drive, or your personal Sharepoint drive);
Set up a randomly generated password for your OWP email account, Slack account and Zoom account (if you have a Zoom account linked to your OWP email); and
Set up a randomly generated password for any recovery email accounts.
Have a read through the security plan for all the details!
other platforms
There are also other platforms we use, that you may need access to as part of your role. These include:
Our website, hosted through Squarespace;
Our fortnightly newsletter, hosted through Sender;
An online collaborative platform called Miro;
A project management tool, called Trello;
Our finance and accounting platform, Xero (only used by the Finance portfolio);
A project management and database called Airtable;
A design program, called Canva; and
Have a chat with your portfolio team to see what platforms they use – you won’t need all of these!
If you ever need to update our website, check out this training video below (video):