Internal team: Communication at My French Life™

In this document…

• Values
• Daily Reports
• Emails
• Slack

 1. Values

At My French Life™, we pride ourselves on the way we communicate. Although our team is all around the world and working virtually, we make sure we really connect with one other! We like to keep relationships strong.

We value and appreciate the work everyone does. We all work really hard to make each person feel part of the team, and we put a lot of effort into providing excellent feedback, so we can all grow as a team.

We welcome everyone’s opinion, and value your suggestions! We make sure we communicate any feelings, ideas, and thoughts as soon as they arise – no matter how silly, small or unimportant they seem.

Please remember that it is your fundamental commitment, obligation and responsibility to communicate any concerns you have about your learning, training, internship, role, work or any other concern. There should be NO SURPRISES if communication is open and honest.

Openness and honesty, as well as sharing and learning on a timely basis, are at the heart of all we do.

2.   Daily reports

At the end of each day, we ask all interns and internal team members to send a Daily Report. Depending on your agreement, this could be a Weekly Report.

This is to be sent in the #dailyreport channel in Slack.

In your daily report, list the tasks you completed that day, and always name the specific task or article. Please also list the tasks you didn’t complete under a different heading.

Eg:

Sub-editing:

Jennifer Bourne – Paris vs. New York

Alison Eastaway – How not to make friends with the French

Formatting:

Jess Gregory – Lyon: city of lights

Writing:

The best spots for a hot chocolate in Paris

Other categories could be: Editing, Social Media, Publishing, etc.

If you’re an internal team member in charge of the daily schedule, please send an internal daily schedule report in #internalteam. This is the place to list any emails you drafted, what was published etc.

Always refer to the specific articles/emails you worked on to help us keep track of your work.

And don’t forget: include a list of tasks you didn’t complete. It just means we can stay updated with what we’ll need to reallocate or pick up to keep our processes moving.

3.   Emails

At the beginning of your internship, you were provided with a Gmail address (name.myfrenchlife@gmail.com). This email will be used to sign you up for the various team tools we use.

You will use this email account to received assigned work, to send your Daily Reports, and for important matters. We have a few guidelines for how to communicate effectively and efficiently:

1. Please acknowledge receipt of all emails you receive from our team, as soon as you can. This means we know you’ve received them, and understood the contents. Always tell us if you’re unable to complete the work you were assigned!
2. BCC every email from your address to info@myfrenchlife.org.
3. Reply to one topic within the same thread of emails.

• If you would like to add a short note on another topic, please make this clear in the email.
• If the new topic requires more than a few words, start a new email thread with a clear subject line.
• Try not to mix several topics in the same thread to keep things clear.

Work through every email you are sent and in detail answer each question you are asked. As our team is mostly virtual, we communicate a lot of important information via email.

Here are a few suggestions for responding to long and detailed emails:

• Rather than writing your responses to our comments or questions in the body of your email, try inserting your responses in a different colour in our original email. Don’t forget to make it very clear where your answers are at the top of your email.
• If there have been a number of emails back and forth, and the communication is getting complicated, try copying and pasting the last email into a new chain and inserting your answers in selected colour after each answer. Always notify the people in the previous thread that you are doing this.

When referencing specific work within an email please remember the following:

• Refer to an article (sub-edit, format, etc) with its proper title and author.
• When referring to a task completed, always give the name, the date, and even times if appropriate. Just provide us with as much detail as you can so we’re clear on what we’re discussing!

 4.   Slack

Slack is our internal messaging tool. You’ll automatically be invited to a few ‘channels’ (discussion rooms): #chat, #mflnews, #dailyreport, #help and #questions.

According to the projects you will be assigned, you’ll be invited to the relevant ‘channels’ (eg #francophileguides, #internalteam, #editingteam).

Refer to the section on Slack in our ultimate guide to team member tools for when and how to use this.