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Making a People Operations Wiki on Coda

Making a People Operations Wiki on Coda

Guidelines & Info

Travel Policy - Updated Nov. '22

If you don’t find the information you are looking for below, please

submit it here

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Context

Everything evolves, including our travel needs. Our former policy was drafted in late 2021 and has been slowly tuned as the company has grown and appetite for in-person work has ramped back up. We have invested in our in-office culture (office captains, lunch trains, moves to fresh offices in SF & MTV), experimented with multi-site Hackathons, and added the new ritual of Codathon.

With this refresh, we hope to better articulate our approach to travel and give Codans clearer guidance on how they might leverage travel for work. We are proposing this policy to support our cadence of coda-all events, the expected increase in team gatherings, and our balance of having a distributed team and office hubs.

Guiding Principles

Connecting Codans in support of Coda. With a distributed employee base, we want to enable all employees to work productively together, and feel included and connected to their teams

Supporting hybrid culture. Leverage both our in-office culture and the flexibility of having a distributed team of talented folks.

Resource conscious. Mindful that both time and money are limited resources, we want to be thoughtful about both travel spend and the amount that we ask employees to disrupt routine to travel.

What’s changing?

Prior policy gave a lot of flexibility on when travel was allowed → now we are making it more clear that travel should be centered around company/team events, travel for remote Codans, and business critical reasons.

More clear definition around the types of travel and when/why Codans might leverage those trips

More clearly articulated approval process

Team gatherings should happen at one of our beautiful

Coda Offices⁠

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Less about the exact # of trips that are allowed, but focusing on the when and the why

What isn’t changing?

Guidance and spend limits for booking hotels/flights via Navan is still the same

What’s included in our travel policy:

We cover the following types of trips. Depending on role and location, Codans may or may not engage in all of the categories.

Category of Travel

Description & Purpose

Who is invited to travel?

Where do we expect them to travel to?

Predicted Frequency

Approval Process

Company Events

Hackathon - Multisite events in Coda Offices to drive innovation.

Remote Codans

Coda offices

2-3x/year

No approvals required for remote Codans

Codathon - Coda-all gathering to build connection across Coda, functions and FAs.

All Codans

Varies year-by-year, but likely a “mutually inconvenient location for all” 😄

1x/year

No approvals required for anyone

Team Gatherings

Teams get-togethers (either functions, FAs or IAs) for bonding, strategy, and working together.

Guidance for in-person gatherings

⁠

Whoever needs to (i.e. those who work outside of the Coda office that the event is happening at)

Coda offices

1x/year or as needed

Finance, Employee Experience & manager/team lead approval required. Fill out

this form

⁠

to let us know what you are planning!

Flex Travel

For Codans who live far from offices, the flexibility to travel to Coda Offices for purposeful in-person working time that supports business goals

Remote Codans

Coda offices

1x/year

Finance & manager approval. Ping

@Jordan Le Baudour

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with context and ask.

Business Critical Travel

Things like key customer meetings, an industry event where you speaking on behalf of Coda, etc.

Whoever needs to, but with clear business justification

Wherever needed

As needed

Finance & manager approval. What qualifies as “business critical” is up to individual org leads.

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What’s not included?

Personal trips

Logistics & Limits

These are staying fairly consistent.

This guide⁠

still applies for booking travel using Navan (fka TripActions). All travel related expenses must be submitted via Airbase.

Meals: You can expense up to $25/meal when meals are not provided (ex. if lunch is provided at the office during Hackathons, can expense breakfast/dinner). Meals for travel are handled in Airbase, separate from our Benepass lifestyle budget.

Transportation: Business purpose transport is covered (UberX, Lyft, etc), but if it’s going to be >$100, please consider a more economical alternative or request permission for the trip. If you suspect a rental car, parking, insurance, etc will be less than ride shares, please book that.

Airfare & Lodging: Guidelines are found in Navan. When possible, please chose the most economical choice (airfare vs. driving, etc), and if a cost is going to be far beyond another option (ie. mileage vs. airfare), please reach out to Finance for pre-approval.

Exceptions

We understand that the above policy might not capture every single edge case imaginable. If you are unsure if your travel plan fits within policy, or if you would like to request an exception to the policy, please discuss with you manager and org lead to get their support. Then, reach out to Finance for approval.

Travel Policy Q&A