The Ultimate Coda Handbook for People & HR Teams

Explore

The Ultimate Coda Handbook for People & HR Teams

People Team hub
People Team hub

Keep your People Team organized and impactful with a single source of truth.

Keep your People Team organized and impactful with a single source of truth.

Whether you have a small but mighty People team, or a big squad making it happen, having a centralized team hub is invaluable for keeping everyone—and everything—organized.

How many times has someone asked where the latest information is on a team process? Or where notes from a past brainstorm session are? Or how to catch up on what was discussed in the last team meeting? Rather than having this information spread across multiple docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and tools, an all-in-one team hub organizes everything in one place. That means your team can spend less time looking for what they need and more time doing the impactful work they joined to do: supporting your employees, your culture, and your business.

Our People Team Hub template makes it easy to get started and customize a hub that suits you. Copy the template to get started, or read on for more about you can use the hub to run your team.

⁠

Get the team hub template

⁠

1. Introduce and define your team.

Your team hub sets the standard for your team and makes sure everyone is aligned around the same mission. On your hub front page, share your mission and who’s on the team, including their name, role, and any other relevant information. This is particularly useful for new team members but also helps your team keep track of who’s who and their focus areas as your team grows. You can use the card view to display your team and their smiling faces.

Remember to update this page over timemas your team grows and your mission evolves.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-28 at 09-14-18.gif

⁠

2. Kick off the work week right with impactful team syncs.

Every Monday, the Coda People team starts off the week with a team sync. We use the same dedicated sections within our hub each week to run the meeting—personal updates, sentiments, meeting topics—so that we all know the drill. We take turns being the meeting driver to keep us on track with time.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-28 at 09-27-43.gif

⁠

You can easily customize this page to how you want to run your team meeting, but here’s how ours goes:

Discussion topics.

As you start off your week, you and your team likely have topics you want to bring to the group. Have your team add to the agenda and upvote on the most pressing topics to discuss. Even for work you do independently, it’s sometimes helpful to get your team’s insight and best practices to move forward. Anyone can also use this space to announce important updates for the team to be aware of.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-31 at 08-51-32.gif

⁠

After a topic has been discussed, you can check the “Covered?” checkbox to filter out past topics from those that still need to be discussed. This keeps your table nice and tidy, while keeping any handy notes just a toggle away. If you want to look back at them, simply adjust the filter to include past topics. Perfect for asynchronous catching up!

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-31 at 08-55-16.gif

⁠

Sentiment and status updates.

This is our “how is everyone doing?” and “what is everyone working on?” section. We start with a simple scale of how we’re feeling. This gives folks a chance to share where they are at personally, and offer support when we see someone with a low rating.

The updates let us share reflections of the past week and preview what’s ahead. Though we are on the same team, we have very different day-to-days. Someone on the team may be meeting with employees and running pulse checks, while others are processing payroll. This helps us stay informed of each other’s worlds, without taking up too much valuable meeting time.

We filter the page by date so we can see what’s alive that week, and also have an archive to refer back to.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-31 at 09-15-48.gif

⁠

What’s exciting outside of work?

One of my favorite part of weekly syncs is learning about what my teammates have been up to. It’s a great way to learn about their passions and hobbies. As a distributed workforce, we don’t have the traditional water cooler or lunch time conversation, so this section helps keep our team connected—along with other intentional activities like social time, fun group Slack ice breakers, and direct messages. We use the card view to showcase our weekly personal highlights and show our love via heart reactions and comments.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-31 at 09-31-54.gif

⁠

Every team is different but we also like to add pictures to drive connection and conversations. In the example below we’re using images from Unsplash, but the team often uploads their own pictures.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-31 at 09-27-29.gif

⁠

3. Effortlessly organize team or sub-group work.

The Coda People team has an hour carved out every week for team working sessions. This reserved time slot allows the team to request dedicated time to work with selected team members on any important topics.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-28 at 09-50-56.gif

⁠

For example, if our Employee Experience team needs extra time to discuss keynote speakers for our company offsite, all that team member needs to do is:

Add a new row.

Select the date, start time, and duration.

Specify who should attend.

Share any pre-reads/related docs or links to get the group up to speed.

Describe the goal and specify the stage, to let folks know what to expect—whether it’s to reflect, brainstorm, make a decision, or jam out some work.

On our team, we also draft work in sub-pages within the hub using existing templates, gathering input from the team, and tracking changes. This makes it so everyone can see and review work in progress and stay aligned. When time comes to roll out to the company, we move the content to our all-company wiki—more on those in the

Workplace management⁠

section.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-08-28 at 15-08-56.gif

⁠

4. Plan fun events with your team.

So far you’ve documented your mission and the team, set up weekly syncs, rolled up your sleeves for working sessions, and have a place for all of your amazing work to live. For such an organized team hub, one also needs some organized fun!

In the Team Events section, you can all add and vote on ideas, so you can pick something everyone will enjoy. The team can also share dates that work for them to make organizing easier, and you can keep track of what the team has done in the past.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-10-03 at 20-50-57.gif

⁠

5. Evolve your hub along with your team.

To make your hub most effective as a one-stop-shop, anything and everything else you might use to run the day-to-day of the team should go in the doc—simply add new pages for anything you need. The hub is completely customizable, and you can continue to iterate on it as your team changes over time.

For example, we’ve added a page where you can have a single spot for your team to reference for all resources and templates they may need to use.

⁠

Screen Capture on 2023-10-03 at 20-58-07.gif

⁠

Ready to get started?

⁠

Build your team hub

⁠

Explore the rest of the People Team handbook:

⁠

Recruitment & headcount⁠

⁠

Onboarding⁠

⁠

Training & development⁠

⁠

Career & succession planning⁠

⁠

Rewards & recognition⁠

⁠

Workplace management⁠

⁠

Offboarding⁠

⁠

Performance management systems⁠

⁠

Compensation & benefits⁠

⁠

Employee engagement⁠

⁠

People analytics⁠

Gallery

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.

People Team hubPeople Team hub