The Ultimate Coda Handbook for People & HR Teams
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The Ultimate Coda Handbook for People & HR Teams
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The Ultimate Coda Handbook for People Teams

Why Coda has to be part of every HR tool stack.
Raechel Timme
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Lucy Yip
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Alice Ly
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Clare Geyer
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Emmeline Kim
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Leah Reitz
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Kenny Mendes

Spend time on your people, not your tools.

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I’m Raechel and I run the People Team at Coda. Prior to Coda I helped scale Box from 200 to 1500 people. In my current role, I am focused on and passionate about helping Codans grow, succeed, and thrive, emphasizing a culture of transparency, collaboration, and well-being. I’ve made my career out of finding the right people and guiding them to success, with over a decade of experience in recruiting and people operations.
After interviewing countless People teams, I’ve realized that most of them want to spend their time building trust, enabling, and coaching, but instead, they get bogged down in cumbersome manual processes, status updates, etc. The best teams have found ways to set up systems that unlock their People team from inefficient workstreams and let them focus on strategic initiatives that move the business forward, improve communication, decision-making, inclusion, and engagement.
My team and I have collected some of these best practices to share in this guide— allowing you to consolidate 10s of tools into one core tool that’s flexible and easy to use, Coda. Coda will give your team the time back to focus on what matters— empowering your people.
In this guide, you’ll find templates to run all the parts of your employee lifecycle— from onboarding and off-boarding, to team management, to performance and engagement, all with a lens for diversity, inclusion, and equity. This is just the start of what you can do in Coda. If you can imagine it, you likely can build it in Coda. Just ask Coda AI ✨ or visit our
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. You can also find the Recruiting Team Ultimate Handbook
here
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7 common patterns that people teams solve for.


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1. People Team Hub: Align the People team and consolidate docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and other tools into a single source of truth

Problem

Most teams have hundreds of docs, presentations, and spreadsheets tracking the information they need to operate day-to-day. That’s ridiculous and is way too much overhead. Teams should instead have one Team Hub that has everything they need to know and can continue to evolve it as their team and the company evolves.
Most teams nowadays are also distributed and have lost the ability lean on “water cooler” conversations. Teams need a way to weave in the casual conversation in a way that connects, builds empathy, adds fun, and leaves no one behind.

Solution

Consolidate tools and one designated place for your team to gather. All information important to running your team — from policies and processes, to team meeting notes, to proposals or writeups, to team event information is all easily accessible in one place. Anything that used to be spread across docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and other tools, is now in the Team Hub.
Teams can also bond on what is exciting for them outside of work, share stories, stay aligned on project status, vote on what’s most important to the team, and more... all meant to keep the team feeling connected and moving fast in the same direction. And the best thing is that you can customize it to your team and how you all work. Let your team’s cultures and values shine in your team hub.

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Know your team.
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Stay connected.
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Plan your next working session.

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Collaborate on new policies.
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2. Onboarding & Offboarding: Automate onboarding and offboarding, ease handoffs with other teams, and create an overall delightful experience

Problem

Onboarding and offboarding are overwhelming. Period. For both the new hire or employee and for the team running the process. There are so many moving pieces, numerous stakeholders involved, lots of manual processes, and the emotional stakes are very high. Yet, these are two processes every People team runs- -over and over again. Teams invest in tools that don’t talk to one another and may cause more chaos and confusion to the mix when it’s the People team responsibility to be a guiding light in these transitional periods. It should be more straight-forward.
Solution
This process can be more straight-forward through more documentation and automations to streamline and scale these processes in a way that fits your team. With Coda, you can automate these processes, add personalization, keep documentation fresh and accessible, keep the entire team updated and engaged, and ultimately set up these systems to both scale and delight everyone involved. Think easy to use and interactive checklists, dynamic text that changes with every new information you input, sending emails and Slack messages without leaving your doc, and receiving notifications so you stay informed to take care of sensitive tasks. Have you imagined it? Good. Now let us show you how Coda will get you there.
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Create a simple checklist.
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Or a dynamic one. It’s your choice.
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Quickly compose your template.
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Be the first to know à la automations.

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3. People Operations: Take the pain out of internal processes with these streamlined systems

Problem

Setting up crucial parts of your People operations workflows like a ticketing system, an internal wiki, headcount approval processes, and compensation workflows can have profound effects on both the productivity of the People Team and employees. These processes can either cause your client groups to feel frustrated and slowed down, or empowered and wow’d by your team. So both the tools and how they’re implemented, really matter. Unfortunately, the usual process is to pick a separate tool for each of these, requiring vetting for the tool as well as a unique onboarding process and change management for the entire team. It’d be so much better if all of these process could be in one tool, completely customizable to the workflow your team needs.

Solution

Find simple, yet scalable processes for ticketing, an internal wiki, headcount approvals, and compensation in these templates. You will have automated workflows that can be continually be updated and customized to your team as it evolves. Your client groups will be amazed at what you’ve set up in Coda and your life will feel so much easier.
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4. Employee Experience: Make building an engaging, inclusive environment a supportive and fun team sport!

Problem

All work and no play makes employees a dull, and arguably less effective, team. And that can impact the way they engage with one another and lead to burnout. When it comes to Employee Experience, the goal is to ensure we set employees up for success— both their growth and professional development, to their connection with one another as not just coworkers, but teammates. But how does one get started with this broad umbrella of employee experience? Organizing a company offsite takes time and effort, facilitating survey feedback can feel one-sided, and tools for recognition can be expensive and just another vendor name your employees need to remember.

Solution

We all need that third space when it comes to connecting the work our people team does to our employees. In referencing your company’s roster that you upload, you can easily pull up their manager and other information. No need to navigate to your HRIS portal. You can get the basic information to inform your communication or planning. Coda allows you to keep track of your tasks when it comes to offsite planning like researching hotel locations and capacity, but it can also be how you interact with your employees. From a shared doc where employees can give direct feedback and ask questions to a notification system that reminds you of an upcoming work anniversary. How many tools have you thought of? Well it’s just been combined to one. And it’s Coda.
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5. Performance Management: Empower HRBPs and managers alike with tools to engage and enable top performance.

Problem

Managers are stretched thin and often feel as though they can only spend so much time on people processes and programs, yet usually want to make sure they are doing all they can to promote good performance and strong engagement. Doing so however, takes proactive, focused effort. We all know it’s never a good feeling to catch a performance issue too late or lose a top team member when they’re needed most. Managers need simple ways to stay on top of their talent, stay in close alignment with the People team, and engage the team in everyday activities— and a way to do all this in a customized way to fit their style and preferences. So many times, HRBPs try to pull together docs or other tools to fit the needs of each team, taking valuable time they could otherwise be spending coaching and enabling your people.

Solution

You or your HRBPs can give these templates below to your managers so they have the tools they need to stay connected to you, have all the information in one place, and ultimately retain and engage top talent. From the ability to have a single source of truth and action plans for talent, to customized light-weight performance calibration processes, to more engaging 1-1s and career conversations, and a template to run more inclusive meetings.
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6. Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: tktk....

Problem

The pandemic forced teams to accommodate the new working environments and in doing so, allowed companies to grow even more diverse teams from all over since they were no longer confined to a traditional workforce that requires an office presence. This gave People teams an opportunity to reimagine the workforce, how teams can work together, and how to support everyone to make sure their voices are heard. How do you enable all individuals to feel included and all voices are heard? How do we equal the playing field when it comes to individual contributions from everyone and avoid proximity bias?

Solution

Solution:
fireside chats
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ERG
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7. Decision Making: Efficiently and effectively drive your teams to decisions

Problem

When you can’t get all the key stakeholders in the room, how do you come to a decision? Do you have to fly folks out to be in the same place every single time? Even if the meeting is over Zoom, are you only just hearing others’ thoughts in the heat of the moment? Is this fair to those who need time to digest? Great ideas come from everyone, but we need the right frame to make sure everyone has the chance to bring those ideas to the table. And once they do, we need tools to help make the decision efficient and effective.

Solution

As covered in Pattern 6 (DEI), it is no longer the case that teams are always in the same room. Tools and technology have given us the keys to get folks together without physically being together and the ability to flex for different working styles.
Things should be recorded and noted anyway right? Imagine a meeting without notes, how would you keep track of great insights, the dissection of issues, and action items? You can lean more on this evergreen space. With pre-reads, you give your team time to digest and allows for different learning styles to contribute. Get a head start to discussions by having folks share their thoughts that is not confined to 30 minutes or an hour. Decisions should not be rushed— time is the best present you can give someone.
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Solution:
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the classic ones
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