Silent and Flex Fridays

At CS&S we aim to foster a working culture of balance, flexibility and sustainability. To that end, every Friday is “silent,” meaning no recurring internal calls are scheduled on Fridays. Every other Friday, year round, is a Flex Friday. Flex Fridays are intended to create space for our core team members to do deep work and take deep rest, when needed. Silent Fridays are intended to create space for different working styles and enable people to use Flex Fridays without disrupting regular meetings.

Silent and Flex Fridays enable team members to have regular, flexible blocks of time to choose how to work, or choose to take a break. This document outlines what to expect, internally and externally, on Silent and Flex Fridays.

CS&S Community Members: What can I expect on Silent and Flex Fridays?

• Community members are notified of the occurrence of a Flex Friday in the #announcements Slack channel.

• Core team members are not expected to be available for synchronous work on Fridays, and may not respond to email or Slack messages with immediacy or within regular business hours.

• If a core team member will be unavailable for 2 consecutive business days, their out of office email response will direct you to another point of contact and any urgent business will be handled.

  • As a reminder: team inboxes such as fsp at codeforsociety.org and operations at codeforsociety.org are the best avenue for urgent messages.

Core Team Members: What is expected of me on Silent and Flex Fridays?

• Core team members are encouraged to keep all Fridays free of synchronous meetings, when possible.

• Core team members are encouraged to work shorter days on Flex Fridays, when possible.

• If a core team member plans to be out of office all day, they must note it on the shared “Time Off” calendar and set an out of office autoresponder, allowing urgent matters to be directed to the appropriate team. In alignment with the CS&S time off policy outlined in the employee handbook:

  • All CS&S employees have access to unlimited discretionary time off.

  • It is expected that core team members communicate within the team and externally when any time off is taken.

  • It is expected that you will work with your team to ensure coverage for urgent internal and external requests.

  • An out of office response is not required if the team member is working a partial day.

• As with the CS&S Holiday policy, it is not required that core team members observe a Flex Friday on its scheduled date.