New employee orientation

First, get all paperwork and accounts sorted out: Onboarding.

Working hours

A standard, full-time work week consists of 40 hours, divided in 5 working days of 8 hours. Breaks are not included in those 8 hours. It’s up to you when and how long your break(s) are during the day.

At our office in Eindhoven we hold office hours from 8:00 until 18:00 (UTC+2 in summer, UTC+1 in winter) with a break around 12:00. If you are working in the same time zone we ask you to work within that range, whether you’re in the office, WFH or remote. It is possible that other agreements are made on an individual basis.

Note

On your first day, 9:00 would be a good starting time. Chances are someone is already in the office who can let you in.

Being available

Everyone, including side jobs and the Appsemble team, has their regular schedule recorded in the salary administration’s employee schedules. Maintain your working days, times and permanent changes by opening a merge request for your schedule. Schedules have non-overlapping validity dates: future changes can be recorded ahead of time, and earlier schedules remain available for payroll. Each working day has exact time ranges, with breaks left out, usually two ranges around a break. The salary documentation describes how to record these schedules in your local timezone. Workboard shows times in Europe/Amsterdam.

Workboard writes the Mattermost #Availability overview for everyone from the salary schedules and the leave and swap entries in Kimai, including the recorded working times. It posts today’s availability on weekdays and the current and next week’s overview, including leave, partial leave and work on a usual day off. The channel is for the bot’s overviews. Keep your leave and swaps in Kimai accurate; Workboard checks every ten minutes and updates the affected posts with a reply explaining changes to today or a later day. Each post shows when it was last updated. Using the Mattermost presence mode is also a good indicator of availability.

To swap a contracted working day for a contracted day off, create two zero-hour entries in Kimai on Availability | Swap, using activity General: one on each date, with the same start and end time. An entry on a regular working day means you are off; an entry on a regular day off means you are working. Book your worked hours on the usual work projects. Within each calendar month, your swap days off and swap days worked must balance. A week on a different schedule is one or more swaps. For part of a day off, book leave with its start and end times.

Note

Each team will decide on when they do their stand-up meetings. This means that at the agreed stand-up meeting time you’re expected to join. If you can’t make it, a written stand-up is appreciated.

When you’re regular staff and working within commute distance from the office and you have a preference for WFH, it’s expected to work in a hybrid model, where you’re working in the office for at least 2 days a week. The main reason is balancing flexibility, reduced commute time while maintaining regular face-to-face interactions plus being available to juniors and interns.

Side Jobs

Ex-interns who got offered a side job after a successful 3rd year internship usually get a flexible min-max contract where we agree you’re free to work on issues assigned to you whenever it’s convenient to you, even on the weekend.

Time registration

All employees (including interns) need to do time registration. Not because the boss says so, but because:

• Dutch law requires companies to keep track of working time of personnel. See arbeidstijdenwet. The law exists to protect employees.
• Technical innovative projects get subsidized which also require a per day detailed hour registration.
• To perform internal (when you spend more than one hour on another internal project) billing.
• To perform client billing (even though the invoice might be fixed, we still need to know if we spend more hours than forecast).

If the company doesn’t have a decent registration, it will be fined by the authorities.

How to track time is described on the time tracking page.

Leave

You basically don’t need permission to take hours or days off. However, you should consult with your colleagues if it won’t affect promised deadlines and give them a heads-up as early as possible.

Kimai is the record of all your leave, planned and taken. Book leave under the project Leave | Personal holiday as soon as you plan it, also when it is weeks ahead; leave you didn’t plan ahead, you book on the day you take it. When your plans change, move or delete the entry, because the salary administration reads your leave from Kimai. Also add planned leave to your calendar. Workboard publishes the availability overview from your Kimai entries.

When you’re ill, book the hours to Leave | Sick in Kimai on the day you take them.

Enjoy your time off! 🏖

Note

Even though most people refer to leave as a “day off”, leave itself is calculated in hours. So in that extend, it is also possible to take leave for just one hour.

Statutory Leave

For the Dutch contractors, the amount of statutory leave you are entitle on is based on a simple math rule: the amount of hours you work every week times four. So, a fulltimer gets 40 * 4 = 160 hours of statutory leave each year. Consult with the rules in your country for the amount that goes for yours, and feel free to update this information in the handbook as well.

Note

You don’t just get x hours of statutory leave in the beginning of the year, the amount builds up during the years as described in holidays.

Expiration

Also, for the Netherlands, the batch statutory leave assigned has its own validity period. According to “Statutory leave hours” they expire in 18 months from the first day of the year they’re given out. So use it before they expire - it’s what they’re for 😴.