Internal Teammate Gifting

At Sourcegraph, we love celebrating and recognizing the events happening in our teammates’ lives! Below are the occasions we send gifts to our teammates and what those processes look like.

When we send gifts to teammates

The People team is responsible for sending gifts for:

Managers are responsible for sending gifts for:

Managers will receive an email reminder from BambooHR when one of their direct reports has an upcoming birthday/work anniversary and it is the manager’s responsibility to send a gift that is in line with the birthday budget and anniversary budgets listed below.

Managers are welcome to celebrate their teams’ other life events at each teammate’s discretion. Sourcegraph does not have a budget for celebrating these milestones as they are not experienced by every person on a regular cadence. However, teammates are still welcome to celebrate these milestones if they choose!

Birthdays

Each manager is responsible for celebrating their teammates’ birthdays and sending a gift according to the gift amount policy detailed below.

Be considerate of all teammates and acknowledge that not everybody likes to be in the spotlight on their birthdays. Managers should ask the teammate personally if they’d like their birthday to be celebrated. With the teammate’s permission, managers should follow the below steps:

  • Send a Loop & Tie gift within the birthday gift amount policy. Alternatively, you can let your teammate know that they can treat themselves and submit a reimbursement for up to $50 USD.
  • Post about the occasion in team Slack channel or 1:1
    • Team post suggestions:
      • Announce the occasion: “Wishing a happy birthday to [name]! Please treat yourself to a $50 gift and celebrate!”
      • Personalize the message based on the particular individual
      • TIP: You can pre-schedule your Slack messages to send on the correct dates

Sourcegraph encourages teammates to take a day of vacation on their special day in alignment with our Paid Time Off Policy. If a Teammate’s celebration happens to fall over a weekend, please be sure to take an alternate day such as the Friday prior or the Monday after.

To view and add the BambooHR “Birthdays” calendar to your Google Calendar, please use this link and perform the following steps:

  • Open your Google Calendar Settings
  • Click Add calendar
  • Click From URL
  • Paste link in URL of calendar box
  • Click Add calendar

Birthday gift budget

Birthday gifts will be coming from the individual’s team budget and should not exceed $50 USD per teammate and per year. It is also advisable to spend the same amount for each person on your team when getting a gift for them to create fairness within the group.

Work anniversaries

Each manager is responsible for celebrating their teammates’ yearly milestones and sending a gift according to the anniversary gift budget detailed below. Best practice is to send a Loop & Tie gift. Managers can easily access all teammate anniversaries by checking their Bamboo HR homepage.

Best practices for celebrating a work anniversary

  • The manager posts a written or video message in the #thanks channel
    • Post suggestions:
      • Announce the occasion: “A huge #thanks and congrats to [name] on their [#] year anniversary at Sourcegraph!”
      • Highlight the teammates’ key contributions and impact they’ve made
      • TIP: You can pre-schedule your Slack messages to send on the correct dates!
  • The manager sends a Loop & Tie gift within the anniversary gift budget. Alternatively, you can let your teammate know that they can treat themselves and submit a reimbursement for up to $XX USD.

Anniversary gift budget

Anniversary gifts will be coming from the individual’s team budget and should not exceed the following amounts per teammate and per year:

  • Year 1: $50 USD
  • Year 2: $75 USD
  • Year 3: $100 USD
  • Year 4: $200 USD
  • Year 5+: $250 USD

Promotions

At Sourcegraph, promotions are a big deal - and communicating promotions is one of the single biggest opportunities to widely celebrate teammate contributions! The People Team is currently working to develop a custom promotion gift, but in the meantime, managers are responsible for recognizing promoted teammates by:

  • Sending a Loop & Tie gift! - we recommend $150
  • Sending a Slack in #teammate-announce and cross-post in #thanks. At minimum, these posts should cover:
    • recognizing the hard work of the individual being promoted
    • providing insight into the individual’s new responsibilities
    • how the teammate’s performance and actions embody our values
    • serving as aspirational to others who strive to be promoted in the future
  • Sample Slack message:
    • Hi Team! I am thrilled to announce that (TEAMMATE NAME) has been promoted to (NEW TITLE)! For the past (PERIOD OF TIME), (TEAMMATE NAME) has been responsible for (PREVIOUS ROLE/RESPONSIBILITIES/ACCOMPLISHMENTS) that have resulted in (BUSINESS IMPACT/OUTCOME). Going forward, (TEAMMATE NAME) will bring (their/his/her) knowledge, skills and experience into their new role as (NEWLY PROMOTED TITLE) doing (NEWLY PROMOTED RESPONSIBILITIES). Please join me in congratulating (TEAMMATE NAME) on (their/his/her) well-deserved promotion and wish (them/him/her) best of luck in (their/him/her) new role!

New hires

Our People Team is responsible for sending new hire gifts and uses a vendor named Telescope. The People team purchases inventory in bulk based on the anticipated hiring rate and Telescope monitors/reorders the inventory as needed.

What is in a new hire gift:

  • Hoodie
  • Socks
  • Stickers
  • Tumbler
  • T-Shirt

How to order a new hire kit

After a new hire signs their contract with us, the People team sends an email that includes a link to order their new hire gift. The new hire is responsible for submitting their order, which will then be fulfilled using inventory that we have in stock with our vendor, Telescope.

Once an order is placed, the new hire will get an email confirmation with delivery details. Sourcegraph covers the shipping cost, which varies depending on the shipping destination. We can view the shipping costs associated with recent orders in the invoices Telescope emails to PeopleOps/Finance.

Please reach out in the #swag channel with any questions.

Growing family

Our People Team is responsible for sending gifts for the growth of a family and uses a vendor named Telescope. The People Team purchases inventory in bulk and Telescope monitors/reorders the inventory as needed.

What is included in the gift:

Please reach out in the #swag channel with any questions.

What gifts to send for birthdays + work anniversaries

Loop & Tie

Our recommended gifting platform is Loop & Tie. Loop & Tie offers curated collections of gifts organized by price and shipping location (US and International). Then our teammates get to select the gift they truly want from whichever collection they were gifted.

Managers must have a Loop & Tie account to send a gift. To create a Loop & Tie account, please reach out to the People team in the #swag slack channel and a current Loop & Tie admin (Kemper or Fabiana) will invite you to create an account.

Once you have an account, here is how to send a Loop & Tie gift.

Budget: All birthday and anniversary gifting will be coming from the individual’s team budget. When you’re sending a Loop & Tie gift, you will use the company card on file. Then the People + Finance team will reclass the charges into the correct team budgets on a monthly cadence.

Loop & Tie FAQS:

Q: Will the recipient see the gift price?

  • A: Your Loop & Tie recipient never sees the gift budget you selected. They just see the items available to them in the collection you selected!

Q: Can I change or add products to the collections?

  • A: We are not able to facilitate changes/additions at this time.

Other gift ideas

If you don’t want to use Loop & Tie, here are some other gift ideas!

Sending gifts via mail

If you require a teammate’s address to send a gift, please ask the teammate directly if they are comfortable sharing their address for gift purposes. (While People Ops and managers do have access to address information, it is considered confidential and just as with other information of sensitive nature, we are unable to share it with others).

Additional Gifting/Swag

Custom internal requests:

There are times that teammates will want to order custom Sourcegraph swag for other occasions, such as a team trip or team accomplishment. Below are things to consider and steps to take to begin the ordering process. If you have any questions, please reach out in #swag in Slack.

Budget

The budget for additional swag (any swag besides the new hire kit) will be the responsibility of the team requesting the swag order. For example, if the Talent team is requesting custom hats for a team trip, this order will be paid for using the Talent team’s budget.

Individual teams will not be responsible for finding budget for company-wide swag shipments such as product release swag (for example, the 2022 Code Insights T-shirts).

Who to reach out to

When you’re ready to begin an order, please fill out this google form to provide the following information:

  • What is the occasion you’re ordering swag for?
  • What type of swag do you want to order (ex: hats, backpacks, etc.)
  • When do you need the swag in-hand? (We recommend starting the ordering process at least 6-8 prior to the delivery date)
  • What quantity will you need?
  • What countries will you need the swag shipped to?
  • Have you confirmed your team has the budget for this order?

Once you’ve completed the google form, someone from the People team will connect you via email with our custom swag vendor, Telescope, who will facilitate the ordering process.

Brand Guidelines

When designing custom swag, please follow our brand guidelines and run any mock-ups/questions past the #creative-ops Slack channel prior to ordering.

External requests:

  • See how to send swag to people outside of Sourcegraph.

Happy celebrating!

For any additional questions, feel free to reach out to people-ops@sourcegraph.com or the #swag channel in Slack.