Marguerite d'Ervau

Being a buddy for new colleagues

At Mediamatic we have an ever changing team. Maybe you can remember all the things that were new to you in your first week at the Biotoop? To help our new colleague get used to our work environment, we want to ask you to be a buddy.

We ask you to be a buddy not just for a first day or week, but to be their contact point for at least the first month. This might sound like a big task, but you will see it will be a sporadic question on where to find what.

As you may understand, we do this also to help our new colleague to get around the Biotoop and be part of the team. If there are questions you as a buddy can not solve, please refer to the Office Manager.

For the first week, it is very important to be available for your new colleague!

Enlarge

Working Together! - Mediamatic and Framer Framed invited Lebanese—Egyptian street artist Bahia Shehab to create a brand new calligraphic graffiti wall at Mediamatic Biotoop. Bahia Shehab became a political activist during the Arabic Spring when she decided to transform her earlier research and exhibited art project about Arabic calligraphy into graffiti in the streets of Cairo. ‘Al—Rihla’ means ‘The Journey’, and depicts a poem by Mahmoud Darwish. Anisa Xhomaqi

Important: Please ask HR or the office manager who your new colleague’s Mentor and Manager is (this can be 2 separate people) and where they will be seated at the office, at least 1 working day before they arrive so that you can introduce them on their first day.

When your new colleague arrives, they’ll know who their buddy is, so they’ll ask for you on arrival. Please make sure to arrive on time on the day your new colleague arrives, as you are their first point of contact. If you are unable to arrive on time on the day, please communicate to the office manager the day before or on signal before 9:30 am, so that your new colleague will be greeted by another member of our team.

Show them where they can hang their coat and which place they can take to work.

For your new colleague’s first week, there is a 5-day itinerary plan that you will guide them through, this will act as your checklist to help them better integrate into Mediamatic. 

1st week itinerary (5 days)

1st Day 

  • Show the coat rack and which table they are sitting (If you don’t know where they are sitting please ask the office manager)
  • Show and explain the upstairs coffee Machine 
  • Google Suite
  • Introduce them to their Manager and Mentor
  • 1st Mentor/manager Check-in 
  • Introduction to office staff and their roles 
  • Adding to the Signal group
  • Employes
  • Contract and availability meeting with HR — HR will put it in their calendars (Sacha)
  • Quick hello to Jans and Willem
  • mention the daily ‘Online check-in’ at 9:30 a.m. and show them how to join.
  • Tour around the grounds and meet people
  • Show them the “Getting Started at Mediamatic” knowledge - you do not need to go through it all on the first day
  • Show them the bar discount knowledge page

2nd Day

  • Google Suite
  • Explain how the front door works and give them the phone number for the sliding doors. Their phone number is added to the door opener already so they can try it out immediately.
  • Website introduction - Login to the website and make a personnel profile, make sure they add a nice photo on their page. 
  • Starting tasks from their manager/mentor 

3rd Day

  • Show Stager knowledge page & for them to read it - let them 
  • Phone Training by the operations manager - 
  • Tasks from their manager/mentor
  • Knowledge pages 
  • Make a Pecha Kucha Presentation 
    • About Pecha Kucha: Pecha Kucha is a presentation style where each presenter introduces themselves, their background, and interests within 20 seconds per slide, with the slides automatically advancing. It's a fast-paced and enjoyable way to share information, typically using only photos.
      Presentations: Each presenter will prepare a 5-slide presentation, with 20 seconds allocated for each slide. (Total 100 seconds per person). The content of your presentation is up to you—feel free to make it as serious or playful as you'd like.

4th Day

  • Exhibition Warden around with the program manager (Thursday, 10:00 - 10:30) 
  • Introductory HR meeting — will be planned by HR/Office manager
  • Knowledge pages 
  • Tasks from their manager/mentor

5th Day

  • Intern to Join open tour (Friday)
  • Explaining the hosting & coffee corner shift - practical training 
  • Onboarding “welcome” meeting with Jans and Willem 
  • Tasks from their manager/mentor

We of course start with the important things, ask your new colleague if they’d like to have some tea, coffee or water. Show them how the coffee machine works, and where the milk, coffee, tea and sugar (and toilet paper, hand towels and cleaning supplies) are stored.

After getting a drink, introduce him/her/x to the office staff (managers and what they do) and Jans and Willem.

Please also check with them if their Stager Web-user and Stage backstage accounts are working. For more info please refer to (and the difference between a web user and a backstage account) this link for the web user account and this one for the backstage account.

Employes is the payroll platform Mediamatic uses.
Your new colleague has already received an invite for Employes, check with them if they’ve successfully logged in. More information on using employes, can be found here.

Go to mediamatic.nl and help your new colleague out with logging into the website. Show them how to add their profile to the team's page. A profile already exists (the Office Manager already made it when making an account to login to the website). So go to the ‘This is our team’ page and go to the page of your new colleague. Now show how to edit text and add an image.

Go to the knowledge home page and guide them around the knowledge page, check which parts are suitable for them, and show them how we work with the Knowledge page as a place for gathering our knowledge.

Add your new colleague to the Mediamatic 2.0 Signal group. To do this, they need to have Signal installed and validated, and add their number to your phone, if everything is well, you can now add them by going into the group settings.

Make sure that you explain and practice the steps of hosting and cleaning with your new colleague. Please make sure for hosting that they know how to and which doors to unlock; which buttons to press for the sliding doors; and where the light switches are before their first hosting shift! 

Last but very much not least, take them on a tour of the grounds and if they haven’t already, introduce them to the rest of the team.