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Expectations at Ritza

At Ritza, we offer our team members a lot of flexibility. In exchange, we count on Ritza team members to meet some general expectations.

This page makes these expectations explicit, as people may interpret flexibility differently. Certain expectations are negotiable in specific settings; some are not.

Non-negotiable expectations

Non-negotiable expectations are baseline conditions that we trust everyone will always meet. If you cannot meet these expectations, you're probably not a good fit for the Ritza team.

Characteristics

We expect people who work at Ritza to show certain characterstics. While some of these things can be learned, in general people often simply 'are' or 'are not' these things. You're unlikely to have a successful career at Ritza if you 'are not' the following.

Honest

We expect Ritza team members to be honest in all actions and communications.

  • Don't cheat on your agreed hours. We pay for time and we trust people to give us that time. We don't use monitoring software ("Bossware"), and we trust you not to lie about the number of hours you have given to Ritza.
  • Working efficiently is the standard at Ritza. "I work smart, not hard" is not a justification for not doing your agreed-on hours. Everyone at Ritza works smart. If you've found a way to be more productive in less time, share it with the team.
  • Don't plagiarize or outsource your work. Sometimes, you might be assigned work that already exists. This doesn't mean you can copy-paste existing material – that's plagiarism, which is dishonest.
  • Be honest about any problems you're facing. If you have a personal crisis or anything else that prevents you from fulfilling your agreement, tell us with as much notice as possible.

Efficient and Effective

We don't micro-manage people which means we trust them to use their time efficiently and effectively and to understand the difference.

You shouldn't waste time doing busy-work that doesn't need to be done.

You should get stuff done, even if it means using resources inefficiently

These pull in different directions (getting stuff done, not wasting resources), and there's a time and a place for each, and you need to use good judgement and common sense about both.

Proactive

We expect Ritza team members to take initiative.

This isn't the kind of job where you can hang around waiting to be assigned work. Be proactive: Find ways to add value and ask if you're not sure what you should be doing in a given hour, day, or week.

Situation

These aren't about your character, but about your situation. While we can work with a diverse range of people from around the world who live in different situations, we do have some baseline expectations.

Reliable internet and suitable space

We are fully remote. You need a fast, reliable internet connection, reliable power, and a quiet room from which to take meetings. We can't work with people who are fully nomadic and expect to take meetings from coffee shops or shared coworking spaces, or people who live in locations that do not have reliable internet infrastructure.

Good proficiency in English

You need to be able to communicate (with us, and with readers through your writing) in English. Second-language English is fine as our editors can help fixing common errors etc, but it's important that everyone on internal and external calls can understand you and that you can write prose that is clear and correct enough to be edited.

Don't do anything that would be added to this list

This list is longer than it looks here. General play-nice rules apply implicitly. Feel free to suggest a code of conduct we can use that covers things like discrimination, harassment, and other no-nos. Basecamp has a fairly generic one that faced some controversy in the past, but is probably a good starting point.

Partly-negotiable expectations

Stick to the terms of your contract

If you're on a retainer with us that specifies that you will give Ritza a certain number of hours each month, you should be confident that you can consistently commit those hours to Ritza. Retainer agreements with Ritza are usually structured as:

  • X hours/month
  • Spread approximately equally each week

We expect that, if you have a 40-hour retainer with Ritza, you will aim to do 10 hours/week.

We know that you have a life outside of Ritza, and for exceptional circumstances, we will always be understanding and flexible. But just as we commit to paying you for those hours, we expect you to commit to providing them. We need the earliest possible notice if you:

  • Can't provide us with the contracted hours in a given month.
  • Can't complete your hours for the current week and will make them up in the following week.
  • Haven't worked your full hours for the month and don't plan on invoicing for them.

While Ritza's deliverables to our customers are loosely defined based on word counts, we are committed to delivering the customer value for what they are paying for: We're likely to exceed our contractual obligations when words are "easier" to produce. For this reason, we expect Ritza team members to avoid measuring their output by word count and stick to working the hours agreed to in our contracts.

Stick to our regular working hours

If you're a full-time Ritza employee, your contract stipulates Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm SAST as Ritza's standard working hours. This is when you should be putting in your Ritza hours. If you need to do something else in those hours and you want to make use of flexitime, tell us.

Unlike most other agencies, we avoid crunch-time expectations, where team members are asked to work extra hours, evenings, or weekends to meet deadlines. We plan to keep it this way.

Predictability is a necessary part of preventing crunch time, so if you feel like you're falling behind on expected output (but you've been putting in the agreed hours) then tell us. Don't try to catch up by working evenings or weekends.

If you have individual preferences for when you do your Ritza hours, discuss them with us. We can likely accommodate reasonable requests.