Onboarding Community Workgroup Members

Schedule an Onboarding Meeting

Onboarding must be completed via a face-to-face meeting (either virtual or in-person) with the workgroup manager and new members. New members, especially those from underrepresented populations or who are new to government engagement, may feel intimidated or unsure of their role, so it is important to establish a safe, welcoming environment where they can freely ask questions and be brought into the project at their own pace. 

Prior to the onboarding meeting, provide the community member with an onboarding packet using the Onboarding Guide below to assemble all of the information they will need. Use the basic Public Records Act training to ensure that they are informed about their privacy as a workgroup member. You may want to adapt the PowerPoint tool with your own agency branding and details.

Document Sharing and Collaborative Group Tools

Collaboration is now easier than ever with the invention of apps and software such as Google Docs, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Dropbox that help people share documents online and work simultaneously with others in cloud-based documents in real time. However, many of these popular apps and software are not appropriate for use by state agencies. They typically do not meet Washington State’s standards for document security or privacy, and could open up a world of serious vulnerabilities to your agency, the workgroup, and its members. 

As we do not currently have access to collaborative document sharing software, apps, or licenses that meet our security requirements, unfortunately, it is recommended that workgroups refrain from sharing cloud-based documents at this time. 

• Note: Because there is a high demand for state government staff to be able to collaborate and share documents with external partners (not only in workgroup settings, but also when collaborating with third-party contractors, advocates, and citizens in general), EQUITY is actively exploring solutions to this challenge.

Until that is resolved, we currently cannot collaborate in co-editing documents such as shared Google Docs or OneDrive shared documents, and instead recommend that documents are shared as attachments.

Below is a list of a few apps that ARE safe to use and approved for state agencies, which also can be useful when collaborating with individuals who are outside of your agency:

• Canva for creating graphics and visuals collaboratively.
• Mural for live collaboration during meetings in presentation mode.
• Smartsheet for creating surveys and collecting data in spreadsheets.

Make sure that you are coordinating with your IT or privacy folks to check and make sure that any tools you use is safe, secure, and meets your agency’s internal tech standards.”