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<aside> 👋 Hello! I’m Jessica Grasmann, the people person (aka **Experience Operations Lead) at Part and Sum. For a while now, I’ve wanted to get into the mix here with my perspective on one of the most important parts of any company – operations. Periodically, I’ll be popping in to pull back the curtain on what we do differently and highlight some of my favorite policies we have in place.

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My two year old is newly obsessed with trains and has fallen in love with Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Though meant for children, his nonstop Thomas marathons have shown me there are quite a few lessons for adults as well. What stands out most? Always be responsible, reliable, and really useful. ****(The alliteration definitely helps.)

This seems obvious but in a remote environment, it’s especially challenging to understand how a person is feeling. As a team, we need to take care of each other but that’s impossible without first being responsible for our own wellbeing, both mental and physical. If you’re feeling unwell or need a break, I want you to take it. We all do!

The past few months have been particularly brutal for sickness across our team and something I’ve heard (way too) often is: “I’m just going to push through.” Sometimes I can convince them to take advantage of our very flexible PTO policy and the day off, while other times I have to trust that they’ll do what’s best for them. Unfortunately, most who’ve pushed through end up saying they wished they took time off because they weren’t recovering as quickly as they hoped and have been struggling to get things done. This doesn’t benefit anyone.

Being reliable means letting those potentially affected by your absence know you’re stepping away or will be OOO for the day. At Part and Sum, we have policies and procedures in place for team members to get assistance with rescheduling meetings and reassigning tasks so that when someone needs to suddenly go, they can do so without having to send more than a Slack message or two. It’s really that simple.

We can’t help ourselves, our clients, or each other, when we don’t feel 100%. From a natural decrease in focus to a prolonged illness due to a lack of rest, there are a variety of reasons why just taking that sick today is actually the best, smartest thing you can do. Listen to your body so that you can recover quickly and get back to the things that matter most like being the really useful person you’re trying to be.