Introducing Frank Beta 2.0
Dear Worker,
In April we launched the first version of Frank. The pandemic was relatively new, and we were just beginning to see the impact it would have on both our personal and professional lives. Since then, millions of you have lost your jobs, taken significant pay cuts, and are being forced to put your health and safety at risk without proper protection or medical benefits.
Our vision for Frank is still the same — to empower workers like you with a voice in collective action. However, we have changed many things in the product since April that we’d like to tell you about.
Security
Your safety is our single most important priority, so we invested heavily into improving the security of Frank. Our new approach to security is to give you the tools and power to control who gets access to your group and who doesn’t. Instead of relying on a third party verification system, we felt it was better to invest in tools to empower you, the worker, to take control of the security and privacy of your own group. We recognize there is no perfect solution to security. There will always be risk associated in organizing. And while we’re dedicated to making this the best it can be over time, it’s important for you to recognize that your privacy is dependent upon trusting your coworkers and working together to properly screen everyone joining the group.
This new, worker-led approach to security can be broken into three key pieces to help ensure the right people get secure access to your group.
Eligibility: Frank is only for non-management workers. Every worker signing up for Frank is required to certify that they are not a member of management. In addition, an existing member of the group can tag a potential group member as management, blocking them from signing up. Learn more.
Authenticity: You can verify someone is who they say they are by pre-trusting their email before they join. Authenticity can also be verified when a current group member invites them by email. Or, you can enable a passcode option, which requires workers to enter a secret code upon entry to the group.
Trustworthiness: Existing group members can indicate the level of trust they have for coworkers who haven’t yet joined. A potential member must have sufficient support from existing group members to be allowed to join. If someone joins Frank but hasn’t been voted as trustworthy, Frank will require additional members to screen and vouch for a prospective new member before admitting them into the group. This process follows similar organization mapping efforts in labor organizing.
Every coworker joining your group must complete all three of these security checks in order to join. Further, several of these steps are tracked and made transparent to the whole group, like link tracking for invitations and vouching. By having control over and visibility into who is admitted, you’ll have more confidence that your group is safe and trusted.
Coworkers
One of the most critical parts of organizing your workplace is keeping track of all of your coworkers involved in the effort. Some of your colleagues may not be supportive of the initiative whereas others can be great allies to your cause, so it’s very important to keep track of all of that information. That’s where our new feature Coworkers comes in. We drew inspiration from veteran organizers that we worked hand-in-hand with while creating this new feature. Almost all of the workers we ideated with showed us examples of what they used for keeping track of this information. Some used paper and pencil, and others used spreadsheets to track various things, like a trust level “score,” roles and responsibilities, notes, contact information, and whether or not they should be invited into the effort.
Drawing on this inspiration, we created an in-product, interactive spreadsheet so you can easily keep track of this information in Frank. Your group in Frank will have two lists: One list of Verified Coworkers and another list for Non-Verified Coworkers. The Verified Coworkers list automatically updates when a new member joins the group and finishes the verification process. The unverified list is where you can manually add rows of workers, add information about them, identify their support level, and track which folks are managers. We hope this helps you work smarter, spending more of your time organizing with coworkers who are aligned with your cause.
Templates
Our most powerful feature on Frank is Campaigns — it’s how groups of workers build solidarity around an issue to develop a plan of action to improve their workplace. However, we recognize that creating a campaign and drafting a demand letter outlining your key issue is a very daunting task. We hope Templates can alleviate most of this burden while amplifying your voice.
We are launching 10 template campaigns, written by a community of worker contributors, including labor journalists and seasoned organizers, to help inspire you to draft powerful campaigns for your own organizing efforts. These contributors created template campaigns based on their real life experience and expertise. Templates cover some of the most pressing issues facing workers right now — from addressing COVID in the workplace to fighting for equal pay to demanding transparent scheduling practices. We’re excited to continue adding Templates to Frank to offer examples about even more workplace issues, and to open this platform to any worker contributors to expand template offerings for more workers. Our long term vision is to host a community-powered library of resources accessible to all workers.
You can use one of these Templates for your Campaign by customizing it with your details or you can use it merely as a guide for what a successful organizing campaign looks like. Each Template has additional resources and commentary by the creator to help teach you how to construct your campaign. It’s our hope that these Templates will help you feel more confident about where to start — and get you off the ground faster.
For now, we are piloting 10 templates, but our vision is to continue building our library of templates and eventually cover most common workplace issues.
Invitations
Organizing your workplace is hard, and it’s even more difficult being the first of your coworkers to start. We learned that it needed to be easier for your coworkers to join you on Frank and start working towards solidarity. So, we made it a priority to rethink the way you invite your coworkers to Frank.
We recognize you may not have your coworkers’ personal email addresses on hand, so we created an option to invite them with a secure link. This unique link can be pasted into whichever communication channel your group uses. Most importantly, every link comes with the option to add custom security parameters, keeping you and your group safe from the wrong person getting access.
Limit uses: If you’re inviting 2 coworkers to help you write your campaign, limit this link to 2 invites to prevent more from joining before you’re ready.
Passcode: If you’re worried about this link being posted in a chat or Slack channel, you can add a passcode that you share verbally or through another channel.
Expiration: You can set the link to expire after an hour, a day, 3 days, or a week.
Link Tracking: Track who creates a link and when, and who uses that link to join your group.
Our mission for Frank is to empower workers like you with tools to amplify your voice and to be heard in your workplace. While we’re just getting started, we have poured a lot of time and effort into these product updates in hopes that they get us closer to actualizing that mission.
Every one of these updates was developed alongside workers like you and expert advisors via worker interviews, focus groups, user testing sessions, and virtual workshops. Our plan is to continue designing and developing Frank with your voices and perspectives, so if you’d like to be a part of that process, please reach out here.
In Solidarity,
Charlie & Team Frank
GetFrank.com is a digital tool for non-management workers, in any type of job, to privately organize with their coworkers and create campaigns to improve their workplace. Want to use Frank in your workplace? Sign up to join Frank.
