01
A reciprocal working relationship
These standards apply to every client and authorized client user. They complement the Terms, the Teammate Standards, and each relationship’s workflow and authority agreements. NextTeammate expects both sides—not only the teammate—to create the conditions for reliable work.
Clients may set business outcomes, priorities, deadlines, review rules, service levels, and agreed availability windows. They should not treat a teammate as having unlimited capacity or authority.
02
Clear work and timely decisions
- Provide accurate objectives, necessary context, reasonable deadlines, and a usable definition of done.
- Identify what the teammate may complete independently and what requires approval.
- Provide access, inputs, decisions, and feedback in time for agreed work to proceed.
- Use the relationship workspace to record material changes rather than relying on conflicting verbal instructions.
- Respect reserved capacity and agree on changes before adding materially different work.
03
Respect, safety, and lawful instructions
- Communicate professionally; do not harass, discriminate, threaten, coerce, humiliate, sexually harass, or retaliate.
- Do not request illegal, unsafe, deceptive, discriminatory, or unlicensed work.
- Do not ask a teammate to falsify records, impersonate another person without disclosed authority, evade platform controls, or conceal material facts.
- Respect a good-faith request for clarification or escalation when an instruction may be unsafe, unlawful, deceptive, or outside authority.
- Keep sensitive personal, medical, financial, and regulated information in approved systems and disclose only what the workflow requires.
04
Secure access and responsible AI
- Provide named accounts and least-privilege access where available; do not normalize passwords in chat or shared documents.
- Use multifactor authentication and revoke access promptly when a workflow or relationship ends.
- State whether AI is prohibited, permitted for preparation with human review, or permitted within documented limits for each workflow.
- Do not instruct teammates to paste restricted information into unapproved AI tools or bypass security, privacy, copyright, or vendor rules.
- Retain responsibility for consequential approvals, publication, payments, contracts, regulated decisions, and other actions reserved to the client.
05
Concerns and service recovery
Report concerns with specific facts, dates, affected work, and available evidence. A complaint is an allegation, not a finding. Do not threaten, publicly shame, withhold undisputed payment, or demand off-platform punishment while a concern is being reviewed.
Protect people and data first. For a credible security, privacy, fraud, harassment, or safety issue, pause the affected work or access and contact NextTeammate promptly. Routine quality or communication misses should ordinarily begin with clarification and a practical recovery plan.
06
Possible responses
NextTeammate may clarify expectations, facilitate coaching, document an improvement agreement, narrow authority, assign training, pause a workflow, rematch, restrict platform access, or end an engagement. The response depends on evidence, seriousness, recurrence, intent, cooperation, contributing conditions, and whether the relationship can be repaired—not an automatic strike count.
Clients may request reconsideration under the Resolution Process. NextTeammate may also act when a client breaches these standards, including protecting the teammate, pausing service, restricting access, or ending the client relationship.