The A to Z Guide to Culture Books and Employee Manuals

THE A-Z GUIDE TO

BOOKS AND EMPLOYEE MANUALS

Culture is your company's only truly sustainable competitive advantage.

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True Story:

Culture Can’t Be ⌘C, ⌘P’ed

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What We Mean By That

Culture is the sum total of your individual behaviors, values, attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions.

Culture is the most effective and defensible tool to win with both customers and employees.

As a result, companies are openly sharing "culture decks" or employee handbooks to attract like-minded employees and customers.

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While every deck is different, most have:

1. A history of the company and its plans for growth

2. A description of their products and/or business model

3. A look into how the company works, especially what sets it apart

4. A set of shared values and what those values demand from employees

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The Basics

22squared Atlanta Employee Handbook

This handbook has a clever premise: it was written by a new employee, documenting their first 22 days at the company, and functions as half-handbook, half-journal.

360incentives Culture Book

Instead of being a prescriptive manual, 360's Culture Book serves as a yearbook, including fun pictures from events of the past year and reflections of what the company's values mean to individuals. The book also serves as a great recruiting tool that supports their designation as the second best workplace in Canada in 2014.

Acceleration Partners Culture Deck

AP's Culture Deck is oriented towards recruiting new team members, with a heavy emphasis on the benefits of working with the company, such as a stimulating working environment, flexible schedules, and continued learning opportunities. In addition, they give clear examples of how their values impact their daily activities, like using values as hiring and promotion criteria.

Big Spaceship Manual

Big Spaceship's manual is upfront about its purpose: it helps new employees understand how the team makes decisions, not how to access an internal server. There's a heavy emphasis on being a human at work, and they even include a checklist of things newbies can do to integrate into the team faster.

CP+B Employee Handbook

Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s Employee Handbook is clear about its expectations for employees: commit to creating only the best advertising, and aid others when they need help. They also address the company's weaknesses, like meeting deadlines, and ask employees to help.

DoSomething’s Culture Book

DoSomething's culture book is largely geared towards interns and potential employees, demonstrating how they can make a difference within the company. Several pages are dedicated to employees answering questions like "What's your favorite DS memory?" to "What tatoo would you get?".

Disqus Culture Deck

Disqus spends the first part of its Culture Book explaining its history, the product, and the company's business model. The rest is dedicated to the work itself: how employees work, how to operate within the workspace, and "life," including time off and work-life balance.

Facebook Employee Handbook

Ok, we couldn't find the whole document, but here are some images from the mysterious Facebook employee handbook, detailing the company's purpose and approach to work.

GiveForward Culture Deck

Everyone talks about mission, vision, and values, but GiveForward's Culture Deck explains the connection between the three, and what they look like in practice. They also include a mantra—their "secret sauce"—and include video examples so people can see it in action.

Handy Culture Deck

In addition to practical do's and don'ts, home service booking platform Handy provides a discount code for its services directly in its Culture Deck—a clear indication that these decks are powerful marketing tools as well as internal guides.

HubSpot Culture Code

As part of its commitment to transparency (and to recruit great people)‚ HubSpot makes its cultural "operating system" available to all. To better attract and screen potential candidates, one section details the characteristics of a "Hubspotty" individual.

Idea Couture’s Culture Handbook

As befits a strategic innovation shop, IC's culture is always adapting, but their culture guide maps out their values and what they expect their team to do (and what not to do!).

Memoria Visual

Memoria Visual uses a narrative approach (specifically, an analogy of a mission to Pluto) to explain its purpose and ways of working.

Mindvalley Culture

In addition to an introduction to its company culture, Mindvalley includes a "Code of Awesomeness" that summarizes their 10 most important values.

The Motley Fool Rules

The Motley Fool's Interactive handbook incorporates video (an increasing trend) and additional links so employees can dig deeper into important topics.

NASA Safety Culture Handbook

NASA's handbook is more cut-and-dry as befits a government organization, but still covers important topics like the "Lessons Learned System" and "Engaged Culture."

Netflix Culture Deck

The Netflix Culture Deck was one of the first to be widely shared, and now has well over 14 million views. Despite its simple design, it's gone on to inspire many of the other decks seen here.

Nordstrom Employee Handbook

Nordstrom's Handbook gets right to the point: there's only one rule. This is page two of a two page "document."

Paessler Culture Deck

Paessler's Culture Deck is minimal, but it makes an effort to explain how they have arrived at each value.

Possible Culture Code

Possible's Culture Code breaks down its 11 values and gives people clear examples so they understand what those values look like in practice.

Spotify Engineering Culture

Who says an employee handbook has to be a book? Spotify's video (the first of two parts) breaks down their engineering culture and has a handy graphic that can be easily referred to.

Thoughtbot Playbook

Thoughbot's handbook is a "living document" that employees can edit in GitHub. It's laid out in a clear, step-by-step manner, from the Design Sprint to Measuring, making it easy for anyone to understand the entire process. We love seeing a company put their culture deck not only online, but in a form that those inside and outside the company can iterate upon.

Trello Employee Manual Board

Trello created a kanban board to capture its policies, making it easier to find the specific policy or topic the reader is interested in.

Valve Handbook

One of the most comprehensive handbooks available, Valve's explains "the choices you're going to be making and how to think about them." This can be as high-level as their approach to serving clients, to the mundane, like moving a desk.

Whiteboard Culture Book

Whiteboard's culture book infuses information about their work practices with their own personal style. It also includes resources like an office map and glossary of commonly used words like "wireframs."

Zaarly Employee Handbook

Zaarly puts a greater emphasis on internal communication and structure, leaving values for last.

Zappos Culture Book

One of the most famous culture books; it includes contributions from all its team members.

ZGM Employee Handbook

ZGM's handbook lays out expectations for how the new employee will interact with the rest of the team and responsibilities to clients.

Want to create your own culture book? Attend our Team Design Bootcamp.

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The next step

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“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world.

For, indeed, that's all who ever have.”

– Margaret Mead

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