What is a culture-first handbook?
Every workplace will have its own company culture. Often difficult to define or describe – you may often hear it referred to ‘as the way things are done around here’.
Company culture is the values and behaviours of an organisation and they will influence and impact the employee or customer experience. It is something that can be felt both on the inside and on the outside of an organisation. An organisation’s reputation can be built on its culture.
In turn company culture will affect overall performance on key metrics, including recruitment and retention, determining whether candidates want to work with you and if employees want to stay. A strong, positive company culture can be your competitive advantage and plays a significant part in your brand. And in today’s current employment market, having a company culture that positively impacts your brand can only be to your advantage.
It is commonplace now for organisations to have a set of core values. Some organisations will have spent time engaging with their employees to establish their values. Often determined through facilitated discussions about what it feels like to work here, what behaviours are important and how they align to the organisation’s strategic vision and goals. Research from Rungway of more than 2000 British employees (2017) found that 49% of employees could not recite their organisation’s values, whilst 27% said the values had too much corporate jargon in them. Even without the statistics, there is no doubt that values will feel more authentic and will embed more naturally if employees have been involved with their development. If you really want to embed them, you also need to ensure your leaders model them, they are integrated into your processes and that you continually assess how well you are doing. And don’t make your core values empty, nice sounding words without meaning because if you do, you’ve fallen at the first hurdle.
But what is a culture-first handbook? Whilst you will always need an employee handbook to set out your organisation’s contractual and non-contractual arrangements, which will include a set of robust policies and procedures to help guide how various circumstances are handled, they don’t need to be written in a style that is cold, jargon-heavy, punitive or uninviting.
A culture-first handbook is written in a tone and style that reflects the values of an organisation and gives employees a sense of belonging. It has an emphasis on:
a warm welcome
the company’s history, including key milestones
a mission statement and core principles
the company’s vision and strategic direction, and
the company’s established values.
It will be clearly written and easy to understand. The language used would mirror that which is used every day in that particular workplace. Policies will be streamlined and simple to follow, with room to flex when required to meet the individual needs of the employee or the given circumstance, but most importantly the established values will be at the heart of each policy.
If you take this approach you can create a more engaging workplace where everyone upholds the same core values. When done well employees should have a clear indication of how they will be treated and whether the culture that permeates from the handbook indicates a great place to work.
A culture-first handbook is my preferred style of handbook. If you would like to discuss any aspect of this article, or are interested in refreshing your handbook or policies please do get in touch, melanie@hightidehr.je