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Company Culture

Culture has wide-spread implications that have a significant delayed effect on design creativity, product quality, customer satisfaction, sales, hiring, and employee retention. Nothing is more fundamental than culture. 

Here’s a look at what some renowned company do to improve their company culture.

Red Frog Events via Joe Reynolds, Founder

Benefits

• Unlimited vacation days (On average, employees take 2-4 weeks)
• $100 per month office decor budget per employee
• $1,000 per year training allowance
• Sabbatical every 5 years; travel world for 1 month
• Work from home once per week
• Match up to $1,000 in charitable contributions per year
• Birthday massage
• Free red bull, beer, soda, fruit snacks

Office Amenities

• Creative office design (Photo)
• Rock wall
• Lego table
• Tree house
• Arcade machine

Addition Info

• 75 total employees (69 new hires in last 18 months)
• 2,000 resumes a month (1 out of 150 applicants hired)

Core Values

1. We live with passion.
2. We innovate and create.
3. We love to laugh and learn.
4. We’re team players to the core.
5. We have contagious energy.
6. We’re industry leaders.
7. We have big hearts
8. We’re open-minded.
9. We give seriously good high-fives.
10. We continue to grow as people.

Zappos via Tony Hsieh, CEO

 Culture & Customer Support

• Sold first company, LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265 million because the company culture drained from the company and became beyond repair after they hit approximately 100 employees.
• Started fresh with Zappos and became evangelical about fostering an impecable culture.
• Customer support is marketing.
• Customer support phone number proudly displayed at top of every page on website.
• Despite being famous for their extremely high level of customer service, their #1 priority is company culture
• Once a year all employees write about what the company culture means to them. Compiled into a Culture Book. Completely unedited. Organized by department. I ordered one. (Video and Order Form: http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/culture-book/) 
• Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. 
• Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. 
• In modern times, with the transparency of the Internet, company culture and company brand are two sides to the same coin. 
• Strives to always overshoot customer expectations. For example: Randomly upgrades orders to overnight shipping
• Tour of office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIJWv1sFNjA

Hiring

• First stage of interview is standard with the hiring manager and his/her team interviewing for technical, experience, skills
• Second stage of interview is conducted by HR department for culture fit
• All employees are sent to HQ in Las Vegas for 4-weeks of training
• Training goes over company history, importance of company culture, and 2-weeks of answering customer support phone calls, regardless if new hire is a lawyer, accountant, etc.
• At end of training, Zappos offers $2,000 to quit. 2% accept this offer.

Additional Info

• Zappos has over 1,500 employees and has 1 billion in revenue

Core Values

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and a family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

Google via Eric Schmidt

• Extremely important to control who you let in your company.
• Google ‘moves forward’ without central management.
• Eric tries to cause controversy in meetings. Discord + deadline and strive for consensus.
• Allocation principal: 70% core business, 20% adjacent business, 10% others.
• Do not let managers hire their friends. Have a recruiting team, a ‘hiring committee’.
• Don’t interview one person more than 5 times.

Apple

• Steve convenes a secret ‘top 100’ meeting each year. Anyone that he would take if the company were to be recreated from scratch.
• Every project has a “DRI” (Directly responsible individual).
• Steve determines pricing, food in cafeteria, design of shuttle buses, staircase design in Apple Store, etc.
• Steve has created an Apple University, brought professors in to create case studies on how the company operates currently so that when he leaves, things can be preserved.