🍀  Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It’s been quite a week and we’re ready to celebrate. We checked out the latest and greatest HR and policy management articles so we could send them to you. Don’t forget to have some green beer this weekend!

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Article of the Week: Although we subscribe to the old adage “the harder you work, the luckier you get”, the subject of this week’s highlighted piece (look for the 🍀  below) is about getting lucky. Not, not that lucky. C’mon now. The subject is creating your own luck and the author has 5 tips to do that.

TGIF! One more week gone forever. Since we’ll never get it back, let’s look ahead and get better for tomorrow. We plowed through a field full of HR and policy management articles this week so we could harvest (see what I did there?) the best stuff for you. Here’s hoping your Saturday and Sunday are Blissful!

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Article of the Week: The subject of this week’s highlighted piece (look for the ✦ below) is inspired by the recent Day Without a Woman protests in that the article’s headline has the word “Woman” in it. Hey, I didn’t say it was a strong connection. Also, the issue shouldn’t be a gender one – we all hold ourselves back in some way from time to time.

It’s March AND Friday? Yes! Spring is just around the corner. Of course, here in Atlanta, it started a month ago. I digress… We read so so many HR and policy management articles this week just so we could filter out the best stuff for you. I suppose we also learned some things too. Have a great weekend!

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Article of the Week: The subject of this week’s highlighted piece (look for the ✦ below) is the Winner’s Effect and how small victories give us the confidence to keep winning.

Are there ways you can show off some wins to your team so they’ll keep the win streak alive?

The weekend is almost here! We hope your work week was fun, challenging, and drama-free. We read a wheelbarrow full of articles to find the best HR and policy management content for your reading pleasure. Enjoy and have an awesome Saturday (and Sunday)!

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Article of the Week: This week’s highlighted piece (look for the ✦ below) takes a “Moneyball” approach to hiring. We like it because (a) we like baseball and (b) finding creative ways to grow your company gives you a competitive advantage. What other under-valued objects have you discovered and utilized to your advantage?

Friday Friday Friday. Another week in the books. You deserve a break. How’s 2 days off sound? Until then, we’ve gathered the best HR and policy management resources to help you get ever so closer to the weekend.

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Article of the Week: This week’s highlighted piece (look for the ✦ below) takes a deep look at the unspoken things that make some people great at their job and others… not so much. There are also 5 lists that would be great inspiration for someone creating content around core values.

We’re finally getting around to launching our weekly newsletter and since the info we’re blasting out every week is so valuable, we thought we’d post it on the ol’ blogaroo as well. We’ll be back every Friday with the best HR and policy management content we can find to help you become a better HR pro, leader, and person. Without further adieu…

TGIF, am I right?! You made it through the week and to commemorate your accomplishment, we’ve gathered the best HR and policy management resources for your reading pleasure. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

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Article of the Week: We love our first ever A.O.T.W. (look for the ✦ below) because it highlights just how important language is. Language exists just as much to influence as it does to communicate. How are you influencing the people you communicate with? On that note…

Which of this week’s articles do you think is the most useful?

Your company values. Of course they’re important. And it’s easy to throw them into a list that can be used in many places. On the back of an ID card. Painted on a wall. In your email signature. You get the idea. But as Netflix points out in their culture deck, actual values are not just words you show in a lobby. Your actual values are shown by how you hire, reward and release people.

If you want everyone who makes those decisions at your company to make them correctly – i.e. based on your values – they must truly understand what those values are and, more importantly, what they mean. That requires more than just a list.

Creating this type of training content can be difficult. With that in mind, here’s an excerpt from our upcoming e-book entitled “How to Make a Culture-First Employee Handbook” that might give you the helping hand you need to turn your values content into more than just a list.

Company Values

Every company has core values, whether they’re written down or not. To make them more than just nice-sounding words, everyone at your company must live them unconditionally every day.

Before any decision is final, employees should ask, “Is it in line with our values?”

Core values are the behaviors, skills and attributes that employees value in all people. They define who you and your employees are deep down inside. Each value must be universally beneficial: something you think everyone should hold in high regard; not just those within your company (yes, even competitors).

Tips:

The format of your values should be an adjective for a person. You can think of values as virtues. Most companies have 3 to 10 core values.

You may want to go into detail about each value to make sure employees know what you mean. If you’re having trouble thinking of some good details, try answering some of these questions:

• What actions demonstrate this value, in general? You can write these out as: You do / make / think / identify / recognize / understand, etc. …
• Why is this a value? What is its intent?
• What are some specific examples of how someone can demonstrate this value?
• If someone asked what the value means, is there an easy answer? Why is it a good answer?
• What other adjectives would you use to describe a person with this value?
• Is this value a new idea of how to live your life? What’s the old way and why is this way better?
• Are there any exceptions to this value?
• Are there any famous quotes that express this value?

Bonus!

A generous and thoughtful Blissbook customer saw the values help text inside of Blissbook while they were creating their employee handbook and were inspired to send a list of dozens of example values. We thought it’d be valuable to pass on so click that link if you’re interested. And if you’re in need of a therapist in DC please talk to our friends at Therapy Group of DC!

When Blissbook launched in late 2013, we felt pretty good about what we knew and what we were launching. We combined our knowledge of the policies and procedures industry that we acquired over 1-2 years of research with the momentum we saw behind engagement initiatives and the growing sentiment that company culture is something companies should invest in.

It made a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the real world often doesn’t make sense. In the real world, people don’t act rationally. It may seem like they do from the outside, but if you dig deep enough, you’ll find it’s usually an illusion.

Looking back with that knowledge, we realize we knew a lot less than we thought. I’d say we were at the beginning of the “I’m an expert” phase shown below.

In late 2014, after an intense 6 months of startup engineering education, we decided that we knew nothing. Or, at least, not enough. Not only that, we were burned out. So although we remained committed to serving our existing Blissbook customers, we weren’t sure what to do next. We took a break and in addition to taking on some consulting work with Home Depot (our team has deep, real expertise in designing and building software), we built a completely unrelated product in a totally different market.

 

Blissbook, if you didn’t know, is built by the amazing folks at RW Code Lab. By keeping our “day jobs”, we make sure Blissbook remains independent. This is very important to us because we always want to make sure Blissbook’s users long-term interests are our first priority.

Sometimes we’ll post about topics on the RW Code Lab blog that we think would be interesting to our Blissbook audience. Today is one of those days.

Change management in the enterprise is hard! We have an interesting take on it (boats and sharks?!), so head on over to the RW Code Lab blog to give it a read.

Since we launched Blissbook, we’ve done a lot of talking with customers about the content that goes into one. We classify this information into three categories: culture, onboarding / general information, and case-specific. Although no Blissbook is the same, they will all contain one or more of these types of information.

Culture

Defining company culture is hard. Is it chemistry? Fun things people like to do together? How employees or customers are treated? It could be all of those things, but we agree with Rand Fishkin in that company culture can be boiled down to the following:

• What you believe in and why your company exists (your mission and guiding principles).
• Who you collectively are deep down inside (your core values).
• Whether or not you respect these things (how you hire, reward and release people).

These are not shallow questions and they require deep thought. There should also be collaboration with all employees within a company so that everyone is bought in and the culture reflects everyone’s belief of what the company is, not just leadership’s view of it.