Why you should create your own culture book

Company culture book – why you should have it

First of all, the company culture book is a relatively new trend of employer branding and very few companies have yet decided to prepare their own publication. So this is an opportunity for you to stand out from other employers. Let’s think about it. Someone who is looking for a job rarely has the opportunity to get to know a company before sending their CV. They can contact employees, read reviews on the internet or browse the business website. Meanwhile, the culture book gives them all the most important information about the company culture including employees’ benefits and opportunities for personal development.

Secondly, more and more companies pay attention during recruitment not only to the hard skills of candidates but also to the so-called cultural fit. The HR department checks if a person matches the organization in terms of character or shares the same values. The company culture book gives candidates the opportunity to answer for themselves whether they fit into the organization. This also saves time for recruiters, as more relevant CVs will appear on their desk, or rather in their email inboxes. These will be documents from people who share similar values and know that they want to work for this particular company.

Thirdly, an additional benefit of a culture book that is not always obvious is that it helps to organize internal processes. Working on a culture book allows employees to organize their knowledge about the company, map out what is missing in the organization and provide invaluable insight into how they work. So it’s a great opportunity to create some missing processes or improve those which employees feel are insufficient.

Also, the culture book document can support branding and promotional activities. Companies operating in the B2B segment want to learn as much as possible about a business partner when choosing one. It’s worth sending them such a publication to read up about the company’s history, its employees and its values. The latter, as we wrote in the last article, is increasingly important in establishing business relationships.

What should be included in a culture book?

Above all, a culture book must be genuine, which is why it’s a good idea to involve the company’s employees in its creation. Write clearly, openly and without any rubbish.

A company culture book is supposed to reflect the shape of the company, so make sure it looks right. A sloppy, careless (with mistakes) or simply ugly document can be a bad advertisement for your company. Think strategically about it – in terms of including brand elements, design, typography and composition, as well as possible development and expansion. A culture book should be updated from time to time. After all, a company is still growing with more and more projects in its portfolio and new employees. Your publication should evolve in the same way.

Admind’s culture book – example for inspiration

The best way to find out what is a well-designed culture book is to look at an example. When creating the publication at Admind, the big challenge was to show the cultural diversity of the organization, while at the same time showing that as a company we speak with a common voice. We have offices in four regions of the world, and our team consists of people from 16 countries.

We used illustrations, the visual form that is closest to us at Admind. They are an integral part of each area of the culture book. We invited a total of about 20 people from our offices in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Odessa and Kraków to the project and asked them to create designs that are primarily about them. As a result, the publication includes over 20 great and unique illustrations created by people from Poland, Thailand, Spain, England, Ukraine and even Cuba. It would be hard to find a more authentic message so deeply rooted in the culture of Admind Branding & Communications agency. Finally, we managed to create a culture book that contains the most important information about the company and is perfectly designed, which is extremely important for the branding agency. If you want to get inspired, you can download the publication from our website.

From our own perspective, the creation of the culture book was a great experience integrating our team, giving all Admind employees a voice and the opportunity to carry out a joint project in a creative way. In addition, we have learned how to better communicate and transfer knowledge between our offices, as well as how to coordinate such a project on a large scale.

Szymon Dyrlaga, content marketer at Admind.