Google, Facebook and other tech companies have shown the world that corporate culture doesn't have to mean a slow death by boredom. Now, D.C.-based startup Stories Incorporated is helping companies build the kind of corporate culture that employees will want to join. Stories Inc. just launched its biggest project yet, creating an interactive employee handbook for financial advisory giant The Motley Fool. The Fool Rules, as the the handbook is called, was released to the public as well as within the company.
Stories Inc. describes itself as a "culturography" company. From its headquarters in 1776, it puts together videos and other media to foster a sort of corporate equivalent of a personal history. That's actually what the company originally began doing before moving into the burgeoning corporate culture field.
"We target deliberately cultivating an organization or company's culture," said Scott Thompson, one of the co-founders of Stories Inc. "We uncover employee stories and in the case of The Motley Fool, combine it with interactive media."
It's a creative setup. Instead of just tons of text, the interactive slideshow includes comics, maps, videos and other ways of communicating what its like to work there. The videos from different employees add a personal touch you don't normally see in an employee handbook at a big company, and the conversational language used in the text definitely add to the sense that it's not all drudgery and watching the clock for employees.
"We see lots of organizations focused on creating an effective culture," Thompson said. "They want their employees invested in that culture."
Most of their projects only take about three months, although The Motley Fool handbook took longer because of how many pieces it took to put together. It required translating the policies of the company into the online format, employee interviews and plenty of design and redesign efforts to get it right, Thompson said.
"In the notoriously stale world of employee handbooks, I love how Stories Inc. helped us create a living, breathing Fool Rules," said Christine Noonan, HR manager at The Motley Fool in a statement. "We can now update our handbook quickly and make it more relevant to employees all over the world. A new Fool can get up to speed on our catchphrases before her first meeting. She can better understand our benefits by watching the videos. And she can see how Foolishness pervades everything we do as a company."
Stories Inc. is working on several other projects scattered around the country, from a major real estate company to a law firm to non-profits. All of the culture projects have different scopes and priorities, but they are all about making an organization's culture come to life in a way it hasn't done before. Recruitment, historical preservation and even inter-organizational goals like sales and marketing all fall under the purview of Stories Inc.
"We're helping organizations that don't have a defined culture to make one," Thompson said. "They establish the culture and use it going forward."
