Beautifully Designed Employee Welcome and Onboarding Kits

For new employees, organizational culture begins even before the first day on the job. Some companies send welcome kits to new hires, or gift onboarding kits on the first day. The best kits are not only beautifully designed, but also help introduce new hires to the company's values in a tangible way. I wrote about Dropbox's Cupcake Welcome Kit on Huffington Post, but I came across several other ideas for Welcome Kits and Onboarding Kits while doing research that I wanted to share here! What kits have you come across? Let me know in the comments.

Dropbox: Cupcake Welcome Kit
One of Dropbox’s five core values is simply an image of a smiling cupcake. Why? Because Dropbox doesn’t want to take itself too seriously. When Dropbox makes an offer to a new employee, the employee receives a special delivery at home: a cupcake kit in a beautifully designed box. This ritual reflects Dropbox’s fun nature, and brings delight to its employees—even before they’ve joined the company. (Reposted from Huffington Post)

Dropbox's Cupcake Kit, Image Credit: Kurt Varner

Ogilvy's Induction Box
Ogilvy's South Africa office designed a welcome box for employees on their first day. The box was inspired by the advertising agency's founder, David Ogilvy, who wrote a short book, The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness and also created his famous eight habits of highly creative communities. According to AdWeek, the motivation for creating the box was "to make people feel like they belong, like they have found a place here. Working at Ogilvy is so much more than just another job. We wanted to create something that reflects this. The Induction Box solidifies the importance of what we stand for."

Ogilvy's Induction Box, Image Credit: Adweek

Adobe's Kickbox

Adobe employees receive a special red box to kickstart their own innovative ideas. The box contains a candy bar, a Starbucks gift card, and a debit MasterCard pre-loaded with $1,000! Adobe believes the money "empowers individual employees to follow their instincts about emerging opportunities." Adobe encourages innovators use these funds to validate their idea. The box also includes scorecards, frameworks, exercises, and other materials to develop ideas. Once employees move through a checklist of actions, they can pitch their ideas back to the company. Adobe has funded some of these ideas. This idea was so successful, Adobe now has a guide on its website to teach other companies how to start their own Kickbox. 

Adobe's Innovation Kickbox, Image Credit: Forbes

IDEO's Welcome Kit

On my first day at IDEO's San Francisco office, I arrived at my desk to find a beautiful spread of all my favorite office treats (Vosges chocolate, sunflower seeds, and Bengal Spice tea). Every new hire also receives a copy of the Little Book of IDEO, which narrates the IDEO values. How did IDEO find out what my favorite treats are? That's a mystery for another day. :)

My very own welcome kit at IDEO

Also check out these articles for more ideas: How Percolate Does Onboarding; Jack Dorsey Gives Everyone He Hires the Same Red Book; Salesforce's UX Onboarding Kit; The best agency employee welcome kits and Getting New Employees Off to a Good Start.

What kits have you come across? Let me know in the comments!

Monthly Culture Inspiration: Visual, Book, and Article to Bookmark

Hey readers, I'm trying out something new! Every month, I'll post three types of culture inspiration: a visual, a book, and an article to bookmark.

Visual: 6 Things to Do When Your Team Grows to 60 People

Organizational Design Consultancy NOBL Collective has illustrated a delightful chart to help organizations with the growing pains that occur once you've hit 60 people. With fewer than 60 people, it's easier to manage the business and culture by gut feeling. With more than 60 people, it's time to institutionalize some of the intangible norms you've set. Below is what you need to pay attention to. I just love diagrams like this, don't you? I always want to print them out and pin them above my desk.

Find this and more at nobl.io

Book: Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent by Sydney Finkelstein

What do Alice Waters, Jon Stewart, Ralph Lauren, Miles Davis, Oprah Winfrey, and Lorne Michaels have in common? They are "talent spawners." They are leaders who not only get their employees and followers to achieve great things, but they inspire their employees and followers to go on to become great leaders themselves. 

Think about the careers Jon Stewart launched: Steven Colbert, Steve Carell, John Oliver, Ed Helms, Jessica Williams, Samantha Bee, and Rob Corddry, just to name a few. Alice Waters did the same thing in the restaurant world. "When I first learned about Alice Waters," Finkelstein writes, "I was fascinated that a single person could foster such a disproportionate share of top talent." A superboss is a leader who helps other people accomplish more than they ever thought possible. And not every superboss leads in the same style. Finkelstein defines three types, who all operate in different ways: iconoclasts, nurturers, and glorious bastards. 

What are their secrets? HBR reports, "They are unusually intense and passionate—eating, sleeping, and breathing their businesses and inspiring others to do the same. They create impossibly high work standards that push protégés to their limits. They are geniuses at motivation, inspiring people to do more than they ever thought possible. Remarkably, they can be intimately involved in the detailed work their people are doing, while at the same time lavish responsibility on inexperienced protégés, taking risks with them that seem foolish to outsiders."

Read the book to learn more secrets! It's a fascinating read, regardless of your industry or job.

 

Article to Bookmark: The 26 Most Popular People and Culture Articles of 2016

Damon Klotz is Culture Amp's Head of Community Extraordinaire (I added that last word- but it's true). I follow him on LinkedIn, and you should too! Damon helps curate Culture Amp's weekly "People Geekly" newsletter, which is full of helpful culture and people analytics news. 

Damon combed through the past weekly issues of the People Geekly from 2016 and pulled out the most popular articles. I'm a total sucker for "best of" lists, so I found this to be a fun way to share the articles that readers found most useful. I have bookmarked this list for future reference. There are so many goodies in this list, including one I wrote for the Future of Work Platform: Career Planning in a Flat Org: How Spotify and Google Keep People Engaged.