Company culture is important to establish as a burgeoning company. Whether you plan on being a super chill founder with flip-flops and hoodies or a rigid, tough love type that requires professionalism at every turn, employees need to know what to expect from day to day. And your on boarding materials need to reflect that through and through.
We asked ten entrepreneurs what they think needs to be included in written guidelines for employees. Take a look at their answers below and get your company culture in order:
Humor
We’re the type of company that likes to have fun with everything, so the guidelines for our brand tend to incorporate a lot of our humor into everything we put out. Let your brand shine through. Don’t let someone tell you how you have to be or what you have to be doing. Let your company and everything about you be incorporated into your guidelines.
– John Rampton of Due
How and When to Use a Logo
Often times, companies will send out their logo without guidelines on space relationships, approved colors or approved variations. This is an issue because designers at other companies will bend and manipulate a logo to fit a design or layout, but in doing so they will ruin the integrity of both.
– Tom Cullen of LaunchPad Lab
Mission Statement
While we might all think we’re in business to make money, the reality is that we have other reasons for working hard to achieve our dreams. You’ll want to include a mission statement that focuses on what makes your company tick from the inside out. Don’t be limited; pour your heart into this piece and see what statements really resonate with you.
– Nicole Munoz of Start Ranking Now
The Message That Ties all Communication Together
One of the biggest struggles in communicating as a brand is understanding how each individual message fits into your overall brand strategy. The best way to keep your messaging across channels and mediums coherent is to define what the “bigger message” is that you are telling your customers. For a good example, look at GoPro, their bigger message would be something like “Everyone can be a hero.”
– Nick Reese of Broadband Now
Your Brand’s Look, Feel, Form and Function
We’ve articulated our branding guidelines around the look (visual elements), feel (emotional elements), form (what we do) and function (how it all works and the customer experience). Documenting brand colors and fonts is a good place to start, but equally important is the tone of voice in your writing and emotion evoked in your imagery. Your aim is to create a positive lasting impression.
– David Ciccarelli of Voices.com
Specific Tone of Voice
You should set the tone of voice you want to establish for communications. Whether it’s technical, funny, irreverent or serious, you need to be consistent in how you communicate — not just in what you say. Doing this also forces you to go back, look at your target market and compare their needs to how you’ve been communicating in the past. You might find ways to improve communications, too.
– David Nevogt of Hubstaff
Particular Aesthetics
Take note of every detail that needs to stay constant throughout your brand. For example, the exact colors, buttons, height of the text, font, etc. Include your brand’s core values, action words and adjectives. You can also offer examples of your brand as a whole. Everything thing that goes into what you need to embody.
– Jayna Cooke of EVENTup
Core Values
Focus on your mission statement and core values first. My brand’s mission statement is broad — Make Life Better — but it informs everything that we do. If partners and my team members know from the get go why we do things, they’ll better understand what differentiates our brand and know how we do things without much instruction. Then they’ll be more likely to take initiative.
– Nick Bayer of Saxbys Coffee
Concrete Examples
Describing your brand standards is important in helping your employees understand the “why,” but providing examples makes those standards concrete and greatly increases compliance. No matter what the topic is — logo usage, brand name guidelines, trademark symbol usage, brand voice, etc. — or how straightforward your guidelines are, provide examples (both correct and incorrect) for everything.
– Robert De Los Santos of Sky High Party Rentals
A Manifesto
A manifesto can be a simple statement of principles or a bold, rebellious call to action. It’s a powerful reminder of who are and why you’re here. Building a manifesto into your written guidelines embodies and documents your beliefs so that whoever interacts with the brand knows what you believe, what you stand for, what’s important to you and why you matter.
– Sunny Bonnell of Motto
Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC members generate billions of dollars in revenue and have created tens of thousands of jobs.