Ah, the employee handbook. Everyone has had the experience of receiving this weighty tome full of policies, disclosures and legalese on the first day of work. You have to sign a document to attest that you received it. And then you throw it in the recycling bin, unread.
At Bonusly we like to be agile (lowercase 'a') about everything we do. In that spirit, our handbook lays out our values and guiding principles (and a small number of progressive policies) -- in an open-source document that’s easy to read and understand. And because it’s hosted in a public GitHub repo, anyone can view how it changes over time and submit pull requests to update it.
Without further ado, here is the Bonusly Employee Un-Handbook.
...yep, that’s it.
These values are what we value at Bonusly. These aren’t just nice-sounding words on a poster somewhere, but a succinct description of our culture and what it’s like to work here. We use these values to guide our day-to-day activities and decision-making, from how we respond to customer emails to the roles we hire for to the features we build.
The initial list of these values were created at our first company retreat, when Bonusly was a team of seven people.
- Go get results
- Communicate
- Default to transparency
- Work smarter, not harder
- Help out
- Seek and embrace diversity
- Delight the customer
You can think of this value in two parts: “go get” and “results”. The first part speaks to our strong bias toward action. If there’s something you want to make, improve, change, or get rid of -- go do it. Need input or feedback? Chat with some colleagues on Slack. Need copywriting, engineering or design resources? Recruit those colleagues by rallying them to your cause. Whatever you do, avoid what Netflix calls “analysis paralysis”.
The second part (“results”) speaks to the primacy of outputs. We don’t particularly value inputs - how the work gets done. What matters is getting the work done and measuring the impact of this work after completing it. Do the results match up with your goals? Is there more room for improvement? Were there unintended consequences (good or bad)?
Share the results from your work (see our values of “Communicate” and “Default to Transparency”): if they’re great, you’ll be swimming in microbonuses. If they weren’t what you hoped for, no big deal - get some input from the team and then keep executing until the results are great.
Bonusly operates as a flat, distributed team. We currently have hubs in Boulder and NYC, but in all likelihood the company will become more distributed over time. Communication is important on any team, but at Bonusly it’s essential to our success.
What does communication mean at Bonusly?
- You actively solicit input on work you’re doing.
- You listen before giving your opinion.
- You contribute your ideas.
- You keep your cool in stressful interactions.
- You treat your colleagues with respect at all times, especially times of disagreement.
- You have the courage to contribute on topics, even if they are not in your realm of responsibilities or expertise.
(We took this phrasing from Buffer. Thanks, Buffer.)
We don’t just occasionally share our internal metrics - we make them available in real time. Any member of Bonusly can log in to our internal dashboard and see our up-to-date metrics: revenue, burn, churn, runway, etc. This ensures that people have the information they need to come up with novel solutions and act on them.
On an individual level, we candidly share stories of our successes, failures, challenges, and interests so that we can learn from and support one another.
At Bonusly, we’re able to move quickly and effectively with a very small team by ensuring that every team member is not simply executing on tactical-level tasks, but is also evaluating, improving, (and ideally automating) how those tasks get executed. Moreover, team members are encouraged to question if specific tasks are even necessary, and seek growth via subtraction.
Working smarter also means knowing yourself and how you work best. Where do you work best? With what tools? At what times? How much R&R do you need in order to perform at your best? What skills/knowledge do you need to acquire in order to take your output to the next level? At Bonusly, you have the freedom, and the responsibility, to answer these questions for yourself.
Share knowledge, teach skills, and otherwise help out your colleagues whenever possible. “Not my job” isn’t in our vocabulary. Also, helping out doesn’t mean waiting to be asked for help. You proactively offer help and support whenever it seems appropriate. You give selflessly of your time and expertise to help others on the team.
Of course, we all get busy from time to time, so occasionally the answer might be “Not now, but have some free time later today” or “after I ship this big feature tomorrow”.
Our industry has well-documented problems when it comes to workplace diversity. This fact makes it easy for tech companies to skew everything from their employment policies to the features they develop toward the needs of the dominant group - which is both a disservice to our customers and reinforces the lack of diversity in our industry.
We work better when we include a diversity of opinions and ideas. This means encouraging input from everyone on the team, and also seeking to add people to the team from backgrounds that are traditionally underrepresented in our industry.
Our dedication to diversity goes beyond simply putting equal opportunity copy on our job descriptions. We use tools (like Textio) to eliminate gender bias from the language of our job postings, and actively seek out applicants from diverse backgrounds. And we invite feedback from job applicants and employees alike about how we can better embrace diversity. We all have unconscious biases, and welcome your help in identifying and mitigating them.
This is a value as old as business itself, but it’s fundamental to how we operate at Bonusly. We are a business, and the only way we can stay in business is by attracting and retaining customers.
At Bonusly, everyone focuses on the customer - their needs, challenges, feedback, ideas, and behaviors. This focus is foundational to everything we do, because we don’t just serve customers - we delight them.
We want you to take whatever time you need to refresh and recharge. Many startups offer a simple “unlimited vacation” policy. We view this as lazy policymaking at best and at worst an attempt to subtly discourage employees from taking vacation.
Instead, we set a minimum expected vacation. Our expectation is that everyone (including founders and early hires) will take a minimum of 3 weeks (15 days) vacation per year. To that end, we track but do not limit PTO.
We also embrace a more nuanced view of time off. At our last company retreat, we asked the team to talk about what they valued in their time off. Unsurprisingly, we want the freedom to mix work and free time in different ways. Here are some examples of what current Bonusly employees do, which we encourage you to do as well:
- Travel while still working about half time (a “workcation”).
- Take breaks on nice days to go hiking/biking.
- Take occasional 3-day weekends.
- Go away on a longer (week+) vacation where you fully disconnect from work.
One important policy that many early-stage startups ignore is parental leave. We believe that having a great parental leave plan is critical to attracting and retaining top talent who are parents or want to become parents.
Because we do not limit vacation, we don’t have a prescribed amount of time off for parental leave. But you should absolutely take time. And you can structure that time any way you want.
Here’s one example: Raphael took one week off immediately after the birth of his son. Then, for the next 11 weeks (his wife Nina’s maternity leave) he would frequently take mornings off or head home early. When Nina returned to work three days per week, Raphael took another chunk of leave (three days per week for five weeks).
This is what worked for Raphael -- we will accommodate whatever works for you.
Bonusly covers 100% of employee health/dental/vision, and 50% of spouse/partner. We also subsidize 80% of health and wellness programs (e.g. CitiBike membership, gym memberships, etc) in the Bonusly rewards catalog and encourage employees to suggest new health & wellness rewards to add.
Examples:
- Citibike Annual Membership
- Annual Gym Membership (Any gym, we’ll pay 80% of annual membership)
Every employee has a generous budget to give out in micro-bonuses to their colleagues. In addition to gift cards and charitable donations, employees can redeem earnings for travel between Bonusly locations (currently Boulder and NYC), Bonusly shwag, tickets to local events, and more. Please suggest new rewards to add to our catalog!
Bonusly will furnish you with up-to-date hardware of your choice to meet your ergonomic, computing and lifestyle needs.
As with unlimited vacation, just stating “we’ll get you what you need!” isn’t good enough. Here are some examples/options:
- Raphael (does development, sales, and operations out of NYC): MacBook Pro, ReadyDesk, external display, Apple wireless keyboard, Logitech wireless mouse.
- George (content marketing and customer support in NYC): MacBook Air, rain design mStand, Apple wireless keyboard, Logitech wireless mouse.
- John (development in Boulder): MacBook Pro, noise-canceling headphones.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.