I absolutely love the way Zappo’s reminds their employees about corporate guidelines.
Sensible rule
First of all, they have a sensible rule: don’t reply to all! This is one of those Obviously Good Ideas™ that few follow … mostly for the purposes of CingYA in case of disaster, and appearing to look busy to lots of people. But in a high-trust and high-effectiveness work environment, the best email approach is only to reply to the people who absolutely need the reply.
The others, of course, need to trust that those who need to act are in fact acting on whatever information the email contained. The benefit is that they don’t have their inbox clogged with nice-to-know but useless information, and their productivity goes up.
Creative, fun implementation
However, most companies (even the ones with good rules) have nasty or annoying ways of reminding employees about the do’s and don’ts. Memos, personal chats with managers, staff meetings, etc. All of them are boring, annoying, can be insulting, and … ineffective. They’re ineffective because they’re not memorable.
Well, how’s this for memorability:
I tell you – I’d remember it. I’d probably not Reply to All ever again. Others in the office probably wouldn’t either. And, because of the fun spirit … I wouldn’t even be annoyed or insulted.
You have to have an amazing corporate culture to have earned the right to do this sort of thing, though … and especially to post it on YouTube.
But when you do … the benefits obviously spill out and support your entire branding and marketing efforts.