There’s a popular BBC mockumentary series on Netflix at the moment called Cunk on Earth. In it, presenter Philomena Cunk presents the history of earth. It’s very funny, very irreverent, and quite brilliant. It’s very different from the usual dry and boring history programmes that we’re used to.
And that’s what our company internet pages or induction information sections can be like. A little dry and boring. A timeline of significant events in the company history, told in a fairly factual way.
So here’s our challenge. Could you do something a little different for your company history? Could you include come interesting things about your company culture? The achievements of the people who work there? The funny stuff? Could you even do a Cunk style video documentary (or mockumentary) of your organisation?
Need some inspiration about how it could be done?
Some years ago at an HR event, Frucor were finalists for their really cool history of Frucor book they’d put together. They’d asked employees for stories about working for Frucor over the years and put this together into a fairy tale type hard copy bound book that new employees were given a copy of. And then existing employees wanted one too, as they had helped create it! Reading it gave you a real feel of how the company got to where it was.
At Elephant we’ve tried to do some different things over the years. For our HR Game Changer conference we put together a history of HR, but didn’t want it to be boring. Hopefully it meets the cunk test and is interesting and funny. You can check it out here.
Some other examples that spring to mind include Zappo’s, the online shoe company shared a video of their company induction manual which they’d done like a comic book. Valve also put their HR manual online which has an explanation of how their company works, including having no managers! And Netflix found fame a few years ago for their HR culture deck. It went viral because it looked and sounded so different to the usual fairly dry and boring HR strategy presentations.
So now it’s your turn. How you could you get cunky with your communications?
Let us know if you try something out and what happens!
And if you need a good laugh first, go and watch Cunk on Earth.
Elephant Group 