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At the core of every organisation lie the key values and the ways of doing business that help define how staff should behave.
While codes of behaviour are normally spelled out in the company rule or handbook - a document that every employee has access to, but which only the most dedicated will have read all the way through - their content is rarely controversial.
In the case of performance and talent management software firm SuccessFactors, which has attracted publicity recently for its bottom line on 'assholes', the official handbook has become a must-read.
For far from simply waving new recruits vaguely in the direction of HR or the company intranet - where a copy of the firm's 'bible' will be open to perusal - SuccessFactors expects all would-be members of staff to read, sign and date a 15-point 'rules of engagement' document before they start work.
Candid approach
While most of the rules are as bland as they are unenforceable - number one is a commitment to "be passionate" about the job, while number 14 obliges employees to "have fun at work" - it is the rear end of the document that has prompted both praise and outrage.
By including rule number 15, which states: "I will be a good person to work with. I will not be an asshole," critics claim that SuccessFactors has become a serious hostage to fortune.
But after six years of trading in which employee numbers have grown to 500 and the customer base to more than 1,300, HR director Jennifer Boyd - who says that the firm occasionally substitutes the word "jerk" when communicating rule 15 to more sensitive employees - does not agree that the company is in danger of making an ass of itself.
"Our rules may well sound a bit Big Brother-ish to firms that don't spell out what they expect of staff in this way, but the vast majority of people we talk to find it refreshing that we are so candid about what we want and don't want, and are able to use the appropriate language," she says.
"I'm not saying that people here don't occasionally act like jerks when they are under pressure, and on one or two occasions we have had to let people go because of out-and-out asshole behaviour."
Negative behaviour
