Netflix’s Approach To HR – Different and Interesting

by | Aug 5, 2009 | Development, Recruitment, Total Rewards

Here’s how Netflix describes itself on its career page:

Entertainment, like friendship, is a fundamental human need; it changes how we feel and gives us common ground. We want to entertain the world. If we succeed, there is more laughter, more empathy, and more joy.

To get there, we have an amazing and unusual employee culture. This document is about that culture.

Like all great companies, we strive to hire the best and we value integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration. What is special about Netflix, though, is how much we:

  1. encourage independent decision-making by employees
  2. share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
  3. are extraordinarily candid with each other
  4. keep only our highly effective people
  5. avoid rules

Our core philosophy is people over process. More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. With this approach, we are a more flexible, fun, stimulating, creative, collaborative and successful organization.

From Tech Crunch: “Ever since Netflix’s awesome vacation policy was revealed to the public (basically, there is no policy, it’s take the time you think you need), the company’s work policies have been of interest to people. A new 128-page presentation called “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” was recently sent around the company, and then put on SlideShare. The presentation, which you can see for yourself is as interesting as any 128-page document can be. If you read it over, about half-way through, you’ll probably start wishing you worked for Netflix. This was meant to be an internal document for employees to read, but it’s also one heck of a recruitment pitch.

Early on, a lot of it deals with workplace efficiency, and not being afraid to let someone go if they’re not doing their job. The idea is that if someone just wants to do mediocre works, that’s fine, they’ll get a nice severance package. It extends this into an emphasis on effectiveness over effort — the company doesn’t want to necessarily reward people who stay late versus those who don’t, but get the same amount of work done. It then turns to some internal policies including management best practices. And then to retention practices — making sure the company pays the top people a high enough salary that they’ll never want to leave.

There’s a big emphasis within the company on salary, rather than stock options and bonuses. The thought is that you should give the employees as much money as possible up front and let them decide what to do with it.

This is all pretty interesting stuff for a fairly large, publicly-traded company. The emphasis is obviously not to act like other big companies do. Given Netflix’s recent successes, it would seem that the strategy is working. And yes, there is stuff in there about the vacation policy.”

—

Adaptive Talent is a talent consultancy designed to help organizations achieve amazing results and ongoing adaptability. Founded in 2008 and based in Vancouver, Canada we offer retained search, assessments, total rewards consulting, training, leadership coaching and development programs, and culture & organizational development consulting.