HR/People Lessons from Netflix

It feels as if almost everyone in our industry has read the famous Netflix culture deck on Slideshare, and with over 5mm views, that may not be too far off.  If you haven’t looked at it before, and if you care about your organization’s culture and how productive and happy employees are the best kind of employees, then take the time to flip through it.

As part of a benchmarking exercise we did on employers with unique and best HR/People practices a few years ago, a few of us did either site visits or at least live interviews with leaders at four companies, all of whom are pretty well known for progressive People practices that are also in-line with our company’s culture:  Morningstar, Gore, Nucor, and Netflix.  As part of this, we met in person with Patty McCord, Netflix’s long-time head of People.  It was a really informative meeting.

Now Patty has written a longform article in Harvard Business Review that shares a lot of what we learned from her in her office that day. It’s absolutely worth a read.  Netflix does have a pretty distinct culture and gets positive but mixed reviews on Glassdoor, so as with everything, I’m not advocating adopting everything they do lock, stock, and barrel.  But I can guarantee that some of the lessons that Patty shares are valuable no matter what your company is like.